In marriage, relationships ten is more than just a number

The hopeless romantics will tell you that age is just a number in love. The realists will tell you that age is not just a number and that limits do exist. All is fair in love compared to war because love is the battle of the sexes. Generally, men married younger women. This was in response to natural as well as social orders.

The modern world ate into the patriarchal order that ruled the world where women were subservient to men. In Kenya, this is slowly changing as women flex their muscles.

In this flex of what a man can do a woman can do, we still find limits. Women still struggle to change tyres and they cannot legally rape a man, maybe luring him to have sex. This is why I believe a ten-year gap is too big between consensual lovers.

Maryann Mumbi was in a relationship with Mike Okombe who was about ten years her junior. Okombe ended up dead in unclear circumstances after a party in Nakuru in November 2014 and Mumbi and Calvin Okoth were accused of murdering him. This case made me ask questions about men in romantic relationships or marriage with women ten years their senior.

A woman ten years your senior is in the generation your father can marry especially if he got you in his 20s. Any lady who is older than her man by at least ten years could be the man’s stepmother. As in she is in the cohort his father’s generation courted in their twilight years in the seduction game.

This is why I believe such relationships do not work. If they do, then one party gives more than the necessary needed to keep a mutual relationship or is in for other reasons beyond love.

Recently, I realized a good number of women who married men ten years their senior had called it quits. This made me conclude that my conclusion on men also applies to women. Initially, I had thought women generally look up to men so they can survive with older men.

There are very many examples of women who married men up to 30 years their senior. However, I have learned that such huge age gaps only work where the man is way wealthier than the woman. In this age of give and take between men and women, a man will struggle to keep a lady ten years his junior.

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If the man marries a woman in her early 20s when he is in his early 30s, then that is a recipe for chaos. The man has navigated the chaos of youth while the lady is just blooming working out an identity. Especially if she is in college then it is her time for self-discovery where the popular culture of her time still fascinates her. On the other hand, the man has settled into what works for him by eliminating the unnecessary expectations and fake aroma of youth.

Some things in life must be lived, it doesn’t matter how much you read and learn about them beforehand. One such is marriage. You must be married to know what marriage entails. The other is getting the big picture of life, it comes with age. To men, it happens when testosterone levels drop to the average level. As the male hormone drops, a lot of changes occur in men, one of which is the advent of the midlife crisis.

Meanwhile, as testosterone drops in the man, oestrogen, the female hormone peaks at the age of 30. These two hormones determine the levels of desire for sex for men and women. As a man desires more sex but is not able to maintain it at peak levels from the age of 40, the woman is going into her sexual peak.

The desire for sex comes with the drive to maximize childbirth, child rearing and hedging the home front. The vision, drive and desire between a man in his 40s and a woman just in her 30s lead to battles. These battles explode in finances, social interests, career progression and fights over how to nurture the children.

The woman has now matured and wants to exert herself in the marriage which she could not do when she was younger. She may even decide to go back to school and change her career trajectory. As she goes about these plans while balancing child nurturing her man may not be receptive to changes in her attitude.

Meanwhile, the man is at his peak in terms of career and experience in life. He has pruned off the unnecessary and balanced his lifestyle in terms of career and leisure. He knows his path as his experience makes him eligible to be appointed as a manager. He has accepted what he cannot change but he has a wife at home who sees that as lack of ambition or procrastination.

What she doesn’t know is that the man has healed scars from his emotional, financial and social engagements. He knows what works and what doesn’t.

To get the gist, look at the music Gen Zs in their 20s enjoy and compare it to the music that gets to the heartstrings of Gen Y in their 30s. A couple will not agree on where to hang out on a Friday night.

If they happen to end up in one joint, then one party will grudgingly put up. This is where the ten-year gap leads to a divide in the relationship unless great compromises are sought and undertaken.