An Ashton to a Demi

My sisters and I were discussing "age-gap romances" the other day. My dad is nine years older than my mom. My sister married a vegetarian, whose idea of fun is making life miserable for me, nine years older than her. I wanted to see "Jaws", which is a surf spot in Maui with waves that could get as high as 100 meters and where they shot the opening scene for the James Bond movie "Die Another Day". He drove me there in his Harley, past the pineapple plantations. It was a fun ride but I had to wear a collection of silly contraptions that made me look like an extra on Star Trek. Oh he also liked playing name that tune while driving. He would play obscure rock music from the 70's, music that were famous when I was not yet born, and take delight in my ignorance. But I'm digressing.... or not. The perks of being in a may-december relationship is that you get to experience a decade or a pop-culture that you were too old or too young to experience on your own. I once dated a guy 5 years younger than me. While I was attending meetings, he would send me messages to answer calculus problems for an exam. He introduced me to Deftones and some other rap-metal bands I wouldn't have discovered on my own. The attraction of dating someone not your age is like the attraction of dating someone from a distant land. It is fun to discover how different you are and yet you are incredibly drawn to each other. And like the language and cultural barrier, there would be the time barrier too. He will never understand how poignant the death of Kurt Cobain was to you. She will never understand how Martial Law changed your view on life. Your fashion is grunge, his is punk. The term "may-december" was coined because one person is at the "spring" of her life while the other one is already at his "winter". But aren't all relationships "may-december" in a sense? No two persons, despite of having the same age, the same culture, the same careers, are at the same point in their life. We will always find something different in our partners. This is the stuff that makes our relationships worthwhile. This is the stuff that makes the world interesting. Do we really have to go to the same direction in order for a relationship to work? Isn't it enough to just know that he loves you?