Gordon (Patrick Brammall) and Ashley (Harriet Dyer) in Colin From Accounts. Photo / Supplied
OPINION:
It came in a eureka flash as my husband was soothing me with some much-needed advice after yet another run-in with my GCSE-stressed teen. My husband was Gordon in Colin from Accounts and I was Ashley.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of watching this genius new Australian comedy, Gordon and Ashley are strangers who are brought together unexpectedly by a car accident and an injured dog, and end up falling in love.
At 40-something, Gordon is more than a decade older than the almost-30 Ashley and is the calm to her chaos; a strong, stable sort with a kind heart and – crucially – plenty of life experience (he’s been through cancer, runs his own microbrewery) who plays the perfect foil to Ashley, a slightly ditsy medical student with a needy, dysfunctional mother and lots still to figure out.
Their age gap is not of the Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas kind, with more than two decades and no doubt entirely different musical and cultural references between them, but it’s still significant enough for each party to benefit.
I call it the “micro age gap”, having drilled it down to a difference in age of between seven to 12 years; an optimum expanse of time, I believe, to make a successful couple. Just look at happy couples Jay-Z and Beyoncé (he’s 12 years older) and Davina McCall and Michael Douglas (she’s seven years his senior).
I say this as a woman who was once married to a man of the same age (he was just six months younger than me), and while it was joyous and exciting to experience so many “firsts” together – first wedding, first shot at parenting, first family home – in the end, it didn’t provide the stability or security I craved. We were running the same race, at the same speed, from the moment the starting gun was fired.
From the terrible-toddler years to crises of confidence at work, we were the blind leading the blind, going through life’s experiences simultaneously, neither one of us truly knowing more than the other.
At times, it even took a competitive turn, each of us convinced that we knew how to parent, run a budget or even cook better. No wonder, then, that after 10 years we made a mutual decision to end the race.
Now, I am married to Ronnie, a man eight years older than me – I am 52, he is about to turn 60 – and he is everything that Gordon is to Ashley, and more.
It’s a micro age-gap marriage with huge benefits for both of us. For me, those eight extra years of rich, lived experiences make him a fantastic sounding board when it comes to parenting, finances, work, spirituality, even the meaning of life. It’s fairly obvious when you think about it: he knows more because he’s lived more.
And yet the age gap is not so large that we’re no longer circling the same life stages and reference points. His children, for example, have passed the teen stage and are moving onto adulthood, so when it comes to parenting my teenagers, he offers me great advice and perspective, being just that one small, but important, step ahead.
With money, too, he’s a fount of information, having run businesses all his life and experienced both financial highs and lows, somehow coming out the other side.
He’s Australian (like Gordon) and has travelled to far-flung places such as China, Bangladesh and South Korea for work, countries that I find culturally fascinating and long to visit.
But it’s not just his lived experiences that inspire me, it’s his attitude to life. As I enter the tricky menopausal stage, I marvel at how well he’s navigating his middle years, diving into the cold water of our local lido almost daily to keep himself energised and upbeat, visiting a therapist fortnightly to nurture his self-belief and stave off anxiety, and spending time connecting with his deep, old friends, which gives him – and them – so much pleasure.
I’m learning by his example and he’s given me a template for navigating my midlife years with a similar verve, meaning and purpose.
Simply put, it’s those eight years of living life ahead of me that give him the edge.
But what’s in it for him?
He claims to barely notice our age gap as it’s so micro, but when pushed, he does admit an attraction to my youthful energy, curiosity and desire for travel and new experiences, and he enjoys the feeling of giving me stability.
It makes me think of pet-owners who buy an energetic puppy to keep their old dog youthful and, hopefully, extend its life – while the puppy in turn is taught how to behave. It’s a win-win for both.
A large part of ... who we choose as a partner is driven by our early attachment figures.
“There are benefits to both parties in a micro age-gap couple,” agrees psychotherapist Dr Sheri Jacobson, founder of Harleytherapy.co.uk. “Some may want a slightly older partner who they can learn from and be guided by, thanks to their years of lived experience.
“On a practical level, the older party will have most likely lived in various places, gone through different challenges and have had more years of work experience, and could be wiser from it, which can help a partner feel a sense of security and stability. Other people may want someone a little younger, with more energy, who’s more of a blank slate and is keen for new experiences – but perhaps not so young that they’re in a totally different stage of life.”
For Dr Jacobson, a couple with a micro age-gap can have a successful, healthy relationship because it’s about finding someone with whom you have a good affinity, and age is often irrelevant.
“Relationship success often boils down to us projecting our needs onto the other person, and a large part of our unconscious decision-making and who we choose as a partner is driven by our early attachment figures,” she says. “If we were an older child and had to be mature and grown up and look after our siblings, we may look for someone younger who we can look after in a relationship. Or if we were used to a parent taking the lead on things, we start looking for that same leadership quality in a partner.”
As the youngest of five children, often surrounded by older siblings and influences, I wonder if my happiness with Ronnie now is reflective of those formative childhood years and I’m merely flexing my early-years maturity and levelling up like I’ve always done.
Of course, like any age-gap couple – micro or otherwise – the downside may be the physical disparity between us. Ronnie turns 60 this July and I see him tussling with big existential feelings around this milestone birthday, and it’s unsettling - for me and for him.
How many years do I have left with him, I wonder? He tires quicker in the evenings than me and has recently started taking statins to lower his cholesterol. A micro age gap is all well and good for a fulfilling, rewarding relationship, but it can also mean that one party gets off the bus a stop earlier than the other.
“Generally speaking, in a couple with a wider age gap ... there might be changes in mobility, stamina, libido, energy, even motivational levels, and this can be very hard to witness,” says Dr Jacobson.
“In couples with a smaller age gap, this will be less noticeable. But life expectancy is increasing all the time, and it isn’t all about age, anyway. You can discover cancer at any point in your life, no matter what your age, and the way you live can increase your chances of dying early – look at younger people who work all hours and suffer from burnout. There’s no telling what can happen.”
She’s right. My father was 10 years older than my mother and on medication for heart issues, and we were all convinced he would go before her, but he ended up outliving her by four years. (They were a successful micro age-gap couple, too – happily married for 56 years.)
So, the message here is don’t knock an age-gap couple and certainly not one with less than 12 years between them. The fictional Gordon and Ashley manage to make it work, as do the actors, Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who play them and are happily married in real life. Roll on series two, I say. As part of a micro age-gap couple, life can only get better.
* Lauren Libbert is a health journalist and columnist for the Telegraph
Broadcaster has written a new book about the joys of getting older.