I finally told her I was starting to like her, and her reply contained a number I had not prepared for: 32. I’m 23. Until that moment, I had been operating on the entirely unverified belief that we were roughly the same age.
We’d met recently and had been talking for a little while. I liked how she looked, how she joked around, and the way we talked. Nothing about our conversations made me think there was a nine-year gap between us. I’d placed her somewhere around 23 to 25, which sounds quite precise for a guess based on absolutely no information.
She looks young to me in person, too. That helped my assumption settle in as a fact. Her texts and sense of humor seemed familiar, so I never felt I was talking to someone from a different stage of life. Of course, feeling that way and actually knowing her age turned out to be separate activities.
Eventually I decided to make my interest clear. I told her I was starting to like her and wanted to get to know her better. I also wanted to find out whether she was open to that. No grand declaration, just an attempt to stop being vague about why I enjoyed talking to her.
Instead of the answer I’d been bracing for, she told me she was 32 and asked how that was possible. She hoped I was joking. I wasn’t. Apparently, while I had been wondering how to say I liked her, neither of us had got around to asking the other’s age.
That changed the conversation in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I had made a small romantic confession and immediately acquired a new arithmetic problem. Nine years isn’t a detail I can round down until we’re the same age.
It doesn’t automatically put me off. I’m still attracted to her, still comfortable around her, and still interested in getting to know her. The things I liked before her reply haven’t disappeared. But I can’t honestly say I had already considered dating a 32-year-old woman. I thought I was expressing interest in someone close to my age.
There’s also something a little socially awkward about her that I haven’t quite figured out. That’s my impression, not an explanation of who she is. It hasn’t stopped me feeling at ease with her. She seems interesting, which is why I wanted to know more in the first place.
I don’t yet know what she makes of my interest, beyond being surprised by it. Her response didn’t give me a clear yes or no. So now there are two things I haven’t worked out: whether she wants this to go anywhere, and how I feel about the age gap I only just discovered.
