Older partner? Younger partner?

I have a new neighbour who is in his eighties. He seems fairly active. He says he has moved house as his very much younger partner, whom he had lived with for several years, said she could see the time fast approaching when she would have to be his carer, felt she was too young for that and ended the relationship. He seems very matter of fact about it, said he hadn’t expected it to last for ever. I don't know what the age gap was in that instance but he said she had a young child (not his) so I am guessing the age gap could have been a good thirty or forty years.

A while ago, I met a man who had been living for ten years with a woman twenty years his junior. He said it was fine when they were 21 and 41 but ten years further on when she wanted to start a family with him, his children from a previous marriage were about to go to university (with associated costs). He said he did not want to be starting over again and potentially having to work well into his 70s to support a new family so he ended the relationship (he said) to give her a chance to find someone nearer her own age to have a family with.

I am 60 and have been asked out more than once by men twenty years my junior. I suppose I should be flattered but actually felt suspicious and asked why they would want to date someone so much older. A couple of them explained that they had decided that they did not want to father children or look after children from any new partner’s previous relationship. Women their own age either already had children or were looking for someone to have children with. Dating older women was their solution to this issue. I could have been wrong but I can’t imagine these men would have been in for the long haul.

These things have got me thinking about relationships and whether we do get too hung up on them lasting forever and about the age of our chosen partners.

What are your experiences of relationships where the age gap is wide? Can and do these relationships endure into very old age?