This Week's Drama: Age Gaps

the problem with 22 year-old girlfriends is that they grow up.

On a recent episode of Below Deck, Xandi, the 2nd Stew, says “from 28 to 32, that’s when you go through your most changes”.

Xandi from Below Deck

I went to a psychic in my early twenties who told me I’d meet my soulmate when I turned 28, “during my Saturn return”. According to her, the guy I was dating then was NOT my soulmate.

I was 22 and my boyfriend at the time was past his Saturn Return, just beyond the 28 to 32 age range, and I wanted him to change more. I wanted his Saturn to return more, or in a different way. I at least just wanted us to have something in common besides agreeing that I was an old soul.

me in my early 20s

Socializing together usually meant one of us would be miserable and feel out of place. He showed up wearing a custom suit to my friend’s seance-themed 22nd birthday party. I showed up wearing a Topshop body-con mini dress with cutouts to a charity gala where he was being honored.

Early in our relationship, this boyfriend invited me to dinner with his colleague and his colleague’s fiancé. This was a couple well into their forties, and if you’ll recall, my brain was still biologically forming. Yet, I knew instantly that these were not good people and that their stories didn’t add up.

Don’t credit my intuition - before the appetizers, the colleague was shining his iPhone flashlight on the engagement ring he bought for his fiancé, bragging about how they blew the jewelers away with how much they spent on the diamond. I was wearing a Forever 21 statement necklace made of whatever metal dyes your skin green if you wear it for more than an hour.

I had a real thing for statement necklaces back then…

I was a PA at the time, working in TV, and the colleague told me he knew the industry well, because he used to be a filmmaker. When I asked what his films were called, he (white, from the Midwest) said they were “all made in Brazil so I wouldn’t have heard of them.” Every other word out of his fiancé’s mouth was a name drop, from Adrian Grenier to Verne Troyer (RIP) and her “close friend, Khloe Kardashian’s publicist”.

It came out that this couple had just bought a house in the Hamptons, and were planning to have their wedding at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The level of wealth they portrayed did NOT match the information I had about the company where my boyfriend worked with this colleague, which had only launched a few years prior.

Shortly after that dinner, of course, I googled the colleague and the only information I could find about his past career was an interview about a since-failed fashion line and a website for an LLC, the same one listed on my boyfriend’s paychecks, with “global” in its title and only a couple of U.S. cities listed as operating locations.

Everything from that point forward became evidence. Suddenly, there was this all-encompassing issue in our relationship. My focus shifted from “do we have anything in common”/”could this last”/”do I want to get married or go enjoy my 20s and 30s” to “once I convince my boyfriend he works with a con man, then we’ll live happily ever after”. I couldn’t focus on how I really felt being with this person, because I was so tied to this “if only” narrative, and because exposing a con man is a BIG job for someone young enough to to have a solid Snapstreak.

This same suspicious colleague and fiancé ultimately invited us to their wedding. So, I flew to Los Angeles with a group of my boyfriend’s friends who were all in their mid thirties, but still found quoting Tropic Thunder to be the pinnacle of humor. I had quit smoking, but purchased a pack moments after touching ground in California.

The first event of the weekend was a hike at Runyon Canyon. I was relieved the trail was mostly flat, but the group we were with found it boring and decided to run to make the hike more challenging. I belligerently maintained my walking pace. My boyfriend ran up next to me and passive aggressively whispered something about how he didn’t want to be dating the type of girl that doesn’t run on a hike. But she? Was me. I am still the girl that doesn’t run on a hike! At the time I was also the girl who went back to the car and smoked a cig to make a statement that I was PISSED.

On the night of his own wedding, the colleague got up and gave an over-20-minute-long speech that involved listing all the favors he had done for each wedding guest in attendance. I looked around at the assembly of Restoration Hardware table settings, desperate for a moment of eye contact to acknowledge how insane this all was, but the only eyes that mattered, my boyfriend’s, were filled with awe as he cheers-ed the speech, and I officially felt alone in the relationship.

It wasn’t that this couple was obnoxious or untrustworthy that made me feel alone, it was that my boyfriend wouldn’t acknowledge that anything they did was off. Any time I commented on their behavior, he said I was judgmental. And I am! But come on! Who gives a 20 minute long speech about all the favors they’ve done for people on their own wedding night?!?! And why didn’t either the bride or groom seem to have any real friends or family in attendance!? And where did they get the money to throw this event that was straight out of an episode of VH1’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?!

There’s something really stark about realizing you need to break up with someone in a luxury environment like the Beverly Hills Hotel. It felt like my gut feelings were exposed to the sun as I sipped from a $16 water bottle.

But we didn’t break up on that trip, or after that trip. We didn’t break up for another year or so. Because he decided to leave that job and the narrative overshadowed the truth again. The idea that “if only he didn’t work there, with those people, then we could be happy”. Now he didn’t work there, he didn’t associate with those people. And we still, DEFINITELY weren’t happy.

I did a lot of googling “how to know if you should break up with someone” during that time. I remember one moment of clarity, being on the phone with a friend asking for advice about the relationship. I was standing outside the Nike store and my boyfriend was inside shopping. My friend offered some solutions, some ideas on how I could work harder to make this relationship work. I remember looking through the glass at him, as he eyed a new pair of Jordans, and knowing, in my gut, that these solutions were great ideas, but that I didn’t want to try them anymore. I wanted to try something else. I wanted to try to understand myself, in all the ways I knew he never would.

Now, I am 32, technically past my own saturn return and done with my “most changes” according to Xandi from Below Deck. I still want to make a lot of changes and I feel like I have a lot more of myself to discover, but I can safely say it is absolutely impossible for me to imagine going to a 22 year-old’s birthday party.