Ask Delissa! Sorting the agonies of love, dating and relationships

Too old for kids?

Dear Delissa

I am a 68 year old bachelor. I am wealthy, I have a successful business, a small yacht and several properties in London and the country.

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I have a girlfriend who is much younger than me in her 30’s but I’m not sure she’s right for me.

I have no family and I would like to have children as I don’t want to think that I am the last of my line.

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The kind of girl I would like to meet is a sort of Jewish version of Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Funny, intelligent, witty but also wanting to have children with me so I guess age wise around 30-35.

How do I go about finding someone like this?

Charlie, Battersea

Dear Charlie,

Yours is the kind of letter I open up and want to immediately wash my hands.

Children are not something you do as a sort of selfish whim! Have you thought about this?  Really thought about it?

At best if you find someone tomorrow you will be heading into your 70’s and by the time Junior is old enough to kick a football you’ll be slithering into goal on a zimmer frame.

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You may well be a fit and healthy 68 year old but the chances are your young son/daughter will be living without a father for most of their teenage years if not sooner.

You’ve not mentioned in your letter why you don’t already have children so I can only wonder if parenting is really your last thought.

There is also an important word missing from your question – it’s the word love.

You don’t seem to be looking for love – but for an ‘arrangement’.

Is this what you want because its most likely what you will get.

No matter how small that yacht you’ve put in the shop window you are looking to attract a much younger girl and I can see why that appeals to you. But she’ll be most likely looking at you and hoping that bulge in your pocket is a fat wallet. Is that what you want?

There are younger women in their 30’s who fall genuinely in love with men 40 years older but you’ll always wonder if the attraction is driven by money.

So the age issue aside, is that kind of relationship really an ideal basis for children?

Could you not reconsider and think about meeting a woman nearer your own age?

A person with the same cultural references, who doesn’t think the Magic Roundabout is a reference for a new high.

Let’s call her an older version of Phoebe Waller Bridge. Someone who is more likely to fall in love with you, for who you are.

If the only reason you want to have children is to carry on your line then what difference is that to you when you are 6 feet under – in the meantime you could re-write your will and leave it to the cat’s home.