Is a relationship with an older man BETTER?

Gayatri Parameswaran weighs in on whether being with someone who has quite a few years on you may actually be a good idea.

"Always check on how old your man is," a friend of mine told me last week. She was of the opinion that men are like wine -- the older they grow, the better they get.

It made me wonder if age really matters. "It's like asking, 'Does size matter?'" she said. "You might want to believe it doesn't, but get down to business and you know it's important."

I wasn't convinced. My point -- 20-year-old guys can behave like they're 40 and 40-year-olds can act like teenagers. "Let's not talk about exceptions to the rule. Let's discuss the rule," my friend suggested.

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"You can't disregard what age means. Like it or not, you grow wiser as you grow older, and why should love be an exception?" she asked. "Older men are just more mature and easier to get along with. You don't haggle over petty issues because they know from experience that in the end it doesn't matter."

But what if all this advantageous life-experience that she was talking about made him unenthusiastic about his woman? "Love is a benign drug. The more you use it, the better you get at handling it. The more suave and easy you get. And don't you like your love easy rather than tough?" she asked.

She told me that this was a lesson she'd learned from her own experience. "I've been through the testing drills. Older men also just make life easier for you. They are often great at making you feel more comfortable and secure about the whole thing," she said.

"And that's true in bed as well. Practice there just makes you better. They know what the woman is looking for," she said. "I was dating an older man for some time and was surprised at how good the sex was. He knew exactly what to do when. Often I wished for something and he gave me just that."

Well, that's no big deal I thought -- if you really like your man, you can train him to do what you want, can't you? It might take time but the wait will have been worthwhile.

Talking about waiting, I couldn't help but ask the obvious -- if these men have grown old being so awesome and were getting more awesome by the day, why were they still single?

"You're so damn negative," my friend said, "When you get precious gifts, you don't ask why they are as good as they are, you just enjoy them."

But I spotted another major hurdle. At different stages of your life, wouldn't both of you be looking for different things? If you're 20-something, you don't think about settling down, you think about exploring life. And if you're a 40-something man, you're done with all the discoveries and looking forward to slowing down.

My friend was giving up on the argument. She said, "I'm not asking you to flog a dead horse, idiot. And anyway, why am I preaching? You'll learn some day, because I know that you'll only grow wiser as you grow older!"