Needed support for newbie

Hello, Everyone :)
I've been reading the boards for the past couple of days looking for some like minded souls. I'm a 46 yo. female and just entered into an online relationship with a guy who is 22. I've always dated younger guys, but this is such a huge age gap; I remember when I thought 10 years was big! Since we haven't met yet, so much is still up in the air, but I find myself falling for him more each day. It's so funny how online age is a non-issue. Neither of us knew how old the other was in the beginning, tho I assumed he was younger.

I'm wondering if any other women can relate to this: I have never been married and do not have children. I feel very young, and look it as well (at least with my clothes on..hehe). I watch MTV, listen to current music. It's not that I'm NOT trying to "act my age", it's just that I still feel so young (and kinda immature). It's just weird...I've thought maybe it's because I didn't have children, so I have never had to be the "adult" and a parent who shoulders responsibility. I've spent a lot of time in school as an adult, and have 2 masters degree (one aborted attempt at a doctorate). I've never thought much about this 'til I entered my 40's and had to deal with some real depression about what I perhaps have missed in life. So in many ways dating younger men has made sense to me: we tend to have the same interests, and struggle with some similar developmental issues. The current guy I'm involved with is more mature than I am in taking care of finances and some other issues.

I've been to therapy, and at this point I want to just accept who I am, and where I'm at. I'm tired of trying to figure out what's "wrong" with me.

Thanks for this message board! I'll keep reading.

Haley, I am pretty much the same, as you (well, a few years younger maybe, and so is my YM), but I guess most of what you are saying about being/feeling/dressing young, hobbies and educational background applies to me, too ;)

And yes, I do have the same concerns about being pretty crazy to get involved into anything like that (online, too, of course), but at the same time I am selfish enough to allow myself to be happy when I can be, and I am very happy with my YM atm ;)

ALTHOUGH: we spent last week together irl after about 9 month online "relationship" and to tell you the truth, we now both find it hard to settle back to the "just" online state for the time being (we live in different countries ;) ).

Still, welcome here and good luck to you - and yes, feel free to share your concerns and worries, I know there are a lot of nice, supportive people around to help with advise, moral support or some telling off if need be ;)

Carazy, just curious, by different countries do you mean ones in Canada and the other in US? Or is it an even larger seperation than that?
I myself am in Canada and Marcy is way over there in Ohio...
I can imagine it would be rather difficult to return to an online relationship after being together like that, definately not the part of the trip im looking forward to ;)

well, my YM and I are European - I am German, he's Norwegian ;) so, not sure what the distance is in miles, but it's like 2 hrs flight but a few borders, and Norway is not part of the European Union ... - so, we are not sure how to deal with this location issue, but as we are still in early stages of our "irl" relationship, we wanna give us some "acquaintence" time first before jumping ahead on some life changing issues ;)

So, meeting up is difficult and needs preplanning and will be less frequent than we would like, but that's the situation at the moment, I am a fraid .... :(

Ah okay. Well it would be a 4.5 hour flight for me without stops to visit, but there are no direct YVR to ohio flights so its about 6.5 hours minimum to get there on a plane :(
But its easy enough for me to get into the US, only real issue is that it does require preplanning, like you said.