I’d like to thank Sid for asking me to be here today. It’s quite the honour.
There’s been a lot of media hype recently about a celebrity couple with a considerable twenty year age difference.
Personally, I don’t get what the kerfuffle is about. I’m sure no one cared one iota that Madonna was 29 years older than Brahim Zaibat when they started dating. Or that Rod Stewart is 26 years older than his wife. Harrison Ford is 22 years older than Calista Flockhart, and no one sees this as an issue.
So why is this celebrity couple any different? Maybe it’s because one’s the UK Olympic Golden Boy and the other an Oscar winning star. Maybe it’s because Tom Daley announced the person who he loved – who made him feel safe – was a guy? Maybe because social media is so accessible, and everyone with an opinion and an internet connection can spruik jealousy and bigotry with anonymity, without repercussion.
So why is it any of our business? The fact is, it’s not.
A recent online article, shown to me by fellow author Jay Northcote, summed it up perfectly.
Jay thought it was fitting for some characters of mine, and I couldn’t agree more. Yes, it says none of our business and I whole heartedly agree. I just thought it was very fitting in the context of this post.
The whole stigma associated with age differences is something I just don’t understand. I’m a whatever-floats-your-boat kind of person, you know, live and let live, if-you-can’t-say-anything-nice-don’t-say-anything-at-all kind of person. A weird concept in this day and age, I know.
I’ll admit, the term May/December to describe a fictional couple with an age difference was new to me. I’d actually never heard of it. Coming from an online fanfiction background, I knew it as ‘age-gap fic’ or even just ‘romance’ because, for me at least, having characters with a sizeable age difference was no big deal; it didn’t matter to me.
It still doesn’t.
In my latest Thomas Elkin Series, there is a 22 year age difference between the two main characters, and a lot of people have questioned this. I’ve been asked why I wrote it that way, what issues I had writing it, or was it difficult to imagine.
Any writer can tell you, you don’t really get to choose the characters you write about.
My two main characters, Thomas Elkin (44 years old) and Cooper Jones (22 years old) had a story to tell; a tale of being true to yourself, falling in love and finding that one person who lets you grow. I never wrote it to be about their age difference. It’s a love story, pure and simple. Yes, their ages are discussed, and play a part in the series, but it’s not what defines these men. In fact, it’s because of their age differences that you can see how genuine they are, that this love is real.
There seems to be some preconceived notion that in age-gap romance, the older person misleads the younger person, manipulating them into the relationship, citing the younger person couldn’t possibly know what they wanted.
Now, if you’ve read the first two books in the series, you’ll know it’s not Tom who leads the relationship at all. It’s 22 year old Cooper. He knows damn well what he wants. He wants Tom. He doesn’t care for the age difference, the success or the money. He just wants the man underneath it all.
And with that, I’ll leave you with the very wise words of Cooper Jones.
“If gender doesn’t matter, then neither should age.”
Thomas Elkin Book One – Elements of Retrofit
Thomas Elkin Book Two – Clarity of Lines
You can visit N.R. Walker’s blog at http://nrwalker.wordpress.com/ On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003907957620
Very well said, Nic! I’d always known these types of stories as age-gap also but I’m with Cooper on this one. Age, gender, skin color, weight and all that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you love the person you are with. Love is love and as long as you are true to yourself and your partner, who cares about the differences? <3
I like this quote from Clarity of Lines. Best pro-age gap argument.
“So if I’m Gen Y and you’re X, then together we are the chromosome code for male,” he mused
Very well put.