Our first meeting was carefully planned to seem very informal. They had chosen a cafe in Brighton, near where I live, instead of a restaurant or, worse, my house.
But I could tell from the fact that Olly was sitting on the edge of his chair and wiggling his foot that he was feeling anything but relaxed.
Dressed in Vans sneakers and a plaid shirt—the millennial uniform—he bought me an apple juice and tried to strike up a conversation. What music did I like? What was my favorite subject at school?
He smiled too hard at me and an awkward feeling developed between us. But it was his girlfriend who I found most annoying. She had pulled her chair very close to him and kept blowing her hair.
And I couldn’t get over the fact that Olly was closer to me in age than she was. No matter how hard he tried to impress, it seemed wrong.
Why? Because the friend in question was my mother. And then I was 12, Olly 29 – and mum 50.
What’s worse, Olly was the first boyfriend Mom had after splitting up with Dad. I was still reeling from their bitter divorce – and now I had to deal with Mom’s new, much younger boyfriend.
Not only did I feel upset and angry, but I also worried about what my friends would think if they judged us as a family.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is closer in age to his stepdaughters Angelica and Jessie than to his wife Sam
Believe me, you go through a whole range of emotions when your mother starts dating a much younger man – in my case, 21 years younger.
It’s especially challenging when he’s attractive, like Olly. I mean, it was my mother! What the hell was he doing with her? Did he have a thing for old people?
While age gap relationships where the woman is older are less common than the alternative, it seems I’m not entirely alone in experiencing this dynamic.
Earlier this week, director Sam Taylor-Johnson, 57, posed on the red carpet with husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 34, and her eldest daughters from a previous relationship – who are 27 and 18.
Aaron is just seven years older than eldest daughter, Angelica, while he is 23 years younger than his wife (the couple got engaged when he was 19 and she was 42). And it’s fair to say that the fact that he’s closer in age to his stepdaughters is all too apparent.
I wonder if Sam’s daughters have had as hard a time as I have.
At first I thought it was disgusting. I told my mother it was like dating someone who wasn’t born yet.
She just shrugged her shoulders and said, “What should I do?” She had fallen for him and wasn’t willing to give him up just because I found it embarrassing.
Now that I’m 16, I still think a 21-year gap feels unnatural. And it doesn’t necessarily have to do with gender; Dad is now dating a woman fifteen years younger and it feels even worse because it’s such a clichéd male midlife crisis.
But most of all, I hated the way Mom seemed to treat the age difference like a badge of honor. I bet she bragged about it to her friends.
When mum met Olly in 2019, my parents were still in the process of divorcing. It was painful – they had been arguing all the time – and as much as I hated the idea of my father moving, I had to admit that the atmosphere was calmer when he did.
I understood that mom needed time for herself, but I didn’t expect her to find a boyfriend so quickly. It felt too soon. I didn’t want to make it all about me, but it was disturbing. She started seeing Olly just after Dad moved – although I didn’t know it at the time because she didn’t tell me straight away. Yet my brother and I soon noticed that something was wrong.
The first clues came when she and I were on the bus together on the way home from the shops. She texted with a kind of secret smile that I found very annoying. It was as if the roles had been reversed; she held her screen away from me like a teenager.
She also wouldn’t tell me who she was talking to, which raised my suspicions. I glimpsed the bomb emoji next to the grenade in a text message she received; I was sure someone her own age wouldn’t use emojis like that.
About a week later, I caught my mom taking pouting selfies with her phone while posing with her head tilted back on the couch. When she saw me, she laughed nervously. I felt angry because she looked ridiculous. I knew they were for the mystery man. Who else would they be for?
Although age gap relationships where the woman is older are less common than the alternative, it seems I’m not entirely alone in experiencing this dynamic, writes anonymous.
She admitted that she had a boyfriend soon after. She couldn’t deny it anymore, not when she and Olly were texting all the time. But it took her another month to tell me and my older brother Finn, then 14, about the age difference.
She dropped it into the conversation one night when we were all watching TV.
“Olly’s a little younger than me, you know,” she said. I thought she only meant a few years, but when Finn asked her how much younger, she told us the truth. I sat there in disbelief.
Finn was also really embarrassed about the age difference. We both thought there was something wrong with Olly to be interested in someone as old as Mum.
I told Mom to act her age, but she angrily replied that I wouldn’t understand until I reached fifty myself, which is clearly miles away.
Then mum started to change before our eyes – and I knew it was because of Olly. When she was with Dad, she enjoyed gardening and DIY, and they would watch TV together.
Now she was spending her money on the kind of lace tights and short skirts my friends would wear. It was humiliating. She went to bars and clubs with Olly every other weekend and left us with Dad.
I didn’t like it, especially since she was hungover the next day. I wished things could go back to the way they were before.
It was another six months before Mum actually introduced Finn and me to Olly. I think they were both nervous. He looked even younger than I imagined and once again I wondered why on earth he was dating my mother.
But I knew better than to bring it up with Dad. I knew he hated the idea of Olly too.
For the first year of their relationship, Mum stayed at Olly’s flat for their dates, while Dad looked after us. It wasn’t until their second year that Olly came to stay with us.
Even though I had now accepted that they were together, it still felt strange having a younger man in the house. To be honest, it made me miss my dad more. I missed having a father figure on hand.
And that certainly wasn’t Olly; he could talk about computer games and ice skating, but he didn’t get too involved in family life.
That said, it was better that he didn’t try to play the role of the city dad, unlike Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who calls his younger stepdaughter “my baby girl,” which is cringe-worthy.
That doesn’t mean that Olly didn’t have an opinion about our upbringing. He told Mom he thought we should go home earlier and clean up more. She passed it on because she agreed with him.
Once, when I saw him come out of the shower in a towel, the differences between him and Dad only became more apparent. It was clear that Olly went to the gym all the time, and he was much bigger.
I personally didn’t like him; he was too old for me. Unlike mom, I don’t like relationships with age gaps. That would have been way too weird!
However, I was worried that my friends would like him. They always denied it and I didn’t really investigate further. At first I tried not to tell them his age. Once when he was home, a friend assumed he was the plumber. She would never have put two and two together because the age difference was so obvious. When I told her the truth, she was surprised.
I don’t think I ever really felt comfortable with the generation gap during their four-year relationship. I was glad that Olly kept a certain distance from me and Finn, because they broke up this year. Having experienced my parents’ divorce, I had not wanted to experience that sense of loss again.
My mother didn’t tell me any specific reasons for the breakup, but I know the age difference played a role. I felt sorry for her because she was very sad and convinced that she won’t meet anyone else she will like as much as he does – especially at her age.
I’m not against Mom looking for a new relationship; In fact, I hope she does. It would be nice to have a father figure in the house, to do all the things my own father doesn’t do anymore: setting up shelves, walking the dog, helping me with my homework. But it has to be someone her own age.
*Names have been changed.