G'Day Rob
Again the ugly "age" monster rears it's head and tries to derail another promising relationship....Gawd, there are so many other forces working against us in our quest to find our beloved, age shoud be one of the easiest issues to knock on the head !! There have been many, many posts written here on this subject, and I am sure you have read them all.
Rob, you are old enough, wise enough (and scarred enough !!) to realise that we dont live in a perfect World...and in this World there aint many perfct people !!!!
Way back when...at the time you two first met it was only the chemistry, the attraction, the mutual admiration that brought you both to a good place. The age thing was only numbers on a piece of paper...it was nothing to do with what happened between you both.
At this time, maybe your Lady was tired of being involved with shallow, sensless 30-something year olds who did neither want nor understand committment, love and the dream of a happy stable future...so she upped her age by 10 years to attract a more stable, mature and honourable Man ....Maybe
Women are allowed to use many "wiles" to attract the best partner, the underwear, bra and cosmetic manufacturers are forever grateful to this trait !!!:icon_cheesygrin::icon_cheesygrin:
Had she decided to keep her "secret" in the hope that it would never become known by you...it would have been the bigger deceit.
In telling you the truth, this Lady has thrown some seriously big dice here...she is prepared to put her love on the line to have the truth out in the open....she knows full well that it could be a show-stopper for you....Man, that shows some high level of courage and committment on her part.
OK..cannot take away the issue that she told you a fib...and you gotta deal with that one way or the other. If you can find it in your heart to forgive and forget and move on into a new World...then thats great for both of you.
If whatever happens, your own sense of "honour and ethics" forever will mean that this fib gets held in YOUR heart...then it will be a poison between you that will eventually destroy everything.
The only black cloud introduced by this new information (IMHO) is the issue raised here about future children
But if you can never forgive and forget, and know that your real feelings for this woman transcend meaningless statistics such as age difference....then you have answered your own question...there is no future.
Ron makes the perfect point that age difference is important, but not the numbers shown on bits of paper...the difference is measured in character, attitude, wisdom and such things.
But dont spend the next 3 years searching and wondering what might have been, had you behaved with a bit more "charity" towards a woman who obviously think the Sun shines out of yer ass !!!
Not the easiest of decisions mate....but really, its not so difficult after all.
David