May-December Romance Makes Big News (Again)

The Daily Mail calls Edna and Simon Martin Britain’s “oddest couple,” because of their 40 year age difference, but is their love really so odd?

Edna and Simon first made national news in 2005 with their wedding. Edna, who is “seventysomething,” had been married once before, to a man she now refers to only as “Thing.” Simon never had any girlfriends before Edna, due in part to his dyslexic and dyspraxia, but their shared love of music brought them together. Edna says she originally encouraged Simon to find a girlfriend his own age, but he quickly decided that he did not want to be without Edna, wrote her a love letter declaring himself, and proposed (on a “windswept afternoon”) shortly after. The whole story is very romantic, but we have to wonder, would this even be news if their genders were reversed? The writer even goes so far as to ask them whether their union is more spiritual than physical, to which Edna says: “Good God, no. Our relationship has the same passion as a pair of 25-year-olds. We kiss about 150 times a day.” As happy as I am for this couple, there are dozens of May/December romances out there with an older man and a younger women, and we don’t find them so charming. Why is an older woman finding love with a younger man, a “toyboy,” as the Daily Mail calls him, so remarkable? [Daily Mail]