Brigitte Macron has revealed that her 'head was in a mess' when she started dating the French president when he was 15 and she was 40.
The age difference between French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte has long been a hot topic of conversation for the couple.
The pair married in 2007 when he was 29 and she, 54, but their relationship actually started when the future President was just a teenager.
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The couple met while Brigitte was working as a drama teacher at Catholic private school, Lycée la Providence in Amiens, France.
At the time, she was married to banker André-Louis Auzière and her daughter, Laurence, was Emmanuel's classmate.
It caused a great scandal in the province when it came to light that the then-40-year-old teacher had engaged in a relationship with her 15-year-old pupil.
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Emmanuel's parents immediately pulled him from the school and sent him to a boarding school two-and-a-half hours away in Paris, but it ultimately did not stop their relationship.
In a new interview with Paris Match, Brigitte has spoken about the anxiety she felt over the age difference.
“For me, such a young boy was crippling," she revealed. “Emmanuel had to leave for Paris. I told myself that he would fall in love with someone his [own] age. It didn’t happen.”
She also worried about how the relationship would affect her children, who are the same age as her now-husband, and waited a decade before pulling the trigger and marrying him so she didn't upset her family.
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“I took time so I would not wreck their lives,” Brigitte said. “That lasted 10 years, the time to put them on the rails. You can imagine what they were hearing. But I didn’t want to miss out on my life.”
When the couple eventually married in 2007, Emmanuel thanked his step-children for 'accepting us, a not-quite-normal couple.'
However, social media users were outraged at finding out they'd started dating when he was just 15-years-old.
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One Reddit user wrote: "I'm nearly 40 and I don't know how someone my age could want to date a teenager. They're children."
Another added: "Her daughter was his literal classmate. She should be in jail, not the first lady of a country. What a sick woman."
And, a French Redditer shared what they believed to be the general opinion of their country. "I’m French and let’s be very clear, this is not OK," they said. "It is NOT the French way and many of us think it’s gross and inappropriate."
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