marrying younger spouses

by ssn587 63 Replies latest jw friends

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  ssn587

  My wife passed away 2 years ago we had been married over 30 years, I have since remarried and my new wife is younger than 3 of my children from my first marriage. I just wondering if there are any more like me out there. I stay in excellent shape for my age, work out almost daily eat good and have absolutely no medical problems or at least none I can do anything about, bad knees, but my vitals are excellent, and I am known as the teenage because of them when i have my yearly medical checkup.

  So was wondering if there are others out there like me, and what some may think about it, Just for the record i am extremely happy once again, and we have a 18 month boy who delights me, have a whole new outlook on fatherhood and child raising. It's great. Our boy isn't from our marriage but she had been pregnant when I met her. Her former fiance up and left when he found out she was pregnant. She is very very good to me and takes exceptional care of me. She likes most all of the things I like to do, and she is very frugal at the same time. I am over 30 years older than her and she thinks I workout too much, weights, cardio, and working on the farm. I seem to have more energy than most way younger than me and am grateful for that. My family other than my mother live to ripe old ages, father 99 when he passed away, his sisters 100+. So come from a long lived family. Father died of a heart attack while taking stumps out of the ground which says something for a 99 year old.

  She thinks the witnesses are crazy to believe and act the way they do. Where we live we never see any jdubs, and i mean never. Her uncle lives very close to us he is 85 spry and works his farm daily. He told me he hasn't seen a jdub out in their area ever.

  Any thoughts on marrying someone way younger than you?
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  Julia Orwell

  Age is just a number. If you love each other, you love each other.
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  ssn587

  Thank you Julia. Yes age is just a number, too many people let getting older affect their activities, I go to the gym almost daily, and if not there workout out with the weights here at home, and i mean the iron weights not machines.
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  Julia Orwell

  As long as you are both happy, no one can or should judge.
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  LouBelle

  If you love each other, are happy - that is all that is important.
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  NewYork44M

  I am 18 years older than my wife.
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  Band on the Run

  Frankly, I find it gross. Your life experience gives you so much power over a younger "wife." It is my personal view. She married a father, not a husband. You married a daughter. How does one have sex with a girl/woman younger than your daughters? I know it happens but I think l ess of the man -- and feel sorry for the girl.

  There must be tomes of psychology and sociological texts devoted to this one. It completely destroys careers. These marriages often fail. You may be borderline acceptable today. What happens when you reach 70 and 80?

  Why don't you see older women with younger men as frequently as you see old men with child brides? There are powerful social influences at work. In the circles I frequent, there would be concrete consequences. No one would say anything outright. YOu would not advance in your profession nor be included in social circumstances. Everyone would laugh behind your back.

  I say it is permissible when old women can marry young boys at the drop of a hat. What is good for the goose is good for the gander and vice versa.

  This view reflects my biases. They are manifold, however. It is a very rare case, where sick dynamics are not present. Such cases exist. Perhaps you are one of them. Bragging about your child bride is also not good form.
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  NewYork44M

  Band on the Run, that is a bit of an offensive comment.

  If you talked to my wife you would find that I don't have the power of her that you suggest. We are equals, partners. She is an extremely strong woman and takes no crap from no-one, including me.
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  moshe

  I visited the Philippines in 1998- a HS friend of mine was working for a company over there- engineer on some industrial project and he invited me to hook up with him for a 10 days. I met many American men at the hotels/resort who were in town meeting girls for marriage. I found it flattering at first to have 20-25 year old girls wanting my attention, but I couldn't relate to them. They brought nothing to a relationship except baby making and 100 cousins who wanted $$ help. I did meet two americans at the airport who had retired to the PI with their native wives- yes, a big age difference, but it was socially acceptable in their society. One man's wife was a doctor- his pension was more than her income- they had a modest home ( by our standards) and a cook/housekeeper. The beaches were very nice- floating tiki bars, too.

  I am 5 years older than my wife-- I am glad it is no more. We have the same interests in music and our life experiences are similar- we both remember Kennedy's assasination.
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  gingerbread

  This is an interesting thread from a JW point of view. Early marriage between young people is very common in the Org. Other threads on JWN have recently discussed the reasons.

  Age difference between a husband and a wife varies between cultures. At one time it was very 'normal' to marry a young girl - sometimes crossing state lines to make it legal. Young women often - just a few decades ago - married at age 13 or 14. And sometimes to a first or "second" cousin. This kind of marriage was considered acceptable. Often it was a "shotgun" wedding.During that same time period, it was illegal for a man of color to marry a white woman. In the 21st century both of these situations are deemed culturally offensive - in my part of the world. Though still very common in some cultures, an "arranged marriage" seems offensive to the Western mind. A father "trading" his daughters as wives to his male peers is as equally offensive.

  A common saying is "follow the rule of seven" - if a man divides his age in half and adds seven years, that's the youngest age a girl can be considered for marriage. Otherwise it's kinda creepy. But, that rule applies in my neck of the world...