May to December marriages

This phrase is applied to marriages between young women and much older men.

In the year 1975, I met a Japanese–born woman on a train in France. She was 28 years old and I was 42 years old. There was a difference of 18 years between our ages. When she was born in 1951, that year I was about to serve as a sailor in the Canadian navy.

 I soon fell in love with her as we promenaded for two weeks around the French town of Chamonix at the foot of Mt. Blanc and later in Geneva Switzerland.

One day she asked me how old I was. I didn’t want to tell her that there was an 18-year gap between our ages so I said to her, “I am closer to forty than I am to thirty.”  To her, that meant that I was 36 years old.  That to her also meant that there was only an eight-year gap between our ages.

When I returned to Canada, she came with me and while we were living in a rented house in Toronto in which I was also sharing that house with two girlfriends I had been previously having sex with, my new sweetheart in a casual conversation with them while I was at work told them that that there was only an eight-year-gap between our ages. One of the girls told her that she had better look at my passport.

When I arrived home after work, one of the girls met me outside and told me that my sweetheart was in our bedroom crying. I hugged my new sweetheart and told her that age doesn’t really matter that much if we are in love and I told her that I loved her—which I really did. She settled for that.

Six months later, we were married and at the time of this published article in my blog, we have been married forty-one years and we have two daughters and five grandchildren. In our marriage, the eighteen-year gap wasn’t that much of a problem.  I am now 84 years of age and she is 66 years of age and we are still sweethearts as we were when we first met.  Both of us look much younger for our ages and many of my male friends are envious of my marriage to my much younger wife.  

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that all May to December marriages will be a success but our marriage certainly has been notwithstanding the gap between our ages.

Canadian Senator, Rod Zimmer's marriage to 23-year-old Maygan Sensenberger had barely lasted a year while they lived in the province of Saskatchewan.  By then, their marriage was already coming apart. After the 69-year old former businessman started experiencing breathing problems while they were on a passenger plane, Ms. Sensenberger allegedly swore at other passengers, threatened to slit his throat and "take the plane down."

The couple had been enroute to Mr. Zimmer's brother's farm to celebrate their first anniversary. Instead, they spent the occasion separated by a court order issued in Saskatoon.

For critics of May to December marriages, it was a predictable fallout for Mr. Zimmer's foray into his intergenerational romance. And yet, for every Zimmer and Sensenberger marriage, there are plenty of Charlie and Oona Chaplin marriages. At 54, the ageing silent film star took up with the 18-year-old daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. The pair stayed happily married for 35 years until Chaplin's death in 1977.

Middle-aged newspaper baron. William Randolph Hearst's extramarital dalliances with a teenaged actress are forever immortalized in the movie. Citizen Kane. What the film omits to say is that Hearst actually remained faithful to his young mistress for a full 34 years until his death in 1951.

But while marriages between a man and a woman have been an institution since ancient times, the intergenerational marriages nevertheless continue to fascinate and at the same time, upset others—especially the parents of the brides.

Known as the May-December romances, they seem to symbolize everything society fears that are sometime true of marriages such as marriages of convenience and marriages driven by money, sex and power. But since age-gapped couples can boast low divorce rates and celebrate the occasional silver anniversary, (60 year anniversary) could such arrangements be more compatible than others really fear?

"Overall, regardless of age, all relationships are the same," said Tom Caplan, a Montreal-based marriage and family therapist. "If you're really good friends, you will support your partner under any circumstances."

In popular media, May-December pairings are such a common event in our society that they are barely noticed. In Sean Connery's last appearance as James Bond, he acted alongside women who had been in diapers the first time agent 007 appeared onscreen.

This kind of marriage is remarkably common among Canadian political leaders. the late Pierre Trudeau, 52, married Margaret Sinclair when she was age 22. Joe Clark was 34 when he married his office staffer Maureen McTeer who was age 21. Brian Mulroney was 34 when he married Mila Pivnicki when she was 19.

In 1983, Erik Nielsen, Mr. Mulroney's widower deputy prime minister, announced his sudden marriage to Shelley Coxford, a female House of Commons security guard who was  30 years his junior. Twenty-five years later, Shelley was at Mr. Nielsen's side when he died of a heart attack in Kelowna.

Kim Campbell, Canada's 19^th Prime Ministerhas seen the May-December relationship from both sides. At age 22, a young woman entered into an eleven year marriage with Nathan Divinsky, a UBC mathematics professor and chess champion then in his mid-40s.

Now, at 65, Ms. Campbell lives in Paris with Hershey Felder, a 44-year-old Montreal-born playwright and composer. "The natural reaction from people is, 'Oh, Hershey wants a mother.” Ms. Campbell told Postmedia in 2008. "But of all the men I've ever known. he's the one who least wanted a mother."

I should add that my wife loves calling me “Daddy” and that doesn’t bother me a bit. However, that confused our oldest daughter when she was four. One day, she asked my wife while our daughter was pointing to me, ”If  he is your daddy, who is my daddy?”

In the marriages of the developed world, there is and always has been, a built-in age disparity. In both Canada and the United States, the average groom is two to three years older than his bride. In at least 40% of married Canadians, the gap is even wider, with both partners born at least four years apart.

Furthermore, couples with extremely large age gaps also had one of the country's lowest divorce rates, according to 1994 Statistics Canada data. The same data also shows that the average age-discrepant couple is actually poorer than their same-age equivalents.

Vikki Stark, director of the Montreal-based Sedona Counselling Centre, said that such an arrangement, while rare, is an understandable tradeoff.

She also said that for men, the arrangement demonstrates to the world that he's still virile and masculine. Ms. Stark added,  "From the woman's point of view, she has security and the potential of living an extraordinary life . In other ways, he's a means to an end."

Any marriage is a morass of sex and power dynamics, it is just more obvious in May-December relationship. "But who says that they're not laughing and having a good time and sharing a bowl of popcorn?" said Ms. Stark.

My wife and I always joke with one another at least five times a day. This keeps us laughing. She often will tell me that I am so bad, I will out-live God. I then respond by telling her that I have told her a million times if I have told her once, not to exaggerate.

In 2007, a Stanford researcher even theorized that ancient May-December relationships may be why humans have become one of the planet's longest-living mammals. Demographer Cedric Puleston compared South American hunter gatherer societies against modern Canadians and concluded that when old men father children, their ancestors live longer. I fathered my two daughters when I was in my early and mid-forties.

As women occupy leadership positions and fetch higher salaries, they are increasingly adopting the elder role in May-December romances. In 2003, British statisticians discovered that, from 1963 to 1998, the rate of women taking younger husbands had jumped by nearly two thirds.

This  is not to say the intergenerational marriage is not rife with obstacles. In the infatuation of a new relationship, "people are not clear thinking," said Sig Taylor, a Calgary couples and marriage counselor. "They're not thinking about the age gap, they're not thinking about the differences in energy and once their hormones come back to balance, they're faced with the realities," he said. Age-gapped couples find themselves living in "different eras," notes David McKenzie, a Vancouver-area couples and sex therapist. He noted his own grandfather took an 18-year-old bride when he was at the age of 36. (Note that there was also an 18-year gap between my wife and me when we were married.)

As for children, "if women are 30 and he's 55, they have to realize that he's got a limited shelf life," said Mr. McKenzie.

Despite my having three heart attacks and only 27 percent of my heart has been functional since 1999, I expect my shelf life to extend to when I am at least ninety because so far, I am in good health despite that heart deformatory.  

The May to December marriages can on occasion, suck the life out of young brides. After analyzing the demographic data for nearly two million Danish couples, in 2010 German researcher Sven Drefahl concluded that women with older husbands die sooner than their husbands. That isn’t going to happen to my wife. She goes to the gym every day where she participates in organized exercises. She also eats proper food. She will definitely outlive me.

And while a new couples bask in the glow of young love, the partnership can have untold ripples on children and ex-wives who fear being written out of the will and friends who question the couple's mental state.

"It's a pressure cooker relationship," said Ms. Stark. "There's so much pressure from the outside, even if they're happy in their living room."

Eugene O'Neill disowned his daughter for marrying Chaplin, and most of Mr. Zimmer's family was absent from his 2011 wedding to Ms. Sensenberger My mother was extremely pleased that I had married my young wife.

Woody Allen's career and reputation has largely recovered from the early-1990s revelations that he was having an affair with his wife's 21year-old adopted stepdaughter, Soon Yi Previn.

Twenty years later, the now-30 –year-old wife can still be seen at Mr. Allen's side at red carpet events and galas. Mr. Allen told Reuters in 2011, "What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, married her. We have been married for almost 15 years now,"

Among the family Mr. Allen left behind, however, the bitterness remains but not necessarily because of the age difference.

There is an old adage that says, “Don’t knock it if you haven’t done it” I will admit that not all May to December marriages work out successfully. But many do and that goes for my marriage to my much younger wife. Needless to say, my daughters and grand children are happy that I married their mother and grandmother.