I keep writing age gap romance with the woman being older.
Why is this a trope I return to? Not exactly sure. Mr. Elise is is younger than I am (by less than a year), but our age “difference” is something he likes to joke about, especially since I graduated a class ahead of him and spend half a year at a different age. But there is something I relate to when writing my older women with younger men.
Some of it is I think society trains us to believe that by a certain age our story is over. I’m still coping with the idea that Marvel cast Chris Abbott as Professor X, and he’s a whole year younger than me. I feel like the message is clear: I’m supposed to have achieved the end of the Hero’s Journey and become the mentor to the new batch of heroes.
Middle-aged people, and especially women, are expected to have reached professional and personal milestones that we should content with—until what? Death? As a result, no one expects a new chapter from us, but we know that’s bullshit. We’re still growing up, and we’re still learning. And what makes this part of life more exciting than our twenties and early thirties is we’re not as afraid of what others think.
I lean into that confidence as I write my older FMCs. She may start the story accepting what society has handed her by guarding herself from hurt and resigning to the little expected from her. But brewing just under the surface is her passion and curiosity.
And my younger MMCs are willing to indulge them. Some of that is because their youth gives them a hope which hasn’t been ground down yet, but it’s mostly because they’re not afraid to share power. She’s a fire meant to be stoked, not controlled, and he’s more than willing to do just that.
What draws me to write older woman x younger man age gap romance is the shared refusal underneath it. Each of them was handed a script for who they’re supposed to be, and each of them set it down, because it turns out joy was waiting on the other side of it.
I write age gap that isn’t interested in “can this work despite the age gap?” I write age gap about people who stop asking if they’re allowed and just let themselves have it.
