Is my [29F] age gap with my boyfriend [45M] too much?
I have been in a relationship with my bf for about 6 months now. When the relationship started I was hesitant due to the age gap but he was insistent so I relented.
Now I'm second guessing that. Overall our relationship is pretty good. We have similar interests and laugh together. He's usually very sweet and supportive. But the age gap keeps floating around in my mind. Sometimes it really hits me just how different in age we actually are. And how different we will be in the future. Right now while we're both relatively young, in decent health, both never married, no kids yet, we seem to align on a lot. But I'm only 29 and while I want kids I'm nowhere near ready. 35 isn't old to have kids. 51 definitely is. Further he doesn't take care of his health. Which is a really big deal to me when I'm so much younger. We met socially in a club for active people so I just assumed he was active regularly. He's not. To compound on this, our relationship has become very codependent. My early attempts at establishing space and boundaries were kind of overlooked and we basically spend all of our time outside work together. And I do enjoy spending time with him but I feel suffocated and defeated when he gets bent out of shape because I want to go to the gym and get out of the house by myself. I know this codependency will cause issues in the future as he isn't able to keep up with me physically. I don't ever want to slow down and well realistically he already is. The age gap is also causing a generally very confident man to get jealous and give me a hard time about having male friends. He snipped at me because I told him the only people that used a school age nickname were a male long time friend and my sister and that he should call me by my name. He got sarcastic with me because I texted a couple of guy friends from college a picture from fishing and didn't send it to him (when he was with me on the trip and literally took the picture). I'm personally also struggling with depression and while he's been amazing through most aspects (supportive and uplifting), my sex drive has suffered and he's taken it very personally.
This man is very sweet, and generally very supportive. More than anything I despise the idea of hurting him. But I feel like I'm settling and setting myself up for a life where I'm disappointed. I do love him, but can't shake my hesitation that things associated with his age are going to lead to me resenting him.
Posted Apr 24, 2026, 8:31 PM UTC