When I was in my early Twenties I assumed everyone else I was hanging out with was too. Same deal in my late Twenties. Then I hit my Thirties and just thought we all did it together. No surprises this wasn’t actually the case. I only recently discovered some people I’ve loved and known for a decade are more than half a decade older than me. In the Party Years age doesn’t exist. When life takes hold and people move in different directions, have new priorities and progress through new phases of life, the gap becomes evident. Not in a bad way, you just start to see it more clearly.

I was sitting on a bench outside my work the other day when a woman walked past and looked at me – she circled back and sat down beside me for a chat. She was all killer yoga body, skin-tight lime green singlet, purple trainers, black sunnies, perfect brown Filipino skin. Then my mouth dropped open: she told me she was seventy two years old. She didn’t like hanging out with people her own age because she found them really boring. We talked for a while longer and then she told me to stand up – she darted around me, poking here and there, doing a body inspection. She said there was nothing at all wrong at the moment but if she sees me in a couple of weeks and I’ve gotten any wider she’ll yell out Fatty from across the street. She was a crazy bitch but I liked her. A nice reminder that being old doesn’t change who you are.

When you’re dealing with new friends and acquaintances, it doesn’t matter so much if your Age Gauge is a bit off. In a Boy/Girl situation though, it can become more important.

I had a crush on a boy who worked in one of the bottle shops in my neighbourhood for months. Each time I’d go in he liked to give me updates on what was going on: he told me a lot more than he ever asked me and for someone I hadn’t even introduced myself to I knew a fair bit about his life. I also always just thought he was my age – I guess my mind defaulted to the most convenient outcome. Every time we’d chat he’d reveal another piece of his life puzzle. One Sunday afternoon I went in to grab a beer and he told me he was really struggling: on Saturday night his brother had a birthday party and it was large. After he talked me through some of the highlights of the night I asked him how old his brother had turned: twenty one. We wrapped up our chat and I left, thinking back over some of the other updates he’d given me over recent weeks: enthusing about an awesome CGI shark video he’d found on YouTube; his current college course wasn’t going so well because he was distracted by the internship he’d started; one day I ended up giving him career advice and tips on how to get over his nerves to nail a job interview. I don’t think this guy could have been more than twenty five years old. I got over the crush pretty quickly after that. I’m not saying relationships can’t work with an age gap – I know couples with years between them who are rock solid and totally in love. For me, it’s more about the different stages of life you’re in and the experiences you’ve had or are yet to have.

I was chatting to my sister about the decades of life over the weekend. Her breakdown on it was that your first few decades are about learning the ropes of the world, getting educated on the basics. Your Twenties are for experiencing as many different things as you possibly can; your Thirties are for interpreting the experiences of your Twenties and working out how you want to use them to help keep shaping who you are as a person and how you want to move through life. It’s a good way of looking at it.

Lots of people I know in my generation, bridging X and Y, have pushed out the life phase timeline a good amount further than our predecessors – largely in the name of independence, travel, fun and generally living life. I always knew I’d do it, but I didn’t seriously recognise marriage and family as something I wanted until later in the game. And as long as I eventually do find my man, I figure it just means we’ve got fewer years to get bored and grumpy together.

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