At 81, can I find love with a 30-year-old?
DEAR BEL I AM 81 and a widower for more than seven years. I have a son who lives in the U.S. and a daughter who lives in New Zealand.
I am close to my children and we keep in contact using social media and the phone. I am also able to visit them from time to time. They are married and have good careers and comfortable lifestyles.
As for myself, I am in reasonable health and live alone, but am quite capable of managing my affairs and looking after myself. A couple of months ago, I received a friend request from a 30-year-old Filipina girl working in Dubai.
I reluctantly accepted this request and since then we have chatted online and by video link and have become very close recently.
Initially, we kept each other company and alleviated our loneliness, but recently we both feel that we are in love and want to be together.
She gets upset when I mention the age gap between us and says that it does not affect how she feels about me.
Of course, the only way we could be together would be for us to marry, so that she could get UK residency. She would then become my next of kin and my children would lose their inheritance. Am I living in cloud cuckoo land thinking that a marriage with such a large age gap can work?
Also, I am worried that my children would be so disappointed at losing their inheritance that it might adversely affect my relationship with them.
My heart tells me that I want this lovely young lady in my life and my head tells me that it could lead to disaster.
What do you think? ALAN
THere is a strange but beautiful sound young people cannot hear. It’s like small waves pushing pebbles into the shore and then withdrawing. Or that distant whispering in the shell you hold tight to your ear. Or the last soft murmur of a wood pigeon just before bed time — the final note always sounding like a question.
Do you know what the sound is? The insistent fluttering of a still-passionate heart. The sighing of men and women who are as full of longing as they are of years. And that bird’s last question asks softly, ‘Is this it? When I want so much more?’
Which is to say, I do not think your sudden passion stupid, although there is no doubt it is unwise. Do you see the distinction? Of course you do!
You know it all already, and have written to me because you need somebody to tell you to step back, pull up that drawbridge and slide the bolts firmly into position. Save yourself.
I made a point of expressing understanding of those feelings of longing because I know it is human to yearn for love — a need that never stops.
On the other hand, I must warn you to stop this now and ask you bluntly why you think a 30-year-old Filipina would possibly want to marry an 81-yearold Brit. Because of your drop-deadgorgeous looks?
Because she desperately wants to share your bed? Because she is longing to turn herself into your nurse as infirmity gradually takes its toll on your poor body?
Or does she look at you on that video link and see a passport and pound signs and property? You know what the answer is.
I implore you to switch off that computer and go out. Visit brendoncare.org.uk and
bournemouthu3a.org.uk for events and activities going on for your age group where you live.
Ditto Age UK in Bournemouth (call 01202 530 530). I beg you to listen to your head, but also to celebrate the fact that your heart is still beating and can make new friends. But not this way.
Yes, dear man, you are deluded by clouds and cuckoos.
No, you cannot love someone you have never met and marriage to this stranger would be a catastrophe for you.
Of course your children would be devastated, not because of ‘losing their inheritance’ (rather cynical of you), but because their old dad would be casting himself into a dangerous situation bound to break his heart.