I didn't tell my boyfriend my age when we started dating. I worried he might end things

Their dates were going well - really well, in fact. But Lena feared the new man she was seeing might end things when he discovered her age.

The pair, from Norway, had been going out for a few weeks after matching on a dating app. But Lena hadn't listed her age on her profile because she didn't want suitors to make assumptions or discount her.

"When our relationship became more serious, my worries got worse," says the 45-year-old. The man she was seeing, Kjetil, had already made it clear he was looking for love rather than a fling.

On their first date, Lena told him she had a teenage daughter, but that didn't put Kjetil off. He just assumed she'd had her when she was young.

"I actually thought she was maybe only a couple of years older than me," says 30-year-old Kjetil.

When Lena did tell him her age - a few weeks after first meeting - Kjetil was undeterred. He made a point of meeting Lena's daughter, who is 11 years younger than he is, to ask if it was OK for him to date her mum.

No such approval was needed from Kjetil's family or friends, but Lena was still concerned about what they would think of her.

"I told Kjetil that I might look younger, but please don't tell them my age because I'm so worried they will say, 'Why are you dating an old lady?'"

As it turned out, Kjetil's friends were totally accepting - "they're chill people" - and his parents welcomed Lena and her daughter into their family with open arms.

But what if someone had made fun of them, or implied the age gap was inappropriate?

"I would say something back," says Kjetil, who says he was prepared to end friendships with anyone who mocked or criticised his partner.

And Lena's daughter? She told her mother: "[Kjetil] is grown up and you're grown up, so as long as he treats you well, that's OK."

She's even helped bridge the couple's age gap by explaining the meaning of some of the slang used by Kjetil and his friends to her mother.

Lena and Kjetil have now been together for two years. She says his calm sensibility tempers her impulsiveness and stress.

"Sometimes I feel he is more grown-up and I'm more childish," she says, "though I can be quite bossy."

The couple are planning for the future and recently bought a house near Stavanger, a coastal city in Norway's southwest. They're moving in next week.

But there are issues Lena and Kjetil need to consider beyond social stigma.

Given Lena has more life experience than Kjetil these include potential power imbalances, whether or not to have children, and the implications of one partner needing elderly care before the other.

There has been renewed discussion of these topics on social media following the release of Age of Attraction on Netflix - a dating show in which 40 singles fall in love before discovering their massive age gaps.

Lena and Kjetil say they too have talked about many of these same issues.

Something they have taken seriously is financial planning.

When they purchased their new home, they agreed Lena would invest more into the property in the short-term as she will retire sooner than Kjetil.

He will initially make smaller mortgage contributions, but by the time he retires they will have contributed equally to the property overall.

Such planning can be difficult but is important to figure out for couples with an age gap, according to relationship therapist, Sarah Louise Ryan.

"In the early stages of age-gap relationships there can be a lot of fire in the belly," Ryan says. "It's quite vibrant, it's exciting… But then when both people get older, and life differences can't be ignored, it puts a lot of pressure on the relationship."

Such couples need a retirement plan that makes sense in terms of money and timings, she advises. They should also figure out what caregiving might look like in later years.

As far as aging is concerned, Lena hopes for good health and trusts Kjetil won't have to "come visit me in my elderly home" anytime soon.

Long-term plans haven't featured in Kseniia's conversations with her husband Mikhail, beyond a few jokes he's made about growing old. He's 41 and she is 23.

"We're enjoying life in the moment and aren't thinking about what will happen in 20 years," Kseniia tells me from their home in Germany.

The couple met, also via a dating app, in their native Russia.

Both were initially worried about their difference in age, but soon bonded over their shared love of art, culture and detective movies.

Kseniia wasn't interested in dating people her age, whom she says spent their time clubbing, drinking and smoking. "I liked going to a museum, discussing politics and social issues, learning something new, and travelling to new cities and countries."

The more she got to know Mikhail, the more Kseniia realised they shared life goals and interests that "went much deeper than going to a museum and watching a movie together".

That became "the starting point for our family", she says. The pair married in 2022 before eventually settling in Germany.

Kseniia doesn't feel a power imbalance in their relationship but appreciates Mikhail has more experience of how the world works and feels she can learn from him.

But Kseniia does notice a generational difference in how they both communicate. She texts incessantly - sometimes sending more than 100 messages a day - while he prefers to speak on the phone, or in person.

Kseniia's friends and family have all been very accepting of Mikhail but she hasn't had much contact with his family because he doesn't have many close relatives left.

There are no imminent plans to have children, but the couple do want them in the future, and Kseniia isn't concerned about Mikhail's ability to keep up if he becomes an older father.

"Even though I'm younger, I think he has more energy. He's very active and doesn't like to sit still," she says. "We balance each other very well."

That sense of emotional balance is something Lena feels she has also found in Kjetil.

When she signed up to dating apps a few years ago, she had no specific intention to find a younger partner. On the dating apps she set her age preferences from 26-60.

"I was 42," Lena says, "at a place in life where I could date a man with grandkids or a man without kids - either was OK."

But the fact she and Kjetil clicked so well prompted her to encourage other women to consider dating outside their immediate age range too.

She began posting on social media about their life together and, despite a few negative comments, most responses have been positive.

Lena believes women should "stop feeling ashamed" and judging each other over personal decisions. She's had these feelings herself, she says, and overcome them.

She wants women to know they can find meaningful and lasting relationships with men they might have once discounted because of their youth.

Before her career in counselling and education, Lena used to work in an elderly care home and remembers a woman there who had a husband 17 years younger than her.

"He came to her with flowers everyday. He loved her still and I thought to myself: that is real love… I believe that age cannot take away love."