However, when Baron Burkhardt-Alexis-Constantine Krüdener, a widower sixteen years her senior, sought her hand, she had no such qualms. He was a well-educated (he attending the University of Leipzig), and a well-traveled man, who, like her father, was in favour with Catherine II. However, the baron, a diplomatist of distinction, was cold and reserved, while Barbe-Julie was frivolous, pleasure-loving, and possessed of an insatiable thirst for attention and flattery; and the strained relations due to this incompatibility of temper were made worse by her limitless extravagance, which constantly involved the young baroness and her husband in financial difficulties. At first all went well. This was due to the fact that despite having an older husband for whom she did not possess any passionate feelings, his title and position in society were such that he could provide her whatever she might desire. At the same time she endowed him with an even higher social status because of the social standing of her own family. However, this socially advantageous exchange left, for the baroness, much to be desired. Despite being materially pleased she was romantically unsatisfied. Her "earliest griefs arose from the fact, that, in her youthful inexperience, having chosen with her head, she expected at the same time to satisfy the longings of a singularly romantic heart". First she would pretend that her husband was something that he was not: a lover. This is especially evident in her description of him in her book. "The glowing description of the Count in "Valérie" represents Baron Krüdener more as his wife’s ardent imagination loved to picture him, than as he really was. The truth is, he did not lend himself readily to the role of a hero of romance". These notions, as well as the separation between her real husband and her fictional husband helped lead to marital instability and to the eventual love affairs she had with others.