Posted by skyfox
on Mon 19 Nov 07, 2:20 PM to skyfox's blog.
I suppose I should start this off with a disclaimer that I'm only 26 years old. In the grand scheme of things, this isn't a large number of years, though with current life spans, I should be between 25% and 33% through with my life. But this article in the New York Times about love among people with alzheimers and dementia did spark some thoughts in my mind.
I've always had a thing for older men. Not grandfather age (yet: give me a few years), just older. Heck, Sukebe is 17 years older than me, and my last boyfriend was even older. However, I've also been told that I'm quite mature for my age. (I leave that for you to decide yourself.) "Maturity" may be one reason that I prefer older men.
It has been said several times that girls develop quicker than boys during puberty, and that even into their 20's, girls are more socially mature than their male counteparts. This may explain why when I was in high school I prefered boys who were a year or two older. However, after a certain period of time, maturity differences between men and women seem to even out, as demonstrated by the vast number of hen nights. After the men and women reach an equilibrium of maturity, differences are found elsewhere.
| New York Times wrote: Researchers trying to understand aging and emotion performed brain scans on people across a range of ages, gauging their reactions to positive and negative scenes. Young people tended to respond to the negative scenes. Those in middle age took in a better balance of the positive. And older people responded only to the positive scenes. “As people get older, they seem to naturally look at the world through positivity and be willing to accept things that when we're young we would find disturbing and vexing,” said John Gabrieli, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the researchers. |
This section was quite illminating for me. It explained (in part I felt) why my boyfriend dumped me in high school after realising that I was going to college. (Positive: having skyfox and her being able to support me; Negative: waiting for for years. Guess which won out?) And I could probably say the same thing about everyone under the age of 30 that I ever dated: in the end, the negatives won out over the positive.
Which of course shows why I would prefer someone who is able to overlook my (minor) faults and see things long-term. (That is what the word "commit" means, right? "long-term"?) And I'm actually quite tickled by the fact that as we get older, my little faults will mean less and less.
For myself, I think I've taken the good with the bad for a while. There's just some part of me that know that if I want to experience the good parts of him, I have to put up with those little idiosyncracies that might be less than perfect. (Of course, looking at some of my past relationships, I've probably put up with a great deal more in the past than I am right now, but then, that just highlights for me the good parts of what I have now.) I won't say that I don't notice negative aspects of relationships, it's just that I'm a little more realistic about them than I was in my youth.
So what is my conclusion to this little piece of information? Only that people are who they are, and they're not likely to change, but in the end, it doesn't really matter anyway. We're all going to die. There, I said it. We're all going to die, so we should enjoy the positive while we can. So, thank god for older men. 
| 19 Nov 07, 3:06 PM The_Counsellor UK(WA), 5 yrs  |
Love occurs, grows and is sustained by many things. One of them is common outlook, including time horizons and level of optimism/pessimism. There are many more issues too. Knowing what parameters work in your own love dynamic is a brilliant way to create a happy love life and a longer lasting love. Long may your love grow, and the bliss you derive from it! The Counsellor Kink Friendly Counselling and Therapy Let me help you to be the best you that you can be |
