Date Someone With More Life Experience Than You

Everyone has something to give to a relationship. As Freud said, “Our beds are crowded.” We bring with us our pasts, the good and the bad.

Dating someone with more life experiences means that you’re with someone who can teach you what they have taken from their priors. Experience can come in the form of lessons from previous romantic relationships, career choices, financial situations, and relationships with family and friends. When you’re with someone who has experienced more, they can impart wisdoms on you, or influence bad relationship habits that they have developed from past relationship strain.

1.) Sex

When you think of someone that has more life experience, you often imagine them older. While that may be the case for certain types of experience, that’s not always the case when it comes to sex. Someone younger and more naive can have more sexual experience than you have had, and it’s not a bad thing.

Due to unhealthy views and stigmas about sex, people often view those who have had multiple partners or who have engaged in more “taboo” sexual practices, such as BDSM, as promiscuous or shameful. If sex has been safe, sane, legal, and consenting, there is nothing wrong with having had multiple sexual partners.

Dating someone who has more sexual experience can be a fun, invigorating teaching moment. You may realize that you have certain preferences and tastes that you never knew of.

Someone who has had open-minded encounters is usually aware of their own preferences enough to be open to inviting you to partake in acts that you have never experienced. If you adhere to the previously mentioned “safe, sane, legal, and consenting,” there is no reason to not venture outside of your own personal comfort zones.

There’s a myriad of positions, acts, and experience that someone with more sexual knowledge can show you, and you may become more in tune not only with your partner, but yourself as well.

Sex can be weird and awkward, but an open mind and a willingness to step away from your own comfort zone can help you gain experience to continue to build in your current relationship, or to being with you into the future.

2.) Love

Falling in love doesn’t have to mean “forever,” nor are you obligated to fall in love with everyone you enter a relationship with. Some of us have never been in love before, or have only fallen for one or few previous partners. Others of us wear our hearts on our sleeves and fall head over heels every chance we get. Whether you’re in love, looking for love, or just wanting to have fun, dating someone with more experience can teach you about how you love and desire to be loved.

Experience isn’t always positive and constructive. There are some who are toxic to a relationship, using anger and infedility as their own expression of “love.” This can impact your partner, and they can take on those undesirable traits. Though that may not be the love you desire, you can still learn from this. Experience is all about collecting the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, even if you’re with someone toxic, you can still learn from their previous negative experiences and make them your own. You can move forward, learning from that relationship about how you desire to be loved.

However, you may be with someone who has used their experiences constructively, and who loves appropriately. As mentioned before, you’re not obligated to love anyone, and it’s fine if you don’t. Dating someone with healthy relationship habits can still teach you how to move forward and love productively and positively in future partnerships. Their constructive and encouraging patterns can prepare you for love down the line.

When you’re with someone who has had more relationship encounters, you can learn from their habits and convention, and become more aware of your own patterns. You’ll learn how to love, express love, and what type of love you desire.

3.) Personal Relationships

My mother has always had a keen sense for who will encourage me, and who will not. The romantic partners I have introduced were simply pass or fail with her. Though I never saw it at the time, any partner she didn’t particularly care for ended up not being the right fit for me. My mother has more life experience than I, and though this article is about dating someone more knowledgeable, you should always listen to your mother. Her life experience will prove more valuable than that of any romantic relationship ever could be.

How your partner treats their friends and family, as well as your own, will teach you about the type of person you’re looking to be with. For me, I’ve always wanted to be with someone who my mother adored. It’s not that I seek her approval over my life, but I have this image in my head of loud laughter over Sunday dinner with a man that my mother lovingly calls “son.”

Someone who treats their family with love and respect is likely to treat your family the same. Those with many life experiences have probably learned how to give and get respect, so they are likely to give the efforts required to earn the respect of your friends and family. Their understanding of life can influence how they maintain personal relationships.

You may learn that you do not admire how your partner treats the people in your life, or their life. Their past experience may have influenced them to have unhealthy ties to family and friends, or they may not work to maintain relationships.

You’ll learn how you want your friends, family, and loved ones regarded by your partner. Your partners' experiences will influence their treatment of others and influence how you desire the people in your life to be treated.

4.) Parenting

You may have children of your own, or you may date someone who has children from a previous relationship. You may not have any children, and either want a family in the future or want to apply your energy elsewhere. No matter what you decide, that decision is influenced by the type of people you date.

For me, I’m a divorced twenty-something with a young child. I have more life experience than the men I have dated who are childless, and I have influenced the ideas past partners have about children. In the case of one old flame, he didn’t mind being around my child, and was very kind to my son, but made it clear that he was not looking to create a long term relationship with someone who came as a package deal. However hurt I was at the time, as I was truly falling for the man, it was a fair decision for him to make for his life and I respected his honesty. My life experience as a single mother taught him that he didn’t want to fall in love with someone who came accompanied.

Shortly after, I met a man who had no children, and was nearly sure that he never would. I found that he was a kind and sweet man, and I brought my child around him frequently. Because of this, my partner found that he actually had the makings to be a great father. Being around my child and I taught him that he desired a family. Though at the beginning, his friends and family were baffled at the sight of him carrying around a young child, they soon learned that he was a sweet and patient father. Suddenly, the picture fit, and a man who never thought of himself as a “family man” found his desire to be a parent.

Whether you think you want kids, think you don’t, or are uncertain, I recommend the experience of dating a parent. It’s not one to take lightly, especially if you’re being introduced to the child, but it’s one that can help teach you about the kind of person you want to be.

There’s a lot to learn from relationships, if you’re open to being taught. Whether it’s good or bad, romantic partnerships can help you mold into the best version of yourself.