I am a 22 year old woman who is in love with a 52 year old man. If I were just 10 years older I wouldn’t have a problem but 28 years is a big difference. We are so much alike that sometimes I forget IM so much younger.He was widowed several years ago and went down hill he’d given up on life, we became friends and he has turned himself around completely. I may only be 22 but I feel like I’m 30 everyone says I’m one of those older than my age people, I see things differently than other people my age, I don’t get along very well with the 20’s group.All my life I’ve hung around the adults instead of the other kids. I haven’t been this happy for a long time and it feels good, he has changed my life too, Iv never felt like I fit in till now, we love each other. He has proposed to me and I want to say yes but I’m just not sure if its right to marry someone old enough to be my father. We would have a quiet life in the back country of the west, but will people accept me as a woman or a charlatan. He doesn’t h ave a problem with it but I still do. I’m one who worries about what everyone else thinks.Help me, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Just tell me I’m not insane, that its not wrong to love an older man.Yours, desperate in love
O.K. the problem here isn’t that you love a man that’s 28 years older than you, it’s that you are being ravaged with guilt. And, you are hoping that if I give you permission that your conscience can stop assaulting you.I can tell you go for it, but will that really ease your conscience? I think you need to understand why you are so distressed by this choice. I can give you a hint, and it will probably freak you out. So, sit down, so you don’t fall over.Whenever we fall for a man or woman that is much older, the incest taboo ( the taboo against sleeping with relatives) kicks into gear. Let me back up a minute. When we are with an older lover, the unconscious mind thinks that we are having an affair with a parent. And, since the incest taboo says that’s a no no, we are overcome with anxiety and guilt for our forbidden choice.Realize that it’s normal to love our parents passionately, and to even feel sexual desire for them. That’s the reason why the incest taboo came about (you don’t need to built fences around something that doesn’t require fencing in). And, the taboo is designed to insure the continuance of the species. If children were permitted to sleep with parents, families would break up, wars would break out, and there would be genetic diseases that result from inbreeding. So, the law came don’t sleep with your parents. But, the feelings and wishes still exist. It was normal for you to love and be attracted to your father, and even your mother, for that matter. We are, after all, animals by nature, and our feelings have no limits when it comes to attraction.Now, back to you. Your unconscious mind feels like you are doing a bad thing here (like choosing your dad as your lover). So, you need to talk to yourself and realize that it was all right for you to have felt desire for dad, and it’s all right to want a man that’s dad’s age.If you still feel bothered, contact me in my private consulting section, and we can talk some more