[einundzwanzig]

i went back to a boyfriend who i was friends with in 2008. we never "dated" but we are friends and now we are "dating." i love him so much and he is so good for me. he is 49 (im 22) but he has so much in common with me. we also are very different, and ths is good for me. i am suppose to graduate this year in april but im not sure now... my first plan was to move back to Germany after i graduated but now since i found the love in my life here i am not sure about that plan. i am also having career goal changes. i was majoring in psych but i dont think psych is the right field for me, so everything is messed up atm... i feel confused about my plans. and thanks to my boyfriend i have to think about all of this when i new what i wanted before. i dnt know what to do. and this is big for me these are things that i cant be impuslive about.

any advice?

thanks
21

[Perna]

When I was your age I had a boyfriend 20 years older than I was too. Think about the whole picture; whether your parents and friends and his friends and family will all like one another and get along. Think about if he has had wives or children and how old they are and imagine how it will be in 20 years, etc. I found, at the time, that I would "skip" over some of my feelings because of my love for that boyfriend. But he had different ideas of what he wanted and I ignored that too, trying to stay "present" like all the difficulties of loving someone that much older would never really happen.

You have seen how your own life and interests have been affected by dating him; I recommend not giving yourself up to the relationship but keeping "yourself" going as if your life might be different in 2-5-10-20 years. Keep working on getting a degree and a job, etc. and developing yourself. My husband is 7 years older than I am and I'm 60 now and even that seemingly "small" difference in age is making a difference in our energy levels and what we feel like doing, etc. My husband had three sons already when we married and he wasn't interested in more children, said it was "up to you" but I didn't want to be raising children whose father wasn't that interested in them and whose half brothers were 20 years older than they, etc. My advice is for you to look at the whole picture and not try to make light of the differences.