Love and friendship between older and younger guys is considered not quite the thing. If, say, a 50 year-old falls in love with a 30 year-old, the hidden assumptions of everybody including perhaps even the men concerned, are that it's an unnatural relationship. It can't last. The older guy is regarded as a bit pathetic, because after all he's unattractive, and shouldn't really be having sex anyway. The younger one is regarded as a loser -- what's wrong with him, that he doesn't find someone robust and of his own age to have sex with? I know this is so because I've experienced it. Faint contempt, mockery, raised eyebrows. Of course, we mock it with het relationships too. Rich old men marrying busty twenty year-olds. We smile dryly. We know what she wants, we think to ourselves. And it isn't him.
The implicit assumption is that sex is the only point of the relationship. That the younger partner is giving sex and the older paying for it. Sugar daddy. Says it all, doesn't it?
Sometimes there is much more to a relationship than the merely physical, the merely sexual. Sometimes love transcends barriers, and two people connect, even though they're not supposed to. Even if there's 20 years age gap between them. Today I mourn my friend who died roughly two years ago, and who, though he was much younger than me, came to be my best and closest friend. Our souls connected -- even though he was 20 years younger than me. I miss him. Vale frater et amice.
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