I Would've Stayed 'til the End.

The long goodbye of loving an older man (with emotional damage and a ball gag)

People hear 'age-gap relationship' and immediately picture a guy in aviators and a leather jacket with a twenty-year-old on his arm. But mine? Mine looked a lot more like a man in old cargo pants, drinking tea, telling me to go to bed before midnight.

He never called it what it was, but I knew. He was older. He was tired. He carried the kind of emotional weight you get from seeing too much of the world, and none of it surprising you anymore. And even though he never said it, I think he saw love like a loaded gun. Like something he couldn’t afford to touch again without hurting someone.

I was the younger one, sure. But I wasn’t naive. I’ve been married. I’ve had a baby. I’ve had my heart gutted and stitched up badly. So when he started pulling away—saying things like “Where will you be in ten years?” or “You’ll get bored of me”—I didn’t laugh it off. I didn’t say, ‘Don’t be silly.’ I read the fear in his words. And I realized he wasn’t asking about time. He was asking about legacy.

He thought I’d outgrow him. That I’d leave once the novelty of loving someone older wore off—once the fantasy was fulfilled. But the thing is: I never cared about novelty. I liked the creases in his voice. The sharpness of his mind when it turned on. The weird quiet joy he got from telling me to behave. He was never a fantasy. He was the first man I loved who felt real, who saw all the parts of me.

And of course, it wasn’t just about love.
It was about power.

We met in a space built on obedience, on discipline, on the erotic theater of control.
He was my Dominant. Not just in the bedroom, but in the silence between our texts, in the way I changed how I moved through the day just knowing he was watching. And somehow, even that—especially that—made me love him harder. Because in BDSM, we talk about consent and control, but what no one tells you is how much of it, the mental bondage, becomes emotional. How deeply you can fall for someone who’s never even touched you, because they’ve touched everything else.

And I never got to say it to him plainly—but I would’ve stayed. Not in some martyr way. Not in a Florence Nightingale way. In a practical, painfully human way. I would’ve stayed if things got harder. If he got sicker. If the end crept closer.

People think love is supposed to feel like forever. I think love is about what you’re willing to hold when it’s fleeting. And if he had let me, I would’ve held him all the way through.

There’s a kind of devotion that doesn’t look good on paper. That doesn’t make sense to anyone who hasn’t felt their whole body say ‘yes’ to someone even as their brain screams, ‘This is risky.’ And I don’t know if he ever believed I really meant it. That I’d stay. That I’d introduce him to my son. That I’d make room in my life for a man who thought he didn’t deserve to be remembered.

But I would have.

Even now, with the silence. With the space he carved between us. With the disappearing act he thinks makes him noble. I would still choose him. Not because I need saving. But because he made me feel like being alive was worth documenting.

So no, this wasn’t a phase. This wasn’t about being charmed by someone older, someone famous. This was about love. The real kind. The kind that doesn’t ask how long it will last. Just how deep it’s willing to go.

And my answer, always, would have been:

all the way.

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If this stirred something in you, you might also like:

• You Were Always Going to Break Me

• Jealousy Is My Love Language