A Rugby Player Destroyed The Idea That His Boyfriend Is Too Old For Him

When former rugby player Sam Stanley posted about his engagement on Instagram, he shared the happy news along with a sad truth about his relationship. Since Stanley's boyfriend, Laurence Hicks, is much older than him, the two often joked that Hicks was his godfather, or an uncle, or a cousin.

"After being a part of each others lives for almost 7 years, @lorenzo_uk has been my pretend godfather, uncle, cousin and many others in order to make sure no one found out about us and that we were a couple," Stanley wrote. "Funny looking back after having come so far together. The most loving man I know and I'm incredibly happy to say we're now engaged."

There isn't too much evidence of people who hated on his relationship in his Instagram feed, either because Stanley deleted those comments or because his more than 15,000 followers are all just very kind. But every now and then an inappropriate comment about the couple pops up, either to critique their relationship for Hick's age or for his size (and sometimes both).

One person simply wrote, "Green card?" on a photo of Stanley and Hicks at the beach, as if to say that the only reason a man like Stanley would be with a man like Hicks is to gain access into another country.

Although there are only a few of these comments sprinkled throughout Stanley's IG feed, he has opened up about the comments he and Hicks get when they're out together in the real world.

"Laurence & I love each other and to us that’s all that matters. We’re proud to represent the many relationships like ours," Stanley told Attitude.

And there really are many relationships like theirs — so many, in fact, that these types of relationships have a name: May-December romances. Sure, there aren't nearly as many relationships with a large age gap as there are between people who are close in age, but it's also true that there are fewer same-gender relationships than there are opposite-gender relationships. Just because they don't happen as often, doesn't mean that either type of relationship isn't "normal," or loving, or good.