Real Life Story
Vidhya & Dhruv bridged their age gap with love and optimism
“Besides being from the same community, Dhruv and I didn’t have anything in common. We met while trying to coordinate an event – that’s when it all began. We started hanging out with each other, but always in a group! It wasn’t until my Facebook messenger pinged one night that everything changed – we bonded over so many things.
We’d talks for hours, go for movies and dinners – we did everything together and fell in love. And through it all, our age difference never even came up….I’m five years older than him. It didn’t matter to us when he asked me out, and it doesn’t matter to us even today.
But our happiness was short-lived. Dhruv got caught at home after our road trip, and his parents were shocked that he was going out with someone 5 years older. After that, there was no communication from him, and I was freaking out! I thought that was the end of our relationship.
I was so low, but Dhruv always knows when to step in. He called me a few hours later – I was very restless, and being dramatic, when he said, ‘We’ll figure it out and it’ll all be fine.’ Here I was thinking that we’d have to break up, and he was telling me that this was the real beginning of our relationship.
We decided then that we’re in this together, until the end. It really wasn’t easy – his father even called my parents to tell them to talk me out of it. He said that ‘because of the age gap, in the future I might not be able to get pregnant’ and ‘because he’s so much younger, he wouldn’t be able to take care of me.’
We constantly have to keep fighting and justifying our relationship. How is a small thing like age gap so significant in a relationship? He’s 20 and I’m 25.
Why is it normal for a man to be older in the relationship, but so ‘unacceptable’ for the woman?
There’s so many couples who have a decade between them and they aren’t questioned. It’s tough, but we are resilient, and hope to break through the resistance one day. Whether it’s my parents or his, we both understand the conservative atmosphere we’ve grown up in. And we respect the fact that our parents are taking their time to understand us.
I don’t know if this will be a fairytale ending with a happily ever after, or a filmy Bollywood climax. But you know the saying, ‘When you want something, the universe conspires to help you achieve it’? Well, that’s our motto in life now. We know that when the time is right, it’ll all work out. Until then we just have to have faith – in our parents, in the universe, and in us.”
Source: Humans of Bombay
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Did You Know
46% of youths fear discrimination or public shame when in an unconventional relationship.