Just saw a movie in which a 57 year old man comtemplates starting over with a much younger woman who has a four-year-old. Ironically enough, he abandoned his own child years before. The older man/younger woman reminds me of a friend, male, of course, who started over at 50-something. Grown children, sons and daughters. Married a much younger woman. At 60, he became a father again, delighted, brimming over with grandfather energy, only toward a son, not a grandson. Meanwhile, the grown children are distant, far away; he was too busy carving out a career to be close to them when they were growing up. His then wife kept the homefront. He got to do it all again, with a kinder heart.
It makes me mad. As a woman, I can’t start over, not without the kind of surgeries and invasive procedures I’d rather not do. I can’t make a new immediate family through my body. I think about the grown children of men who begin young families again and wonder what they think. And what about the ex-wives, unusually in solid middle age when husband moves to someone younger. Now there are all kinds of reasons marriages die; interest in sex goes, boredom sets in, people travel down separate paths mentally and emotionally. I understand that. I understand it isn’t necessarily the man’s fault.
I’m just jealous that my friend got another clean slate, family-wise, to do it over again, this time with heart. I don’t want a startover, but I’d love the option. Interesting nature didn’t provide it.
Karleen Koen — writing life 
I say trust mother nature. A sixty year old has no business with a new baby. The boy isn’t starting over, he’s just trying to do what he should have done in the first place.
Look forward, angel.
K.
Wow – thanks for the insights. Now I know why I feel a tug at the heart strings when I hear of or see second marriages where there is a huge age gap. It is unfair to the grown children and doubly unfair for the Mother of those children. Or even in second marriages where the child bearing years have passed and the gift of life is not an option. Mother Nature may have wrongly assumed “a mate for life”. Sigh.
I just saw “Crazy Heart” so I understand the reference. In this one case, the younger woman rejected him because of his alcoholism, and I can say she used good judgment, even though he went through rehab. He will always be an alcoholic, and he will probably fall off the wagon repeatedly. In addition to the ideas you provided, I wonder why it is that so many younger women are so eager and willing to enter into relationships with the older men. It takes two to Tango, as they say. (Are they looking for a father figure?) I first noticed this phenomenon back in middle and high school days, where many of the younger girls would reject the boys in their own class to go out with upper classmen instead. This practice continued in college. Society seems to condone it. I don’t see any penalties being assessed for it. If you were an underclassman boy in these situations, you had a difficult time getting a date.
I think it is because girls generally are more mature than boys their own age. Older men may have the advantage of experience and more money.
Are the tables starting to turn in seeing older women and younger men – for the same reasons?