I was interested today in this story about a 94-year old billionaire who is marrying for the fifth time, to a woman some 30 years his junior.
I was born during the day, but not yesterday, so I understand that the primary reason that she is marrying him is because, in actuarial terms, she feels as though she will outlive him by enough years that she will be able to enjoy her inheritance. I'm guessing that she will attempt to kill him sexually.
My interest went beyond the issue of money - because I haven't any - and transcended into the area of age and how it relates to whom we are attracted and how that attraction manifests itself into romance.
I feel as though the mind ages more slowly than the body, as evidenced by the fact that I feel as though I am still in my 30s even though my body tells me that I am significantly older.
That's a shame.
It's a shame because neither I nor any woman I would meet at this point in my life would be interested in creating or raising a family, so I'd wonder why age would be a make or break issue. How would it matter if our age difference prompted restaurant workers to inquire, "Would you and your daughter like to see an appetizer menu?"
It's difficult enough to find someone whose company we can stand for more than four hours let alone finding someone of a similar age with those attributes. That's why I am interested in those stories and how someone so much younger could be interested in someone so much older.
You could counter with the idea that his money attracted her, but I would counter with the idea that she wouldn't know him if she wasn't in a similar social class. You don't get to know people so far above your social circle.
Unless I win some sort of perverted bachelor auction and find myself hooked-up with the CEO of Avon, I am relegated to either a life of solitude or a continued quest for someone in my own social status (whatever that is) to live with. Either way, it's a social crap shoot, and I can't rely on my financial situation to magnetize my life to the point that women seek me out because either (a) they might out-live me or (2) they can gamble on being included in my will to the extent that their inheritance will make their sexual misery worthwhile.
That's a miserable set of circumstances on which to base ones life.
So I read stories like that and it makes me realize that my miserable social status does nothing toward making me more desirable and it is made even less so by the fact that most people treat me as though I have herpes or HIV and have left me here to perish of my own devices.
That's fine. The realization of my own faults is the first step toward the realization that I will spend my last years of my life alone. I have literally made my own bed and now I will lie in it.
What a different course of events it would have been if I had been born with billions of dollars. I'm sure that would have made me a more desirable person and a much better fit for someone.
Sure.
