Heeellpp!!

[BadKat135]

I have a character married to a man 40 years older than her; unhappy marriage, he never truly loved her and she fell out of love/infatuation very quickly. I am set on this being the relationship she starts in, but I am having a hard time with a believable story behind that condition.

I would like help brainstorming ideas on why she would marry him in the first place.

 

[MSTarot]

Money...no make that a shit load of Money.

He has it she wants it. maybe she thought she was willing to do what it takes to get it but the reality of it isn't what she expected.

then she finds the Pre-nup he got her to sign when she was drunk or maybe she thought it was something else.

"Here baby sign this."

"What is it?"

"Just the ownership papers for your new Ferrari...I need you to sign here and here and here."

 

[damppanties]

You say 'fell out of love' so I'm assuming they were, or at least thought themselves to be in love at some point in time. Older men can be much more mature and smoother than younger men. Maybe that got her hooked?

 

[JagFarlane]

She met him while she was interning at a business and fell in love with his business side while overlooking what he was like outside of work?

 

[PennLady]

I have a character married to a man 40 years older than her; unhappy marriage, he never truly loved her and she fell out of love/infatuation very quickly. I am set on this being the relationship she starts in, but I am having a hard time with a believable story behind that condition.

I would like help brainstorming ideas on why she would marry him in the first place.

She could have come from a family that wasn't very nice to her -- put her looks and/or intelligence down. And/or she got poor treatment from men in her age group. Then this guy comes along, more mature, treats her like a queen and she's bowled over by it and thinks it's love.

He was feeling good that a young, pretty woman wanted him (money can figure in or not here) and so went with it and married her, then realized that he didn't want to be married for any number of reasons.

 

[sr71plt]

He has money and power; she has a father fixation; he is a famous person she respects to the point of worship, an artist or novelist type.

 

[jomar]

She has Daddy issues.

Abusive home she was desperate to leave.

 

[Euphony]

Her parents never told her where she was actually born. She always assumed citizenship because her country is all that shes ever known.

She finds out shes an illegal alien when she applies for college/first job, etc.

He sees her as no threat and decides to marry her on the off chance she'll rock his world, be the proper "wife" he's not been able to find because shes of a different culture that he doesn't have any associations with (obviously, he's unyielding in his expectations of a woman to her man or her marriage hence he is bachlored late in life)

You can play with hers and his idea of roles in a marriage without having to harp on the money aspects of such a union. (sugardaddy is overdone imo and can make her come off badly)

She wants what shes always wanted, to continue her normal life while working hard to get the things she desires.

He wants a throwback style wife, maybe because his parents "50s marriage" is the only happy one he's ever seen.

I prefer there to be more different ideas about love, marriage, roles, etc than good guys or bad guys. Real life has far more gray in it than the black and white which is rampant in a lot of fiction.

 

[BadKat135]

Im liking the abused as a kid backgrou d. In the story he wi s million in the lotto but only after they were married

 

[Darkniciad]

The bad family life works well in the younger woman/older man pairing. It can be the parents or a spouse/boyfriend -- or both. Either one comes across pretty plausible when she runs into a reasonably good looking, mature man who's good to her.

Having it fall apart isn't that difficult, either. Maybe he can't perform any more. Maybe he's slowing down and ready to read Moby Dick in bed while she still wants to go out, drink and dance the way they used to.

On the flip side, there's enormous potential for him not to share many interests with her, due to the generation gap. Over time, that can wear through even the stunned amazement that the young hottie is with him.

Especially if his old soldier has gone off to retirement on him.

 

[slyc_willie]

True Story

When I worked in the restaurant industry, I met quite a few interesting couples. One that stands out in light of this thread was a May/December couple who were my regulars for about two years. the first time I met them, they came in with their infant daughter and I, like so many other people, naturally assumed mom was taking her newborn out for an evening with "grandpa."

Nope. The guy was the tyke's father. He wasn't insulted by my faux pas, most likely because he was used to it.

The woman (Stacy) was in her mid-twenties, her husband (Hugh) was in his late fifties. That made their age difference around thirty-five years or so. Evidently, he was his wife's mother's boss, and that was how they had met. He was a well-aged man, in that, aside from his years and silver hair, he was tall, in good shape, and obviously not suffering from many signs of aging. Hell, he could have passed for forty if he dyed his hair.

They came in to see me once or twice a month for two years, and I got to know them pretty well. Their story was that Stacy had always compared Hugh to Sean Connery after their first meeting, and over the course of visiting her mother at work and going to work-sponsored holiday parties, had gotten to know Hugh pretty well. Then, at a company Christmas party about a year and a half before, they "had some time alone," as Stacy put it.

Five months later they were married, and about another five months later, their daughter was born. It didn't take much to figure out just what had occurred when Hugh and Stacy had their "time alone."

So we basically have a young woman who was attracted to a father-figure type who, as it turned out, was also a mature, sexy older man (hell, I would'a done him ). She could have been seduced, or maybe it was mutual attraction. It was hard to tell from Hugh; he had that air of always being in control, or at least looking and acting like he was. A very confident man. And Stacy, fresh out of college when they met, had yet to get a job with her degree, mainly because her husband provided everything for her.

Anyway, I've always thought their relationship would have made for an interesting May/December romance story . . . or any other kind of story, for that matter.