<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"One reader with a May-December romance wants to make her relationship be a little more in season. She writes: &amp;quot;How do I make him respect me and take me seriously when there&amp;#x27;s a considerable age difference (he&amp;#x27;s older) and he&amp;#x27;s way ahead of me in his career/finances/etc.? It&amp;#x27;s hard not to feel silly talking about college and class when he&amp;#x27;s got other, bigger things on his mind, and when I know his friends inwardly roll their eyes at us and wonder when he&amp;#x27;ll get tired of the little girl. We&amp;#x27;re very compatible but I don&amp;#x27;t want the age gap to translate itself into a problem communicating, or talking about our day or sharing our priorities and tastes. Is there a way to get over that? Is it something that can be worked on?&amp;quot; Age gaps can be hard to navigate in relationships, but not impossible. It sounds like you have a good thing going here! I wish I knew how much older your guy was, but regardless, I should hope that you don&amp;amp;#8217;t have to make your boyfriend respect you and take you seriously--he shouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t be dating you if he doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t do that. But as far as making sure the two of you remain compatible, I think there are two key things here... First, you need to be mature in the relationship. That means doing all the things you mentioned: communicating and being honest, respecting each other, working on sharing priorities, etc. Don&amp;amp;#8217;t cause unnecessary drama, like picking fights over his immature friends&amp;amp;#8217; behavior (more on that later) unless he is a part of it or isn&amp;amp;#8217;t defending your relationship when necessary. If you demonstrate that you can handle a mature relationship, he has no reason not to take you seriously. And you don&amp;#x27;t have to be a certain age to be able to have a &amp;quot;grown up&amp;quot; relationship. In fact, I know plenty of older people that have the emotional maturity of a toddler. So your actions will speak louder than your age where this stuff is concerned. The second is to not to be self-conscious of your age or pretend it doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t exist. You are in college, which means classes are important to you. That doesn&amp;#x27;t make you immature, nor does wanting to have a beer at a campus bar. If your guy doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t understand that and take it seriously, he&amp;amp;#8217;s kind of a jerk. Just because he&amp;amp;#8217;s older doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t make his life more important than yours. It just means you&amp;amp;#8217;re at different phases. But trying to pretend you&amp;amp;#8217;re older and so over everything &amp;amp;#8220;college&amp;amp;#8221; will probably only make you seem even younger, not to mention it&amp;amp;#8217;s a waste not to embrace and enjoy this time in your life. Share your experiences with your boyfriend when possible, and be enthusiastic about his too, but recognize that at times, you may need to do your own thing. It&amp;amp;#8217;s OK if you want to go on your sorority&amp;amp;#8217;s bar crawl without him or football tailgate without him, as long as you also get plenty of quality time together, whether you&amp;amp;#8217;re doing his thing, your thing, or something you both love. You don&amp;amp;#8217;t have to be at the same stage of life to appreciate each other. And it&amp;#x27;s OK to ask for his advice on subjects he might be older and wiser about (he does have more life experience!) but don&amp;#x27;t forget that you might know things he doesn&amp;#x27;t, even if you&amp;#x27;re younger. It sounds like you&amp;amp;#8217;re sensing some baditude from his friends, which is of course totally irritating, but not necessarily problematic as long as it seems like they are scorning inwardly and that your boyfriend doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t notice or alternatively, purposely ignores it. If they are making rude comments and he&amp;amp;#8217;s not defending you, or if he seems like he&amp;amp;#8217;s rolling his eyes along with him, you need to have a talk. But as long as your guy is on your side, hopefully his friends will come around eventually too, once they understand that your relationship is solid despite your age. If they don&amp;#x27;t, you can deal with that as a couple further down the road. Good luck and I hope you can continue to work things out. It will take a little more work, but if you really care about each other it just might be worth it! Anyone ever dated an older guy? How did you deal with the age gap? Was it a problem or easy to work with? Give our reader your best tips! More advice on an older man? *Found! A Handy Trick To Figuring Out If a Guy Is Too Old For You... *Five Funny Things About Dating an Older Guy *The DOs and DON&amp;#x27;Ts of Dating an Older Man Photo: Thinkstock "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2012/11/readers-dilemma-how-do-i-make>