A couple who are mistaken for being father and daughter claims that harsh criticisms only help to make their relationship “stronger”.
Sinead Warnes, 26, of Cambridge, and her boyfriend Daniel Long, 42, met last year and immediately fell in love. The pair is now proving to everyone in and outside social media that their 16-year gap is no obstacle for their romance.
Sinead claims it was “love at first sight” when she met Daniel and the couple now aims to normalize big age gap relationships. The support worker intends to “normalize” age gap relationships by posting videos on TikTok, where she has 161,000 followers.
The mom-of-two is openly sharing details of their relationship online, shares that she is often confronted by trolls asking if her partner is her “dad or granddad” or claiming she is a “gold digger.”
But despite the cyber abuse, Sinead claims that dating an older man is “so much less stressful” than being with someone her own age.
“I find him very attractive and our personalities click very well together,” Sinead told Daily Mail. “Neither of us cares about the hate that we get on our age gap, if anything we thrive off it because it’s just funny.”
“It’s more like people are taking time out of their life to put hate into mine, there’s obviously got to be something so good about my life for them to actually waste their time to write these hate comments,” she said.
“A few people have said “you must be with him because he’s got loads of money” but I actually work two jobs so it’s not the case at all.”
“I think it just makes us stronger because it doesn’t bother us, it makes us laugh. We get so much more support than hate, it’s just funny and it doesn’t bother me one bit,” she added.
The couple first met back in March 2020 when Sinead was outside painting her fence and Daniel offered to help out. She said they stopped talking for a little while but eventually got back in contact and started dating this January.
“I was a bit wary at first because of the age gap and then I think we just got on really well, he’s different – I think it was love at first sight,” Sinead recalled. “I think he was a lot more worried at first than I was because I’m younger than him but he’s not bothered, we’re literally not bothered about it.”
“My dad said that having an older man – “they’ve been there, they’ve done all the partying and going out and they know what they want in their life,” she said.
“It’s so much less stressful than dating younger men – he’s very “been there done that” and wants to just settle down, and I’ve always been like that.”
“He’s very grounded and he goes to work every day, a lot of younger men don’t seem to do that,” she added.
Sinead said that they kept their relationship quiet for about a month and a half at first and when they did eventually announce it on Facebook family and friends were “over the moon” for them.
The unusual couple draws the attention of many both on social media and in real life. But she says that the negative comments she receives are mainly on her TikTok account.
She deletes some but also leaves others because she said a lot of her followers stick up for her with comments such as “leave her alone, she’s 26, she’s an adult, it’s her life”.
“A lot of people stare,” Sinead said. “I think sometimes maybe they probably think he’s my dad until he holds my hand. He’s very loving.”
“I think he feels like I feel awkward sometimes being out with him and people staring but it doesn’t bother me,” she continued. “There’s been a few comments that say “that looks like your dad”, and I just say thanks.”
“Nothing really bothers me because I feel like if I react to them to show that they bother me, then it shows the people that I’m doubting our relationship,” she said. “I’m with him, it doesn’t matter what people think. Their opinions don’t matter to us.”
The social media fan wants to use her TikTok platform to shine a light on the positives of age gap relationships. She also claims that the first video she posted about their age gap relationship on her previous account gathered nearly a million views.
She has since dedicated half of the videos to her age gap relationship and has gained more than 17,000 followers in the process.
As for her mission to spread positive awareness about age gap relationships, Sinead said that ‘it’s more just to show people that it is a normal thing. If you’re over the age of 16 and you’re with an older guy, that’s absolutely fine.’
“It’s more to show support to the other people [in age gap relationships] that don’t like to post about it,” Sinead said. “I think it’s just about normalizing it – I should be able to post a video of me with my partner without people saying “what’s your age gap?” because people can see it, but it should be a normal thing.”