Dear Agatha,
Please help me. My boyfriend is 23 while I am 25 years of age. Can we marry considering that he is younger by two years than I am?
Please help me because I am confused.
Confused Lady.
Dear Confused Lady,
There is no reason why both of you cannot marry. Age is nothing but statistic which should not be allowed to interfere with the happiness of those who are able to get over the hurdles put in its path by the society.
The only danger is if you lied about your age to him. Once he is aware of it and agrees to date you despite it, you don’t have any reason to be confused or apprehensive over the workability of the relationship.
What is paramount here is your comfort with the arrangement. Since both of you are not ashamed at being seen together in pubic, your ages become inconsequential to your overall happiness. Your man has to be sufficiently convinced that you are the right woman for him and therefore able to defend his reasons for preferring you to any of the younger girls his friends or family would have wished for him.
He must be proud of you in everyway to overcome the many nasty comments as well as innuendos that such a relationship attracts.
On the other hand too, you must learn to respect him irrespective of you being older than he is. You must never do anything to question his leadership of the relationship. Irrespective of whether he is younger than you or not, he remains the political and spiritual head of the relationship and subsequently the home. Therefore you must willingly at all times submit yourself to him in every way a woman gives of herself to her husband. In public, you must be seen as the doting and respectful wife who recognises as well as cedes to the leadership of her man. Never make him feel whether alone or in the company of others that your age gives you the edge over him or talk to him to suggest that being older, you have the liberty to scold him.
You may be older but in terms of responsibility and leadership of the home, he is the unequivocal head.
A great deal of how this relationship progresses would depend on the amount of humility, friendship, determination as well as respect you invest into it. There is no relationship without its problem and yours will not be an exception at all. As a matter of fact, it would come with more complex issues on account of the decision of both of you to break away from the norm.
Both of you have to learn this early to steel yourself against the opinions of every other person but the two people who count -you and your mate.
If both of you are able to listen to yourselves, learn not to take things too seriously, discuss your differences candidly and manage to remain focused on the reasons that made both of you united, nobody would notice that he is younger or you older for that matter.
To make this relationship work, you must learn to take pride in yourselves as well as decision to spend the rest of your lives together.
Bearing in mind that nobody is perfect, differences should be tackled with maturity while you must avoid inferences that lack strong evidences to support your line of reasoning. Gossips and malicious speculations about one’s partner have been known to destroy a good relationship. Don’t expect everybody to be happy at your happiness or decision to become a couple.
To this end, you and your partner must learn to have unconditional trust in your feelings for each other. While you must never allow the fact that you are older be obvious in your dealings with him, there are instances in which your lessons from experiences must be applied in the interest of peace in the home.
One of such instances concerns his relationship with other women. Always resist the natural impulse inherent in majority of women to jump to the wrong conclusions.
Even in situations where you have evidences that he has an affair with a lady, don’t rush into reactions. Wait until you are enveloped in the privacy of your home before exploding. Nobody but him must see your insecurity because once it becomes public knowledge that you are insecure, it could trigger a lot of negative reactions from those who don’t want both of you to be happy together.
Strive to be his best friend, major confidant, cheer leader as well as his think-tank. Spiritually learn to pray for him.
However one issue that can unmake this relationship is that of you being able to wait for him to be ready. At 23, reality means he still has far to go whereas at 25, you are almost ready for plucking. Do you think you have the required patience and tolerance to wait for him to put a large percentage of the structures you need to be happy together? Don’t forget a woman matures faster than the man. At 23, he still has far to go. If he hasn’t concluded his education, you have to wait for him to do this, do the compulsory national service and get a job, work for sometime to acquire a little bit of capital as well as material things to give some comfort to your early days.
This is one important aspect of this relationship you must discuss to avoid disagreement and terrible disappointing quarrels between the two of you later in life.
Understandably, you will suffer the pressure more than he would do. Would you have the patience and love to wait? Don’t limit yourself to the now of this relationship; look beyond today to its tomorrow and its workability.
Then it won’t be a matter of love but that of a race against time on your part. Ensure you remove all obstacles that could cause problems now or in the future. There is always a thin line between reality and idealism.
Good luck.
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