Annabelle Baugh first met her partner of 21 years when she was 18, and he was 34.
Annabelle, now 45, met Simon, 61, because she was working at a firm of financial advisors across the street from his own.
When she grew unhappy in her company, she moved over the road to work at his.
‘The very first time I met him, there was just something about him,’ says Annabelle, who lives the West Midlands. ‘I just liked him, it’s hard to put your finger on these things.
‘It wasn’t that he was like amazingly good-looking or my type or anything like that – not that I really had a type.
‘It was just that I liked being around him and the sound of his voice. He made me feel really confident and good about myself.’
But, while she got along great with her boss, their romance didn’t blossom until years later because they were both married to other people at the time.
‘Nothing,’ she stresses, ‘absolutely nothing happened at all during that period of time. There was no thought in the back of my mind to go there.
‘But he did become my financial advisor when I bought my first house when I was 20, so he did my mortgage and everything. He also helped me set up a few policies, like a pension for my husband.
‘Then when I split up with my husband when I was 24, I called him to say I wanted to cancel the policies that I’d been paying for him and re-mortgage my house, and could we have a chat?
‘He said, “Well, I’m actually having a few weeks off work because I’ve split up with my wife after 20 years.”
‘It was really bizarre that we’d both broken up with our partners – we literally hadn’t spoken for about a year.’
At the time, Annabelle had moved back in with her parents for a spell after her break-up while some work was being done to her house, and she recalls the excited conversation she had with her mum about seeing Simon again.
‘I remember running to her and saying: “You never guess what – Simon’s split up with his wife after 20 years. I’ve always liked him. What should I do?”‘
Far from being taken aback by her daughter’s statement, her mum – who is herself 16 years younger than Annabelle’s dad – had some sage advice.
‘She was like: “Well if it’s been 20 years, you might want to give him a little bit of time – don’t jump on him straight away, let him acclimatise.
‘”And they may get back together – you never know.” My mum was very good at these things.’
So Annabelle and Simon arranged to meet and talk finances when he was ready to go back to work, and after around four months of Simon helping her with her post-divorce admin, Annabelle made the first move and asked him out.
‘He said yes,’ says Annabelle, who’s now a senior content marketer at Exposure Ninja. ‘And two weeks later I moved in with him, and around ten months after that I got pregnant with our son, Byron, who’s 19 now.
‘Simon already had a boy, Louie, and a girl, Hannah, from his previous marriage. They were seven and 12 when we got together, and took to me straight away.
‘I now call them my non-biological son – my NBS – and my non-biological daughter – my NBD.’
Her NBS, who’s autistic, is so fond of Annabelle that he once called her ‘mum’ during a trip to the supermarket.
‘So I said: “Umm, maybe call me Auntie? Because your mum might not like it.”‘
While Annabelle says she doesn’t have a type, she does admit to having ‘always had a thing for older men’.
‘My dad was 50 when I was born,’ she explains, ‘and he always seemed really young to me.
‘I remember when I was 10 and he was 60, he seemed younger than most of my friends’ dads who were in their 40s.
‘So I suppose I’ve always had a different view on age because of my dad being a bit older. He’s passed now, but I was a proper daddy’s girl.’
So when she first got together with Simon – when she was 25 and he was 40 – even though he seemed like ‘a much older man’ to her pals, she said he ‘didn’t seem old at all’ to her.
‘Apart from the fact that he had his sh*t sorted out, I suppose,’ she adds, ‘excuse my language!
‘He had the business, he knew what he was doing, he knew what he wanted out of life and he knew what he wanted out of a relationship.
‘And as for me, I matured very quickly. I got married at 18 and got my first house at 20, so I was a lot more mature than most people my age at 25.
‘So I felt like I related to him better because I wanted a serious relationship. I didn’t want to mess around.
‘None of my friends were surprised. I remember my best friend was like: ‘He’s not exactly old for you – you fancy Anthony Hopkins.”‘
And because her parents’ age gap is exactly the same as hers and Simon’s, Annabelle’s family took to Simon very easily.
‘They really, really liked him,’ she says. ‘They didn’t like my first husband at all.
‘I think my dad felt like Simon would be a good, steady influence on me because I was a bit wild when I was 25.’
But her father did have one rule for Annabelle when she told him about her penchant for older men and desire to act on it.
The rule was that as long as her dad, who was 75 at the time, would have been at least 20 when whoever she wanted to date was born, thus making him old enough to be the guy’s father, he’d be OK with it.
That made age 55 the cut-off point – a 30-year age gap.
‘So, at 40, Simon was only a baby!’ Annabelle jokes.
Simon’s family was equally accepting. In fact, coincidentally, his dad and stepmother have got 16 years between them too.
Even his ex-wife, Wendy, is happy with Annabelle being in the family, with the two having become friends ‘very, very quickly’ after they met.
‘It had been quite an amicable break-up,’ Annabelle recalls, ‘and we clicked.
‘We’re actually really good friends now. We go Christmas shopping together every year, and the last two Christmases we’ve actually gone to her house.’
To anyone who doubts the legitimacy of age gap relationships like hers, Annabelle says: ‘It’s really important to not have preconceived ideas about things in life.
‘I think that if you do go through life with preconceived notions, whether it be about relationships, or about where somebody comes from, whatever it may be, you’re going to get things wrong.
‘You need to treat every person, every situation, and every relationship as individual – we’re all unique.
‘From the outside, nobody can know what two people are getting from each other, or what those two people need from their relationship.
‘Don’t judge people for their age… somebody at 18 could be more mature than somebody else at 40.
‘It’s down to what people experience in life, and you cannot judge that by the way they look, or the age they are, or the job they do – you just can’t.’
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