Golden years

When Rudi learned of Marianne’s unhappiness however, he was careful not to influence his young confidant. “I could sense that Marianne and I were becoming close and, if I’m honest, I knew she had some feelings for me and I was beginning to have feelings for her, and I did not want to encourage that,” he says. “This was a young life with her whole future ahead of her and I didn’t want her making decisions based on me... If she decided to end her marriage it was none of my business.”

Because of these feelings, Rudi began to distance himself slightly from Marianne. For her though, it was too late. “I knew I had to leave my marriage and I have no doubt that I would have left either way, but I also knew I’d found someone special in Rudi and he was a bit of a catalyst.” Ultimately, Marianne left her husband and moved in with her brother.

Try though he did to keep his distance, Rudi felt increasingly drawn to Marianne and finally gave in to his emotions after a work function one evening. “We went for a walk along the foreshore and we talked about Marianne’s marriage break-up and our feelings for each other and then I kissed her,” recalls Rudi shyly. 

For Marianne, the kiss was a defining moment. “I’ve never felt more right about something in my life,” she says. For Rudi, however, the kiss brought even more doubts to the surface. “I kept thinking, ‘Am I being reckless here? This girl is the same age as my daughter and what would I do if I saw my daughter in a relationship with a man my age?’”

It was then that Rudi realised Marianne had no idea how old he actually was. “I hadn’t kept it a secret on purpose; it just hadn’t come up,” he says. But when he finally plucked up the courage to tell Marianne that night, he was met with the reaction he had feared. “I thought he was in his early forties because he looked fairly young,” recalls Marianne. “But I had to sit down when he said he was 54!” she grins. “She had a horrified expression on her face and I thought, ‘Well, that’s done it then’,” Rudi laughs. 

Fortunately however, Rudi’s revelation caused only a little bump on what Marianne was certain was the right path for her. “I think that’s when I started to truly believe that age was just a number because Rudi wasn’t like any other 54-year-old I’d ever met... He was young at heart, fit, handsome and healthy, so I forgot about his age and just saw him.”

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