Hi all! I’ve been stalking this subreddit for a few years now, and now I’ve finally got something to add to it. I haven’t posted before because there’s plenty of people asking questions about age gaps and it always ends with the same answer; it depends on the person! I don’t have any questions (yet) but I wanted to share my little slice of life.

I (22FtM) recently entered a relationship with a friend who is 28 years older than me (50M). Now I’ve always known that I was interested in older men ever since I was having crushes in elementary school. I obviously never acted on it, but it’s something that just stuck. I always was able to communicate best with older people, something about growing up too quickly and having daddy and mommy issues. Once I became an adult, I always tried dating apps and set the slider to start at 34 to 65, but never met anyone that I actually connected with or who wanted to go on dates instead of straight to bed.

When I was 20 years old, I shifted from working retail to doing stagehand work, and on one of my first gigs an incredibly charming older guy, 48 at the time, had came up to me and recited the exorcism from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, stating that I “seemed like the kind of person who could appreciate it”. I thought he was silly, but from then on we formed a kind of work friendship. Two years later, we’ve become very close friends, and I had very much developed a massive crush on him over this time.

Little did I know, he had eyes for me too. In short, we had been pining over each other for two years until August this year. His birthday was towards the end of August, and we decided to catch a movie with a couple of coworkers and ended up cuddling together in those recliner seats that fancy cinemas have. Now I don’t have the best past with men, so when I felt his hand tracing my leg, no matter how much I wanted to enjoy it and it turned me on, I had the fear inside me that he just wanted something to fuck and I happened to be what was closest available. After the movie, he acted like nothing had happened, I was distraught.

The next day, I aimed to talk with him. Figure out what his motive was, and luckily we had a gig together that day and due to the location we also each had hotel rooms. Perfect. After work, he invited me over to his room with another one of our coworkers and we drank beer and talked all night. Once that coworker had fallen asleep in his bed, the birthday boy and I got to talking. That’s where I learned he had developed feelings for me too, and that I had caught his eye the day he first saw me. That I was occupying his mind more and more, and that the closer we got, the more infatuated he got with me. He didn’t act on it sooner because he was “too old” and he didn’t want to make me uncomfortable. It took a mutual friend of ours (22f) encouraging him and me saying that I’ve got a list of DILF’s of work and that he was on it.

I never pursued anything myself due to the same fear, I was too young for him and I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable and lose his friendship. This same friend that encouraged him, also slipped me some info about “Don’t be too sure about that” when I mentioned how much I adore him, but have to appreciate from afar.

Now we’ve been dating for a little over a month and it’s been so fantastic. I love listening to his stories and about all his phases of life, where he’s been, what he’s done. And he’s learning about a different side of life that he’s never been a part of. We’ve gone on so many dates and spend a good amount of time with one another despite our busy schedules. I was scared there wasn’t going to be enough for us to talk about, with my life just getting started compared to his, but we’ve got so many shared interests and past times that it’s never a dull moment. There’s just something so familiar about each other, and he feels the same. It’s like we’ve met before.

For me, this is a fantasy come to life. And he is happy to indulge in my taboo ideas, though still navigating his first age gap relationship too. I think this is going to be good for both of us. It already has been a great two years, now we get to spend our moments together without longing for something more.