Age differences in relationships

works for me

It'd be nice to meet someone just a little bit older, like say 2 or 3 years, maybe.

You have to use the half plus seven rule.

Take half your age rounding up, add 7 years. The answer you get is the minimum age of the person you should date. Or if the person is older use their half plus 7 rule to figure out if it's appropriate. There are plenty of exceptions I'm sure, but it seems to be a socially acceptable benchmark.

hstencil = zung.

when i was 25 (y'know, like, now) i was dating someone who was 20 and our age difference didn't matter at all.

see, peasy.

But on the other hand that's a personal preference, why does society care about that?

Sir Sean Connery.

If there's grass on the in-field, play ball!

I think it seems vaguely wrong to my parents.

I think you really, really can't generalise. I've got a partner younger than me by a decade and have gone out with two other younger guys for any amount of time that mattered, and two who were older. All are my peers. It's probably easier to say that when you're a woman, however - I've given more than my fair share of shit to a friend who dates women half his age for all the usual reasons, but mainly because I didn't think his partners *were* peers - and I'm sure that the guys would say that older partners are also cool as long as they're peers too.

let's assume 72 year lifespan / 12 = 6 years to the calendar month in this exercise.

ie "may" "december" = 30 and 72
may = 6 x 5 = 30 y/o
december = 6 x 12 = 72 y/o

biggest difference for me has been:
mid-march and may (i was the younger)
mid-march and may (i was the elder)

spring is in the air.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

I find most people much younger than me less interesting. I don't know how much this is that we have less common undrerstanding (whaddaya mean you don't remember punk?) and how much it's that they have had less life experience to complicate and enrich them*. Also, why would a sexy 20 year old want an unattractive middle aged man anyway?

*Having said that, a few of the ILXers I like best are 20 or more years younger than me, so this 'less interesting' thing is far from universal.

Personally, I've done the 11-year gap thing and it was a disaster, primarily because we had absolutely no common experiences.

Although I did have a fling with a 36-year-old when I was 23, and even though there might have been similar fetishization issues on his end, this courtship felt a lot different from the one I had at 18 -- those five years made me a lot more worldly.

If it's six years to a month, mid-march is fifteen, isn't it?

However, when I think about myself, I can’t imagine dating someone much younger coz', well, they’re so fuckin’ young! Am I being biased or are they just dumb kids? (and I'm sure I was never, ever, that bad)

My first serious relationship was with soemone 20 years my elder - and then the next was 23 years my elder (he and I were together for four years, and when the relationship ended it was not due to an age difference problem). The largest age gap, for me, has been 31 years - that was a bit too much for me, just because he had children older than me. But we did work together well.

I never dated or became involved with anyone near my own age until three years ago - before that everyone was at least 10 years older than me. Now I find I am becoming interested in younger women. Go figure.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwWWWWWWWWWWW

Yes, statistics show that a big age difference usually means the relationship will not last long.

She gets very "Oh no I'm getting older" and I'm very "Hooray, I'm still alive"..

Mind you, I was quite poorly when I was 25, so maybe that accounts for part of it.

Bwah hah hah hah hah! OK, in my case, it's Bon Jovi, but still.

But that has nothing to do with his age, either. Ugh. Where's that thread about the nice way to break up with someone, again?

i read that and all i think is 'ooo! challenge!'.

xxx-post:

nah. younger guys tend to have good taste in music if only because theyre open to new things, have more time to obsess and, mostly, less sentimental. now, if you've been fucking the rolling stones for a few decades, i can understand how anything not from the sixties might seem frightening.

The largest age differences I've had have been + and - 7 years; the older woman was when I was 19, the younger one was last year. And both relationships were about the sex more than anything.

At 36 I guess I'm getting to an age when a difference of a decade seems to matter less.

I'm not sure I could date anyone, full stop.

I'm now 42 and my partner is 39. Works well - I'm comfortable with someone who has lived more or less the same amount of life as me. Cuts out a lot of awkwardness when you have the same common ground.

a 5yr old daddy is awfully young

that was a bit creepy, actually.

Suzy, doesn't this mean that if she conceived at 45, he'd have been 10? How is this even possible?

My partner is 12 years younger than me. Never been even the slightest of an issue - except for making of the joeks, when he says cute things like "who are the boomtown rats, never heard of Bob Geldof" (!!! sorry Nick heh)

if say, a 29 yr old dates an 18 yr old, how highly does this rate on a scale of robert kellyness? (and this is not trolling, its a genuine dilemma).

what are the genders of the parties involved, plz

the guy is 29 and the girl is 18. well, she will be 18 in april. this is creepy right?

Play on, players.

It's purely about how you feel, I guess, assuming you're not a sociopath you'll feel a bit weird in certain situations. I'm guessing or hoping the person may be particularly mature for their age or it's a good match. But still you're going to notice the age difference via meeting her friends or discussing where she's at in her life etc...there'll be constant reminders. These may make you feel weird about it more than what anyone says here. I think it probably is too big an age gap and I can only speculate on what these "reminders" would be with such an age gap or how frequent they are.

That said there's no way of anyone here saying it definitely won't work out.

she is mature. its a bit icky/tricky tbh, shes one of my best friends cousins. i never would have said anything to her but she approached me about how she felt and although she is v mature for her age, im sure in time the gap would become pretty apparent.

so she's 17.

xp

well yes. in my defence, i havent done anything and have serious reservations about doing anything for all the reasons above. just feels a bit dirty-old-man.

but hey, if it was good enough for jimmy page....

jokes, bruv.

17 = way young

it's hard to not sound creepy when you start off with the speculative 'if say...', also it might have been better to say she was 17 at the outset, the sudden chopping of her age at the end makes it seem like the next revelation might be, 'well, he was 29 back in 2001'.

*shrug*

the other details are accurate.

29 and 17 are worlds apart, the "mature for his/her age" thing is usually not true after awhile

"Creepy" is a tool for evaluating the behavior of other people. So you don't really have to worry about it WRT your own self.

^^^ wow

xpost - err u sure about that?

that's really horrible advice

Umm dude, I'm sorry, but no way.

the "mature for his/her age" thing is usually not true after awhile

― omar little

^^^ this. People who look intersting usually look so more than they actually are. Which you don't tend to notice until the bloom is off the rose (some time after all yr. friends have decided that maybe you are kinda creepy, after all).

and this is not trolling, its a genuine dilemma

It's not mutually exclusive.

remember: a 17 yr old girl might act mature but she isn't actually mature

I don't really care about the looking creepy thing, but I'm five years younger than you and the idea of actually going out with a 17 year old girl is quite terrifyingly shit sounding.

and, um exxxposts: joke?

relaxorz

It could work out but the fact that you're going into it with reservations doesn't make for a solid foundation. I'd say no.

massive lols to contenderizer though

plus the "mature for their age" thing doesn't work the other way. "oh, he's emotionally stunted, so it's not like he's THAT much older."

man no one should date 17 yr old girls, not even 17 yr old guys

I have a friend who's been dating a girl since she was 17 and he was 24. I was a little o_O at first as she basically moved straight from her parents house into his apartment, but they've been living together two years now.

I think you're gonna get initial o_Os from folks is what I'm saying.

In my anecdotal experience, I've found that "mature for his/her age" is code for "I want to justify wanting to shag him/her until he/she squirts jellybeans".

i only want gfs who are not in danger of being late for dinner because of detention

It may also be worth pointing out that the aforementioned girl is now trying to arrange a way out of the relationship because she's 19 and not the same person she was at 17 etc etc

I mean, "mature for her age" might work if she were a recent college grad, but you are practically 30 and she is in high school. This would be really weird of you. It won't be illegal soon enough, sure, and you're probably welcome to sit around explaining to everyone you know that it's not illegal while they make WTF faces and back slowly away from you and make disgusted noises whenever your name is mentioned for the rest of their lives. But what would the point be? You think you're going to be the weird 30-year-old helping her move in at college and then you'll stay together and have a meaningful relationship and get married? No: at best you'll have a weird brief relationship that weirds out everybody you know, because they will assume the only reasons you could possibly choose to have a weird relationship with an 18-year-old, instead of someone your own age, are (a) overwhelming and therefore creepy desire to have sex with teenage girls, or (b) you are maturity-challenged to the point where 18-year-olds are your natural level (which you are not and everyone knows it).

If she is so awesome that none of this matters to you, then go ahead, but it sounds to me more like a teenage girl is putting a move on you and you are asking us if you can get away with taking that up. The answer is totally "not really," by any standards I'm aware of.

http://www.observer.com/files/imagecache/article-teaser/files/121905_article_allen.jpg

Also, the title of this thread made me think of my third year grad student friend who's dating a high school senior....

― Maria, Friday, December 12, 2008 11:12 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

him: "but i'm still a student, so we've both never been out of the educational world, i don't have THAT much more life experience"

― Maria, Friday, December 12, 2008 11:13 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/jellybean.jpg

I would also submit that any 17-year-old girl who'd be serious about dating a near-30 guy for more than a brief second is unusual, not necessarily in a bad way, but definitely in a way where you shouldn't expect them to be a predictable/rational "mature" dating choice around the 18th-birthday point. I mean, c'mon. C'mon.

this just goes for myself, but i'm 27 and i don't even want to fuck with 21 year olds

nabisco = otm

xp - twice.

shes one of my best friends cousins

mmm what does the best friend think about this

squirting jellybeans is something i know nothing about

fwiw everyone i know who has gone through on something like this, where the legality of the younger person is nebulous at best, has acquired a rep as being semi-creepy as a result

im tempted to file this in 'lets never talk about this again'.

prob for the best

Yes dude I mentioned above is a bartender who spends all his time being dungeon master for his group of D&D friends who are dudes his age or 18 year old girls fwiw xxp

My dad met my mum when she was in her late teens and he was in his early 30s. They'll have been married for 40 years this year. Just sayin', like.

No one said it could never work, but if he's weirded out by the idea of it, odds are dramatically low to the point where it's not worth taking on the attendant baggage.

i cant imagine telling people about this though. id feel embarassed.

Arbitrary or unfair as it may sound, the mechanics of age differences 40 years ago were just not the same as they are today.

High-school girls come and go, but people thinking of you as the 30-year-old who tried to bone a high school chick never really fades away, I don't imagine.

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/jerry_lee_lewis-gal-scandal.jpg

when i was 15-16 i was friends with girls who dated dudes in their early 20s and i didn't think too much about it besides "wow these girls are worldly and experienced", and then a few years later i was like "who the fuck are these guys who are dating 16 year olds?!"

Classic thread already.

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii8/hensleysflyingelephant/MOVIE%20PHOTOS/123046__dazed_l.jpg

as a dude who has generally dated outside of his age group, i think the whole 17 thing here makes it a massive no go.

I have to say that as much as I agree that this is kinda weird, I'm unsure of Nabisco's methodology here. Should he not do anything that his peers would generally deem as "weird"?

I mean shouldn't there be some kind of internal morality at work?

Nabisco generally OTM, but I think we often go waaaay overboard in judging the generalized correctness-level of such relationships. I mean, it's great that we're so aware of the psychological and political implications of things nowadays, but people and their situations are, more than anything else, personal and specific. So, in general, it's certainly creepy for thirty-year-olds to lust after high-school students. But in this particular case, for these specific people, I'm willing to extend some smidgen of the benefit of doubt. After all, I don't know either of the parties involved, and I'm loathe to judge what I don't really know.

"mmm what does the best friend think about this"

cant say id wanna broach the subject right now.

LG: Part of my point might be that his "relationship" with a high-school girl, or the chances of it, is unlikely to possibly be worth the social fallout.

yep I lean towards agreeing with contenderizer, I think yes this probably is a bad idea but there must be exceptions also. If you really really care for this person and had liked them before you knew they liked you then maybe consider it. It doesn't sound like that was the case tho.

x-post to nabisco, fair enough.

Thread makes me think how weird and uptight American society has gotten over the last 40 years (not that it hasn't always been weird and uptight). Re: what nabisco was saying a few posts back, the only mechanical difference between this type of relationship 40 years ago and now is the level of puritan revulsion it would likely be met with.

nabisco unsurprisingly OTM back there. My mum had been out of school for five years at that point - when I was 17 I briefly dated a guy in his early 20s and my mum went bonkers at me, despite me going "yeah, four years is NOTHING, look at you two", she did point out the worldly wise experience she'd had at that point, whereas I was just-out-of-school kid.

When I was in my final year at school (17), all the guys in my year were dating third years. That's 12 year olds. Now THAT was crepey.

I do think it depends on more than just "she is 17" though. Generalisations be unhelpful.

if it is probably a bad idea and will probably not look good and probably not end well, then he should probably say thanks but no thanks and meet a nice 26 yr old chick

"mmm what does the best friend think about this"

cant say id wanna broach the subject right now.

You can broach the subject without using the word "fingerbang", you know. Maybe you could get from the friend a better sense of where the infatuation is coming from and whether it's something you want to try to build a relationship off of.

At any rate, she's most likely not marrying the next guy she dates, so just wait for her to turn 18, then ask her out if you're still interested.

uh

"wait til april" doesnt really solve any of the problems with dating this chick

the only mechanical difference between this type of relationship 40 years ago and now is the level of puritan revulsion it would likely be met with.

This is absolutely not true -- there are a billion mechanical differences, the most important of them involving gender roles, women's education and career paths, the ages at which people married and reproduced, economics etc. It's not in the least just about Puritan revulsion, it's that both the mechanics of a "relationship" and the cultural/economic setting it took place in were really, really different not long ago. Lucky for us now.

Couple years ago, when I was 26, I met a girl I assumed was in her early 20s and e-mailed her to see if she wanted to go out. In the meantime, I discovered that she was actually 19, and while I probably still would've gone on a date with her if she was interested, I found myself constantly referring to her as "the 19-year-old," which probably would not have boded well in any kind of long-term scenario. As it turns out, she ended up brushing me off, which was just as well, especially since I'd suggested that we meet at a bar.

http://www.dorisday.net/assets/images/april-in-paris-1.jpg

please tell me her name is paris

yeah i think people being iffy with a 29 yr old dating a 17 yr old goes beyond how uptight america is

there's no fool like an old april fool.

My point, really, is that if you are interested enough in her to seriously ask her out, at least wait until she's 18. Given the ambivalence you're showing on this thread, though, don't be surprised if it doesn't work out.

when i was 15-16 i was friends with girls who dated dudes in their early 20s and i didn't think too much about it besides "wow these girls are worldly and experienced", and then a few years later i was like "who the fuck are these guys who are dating 16 year olds?!"

When I was just turned 15 I dated a 20 yr old and at the time I thought that was okay BECAUSE I WAS AN IDIOT 15 YEAR OLD WANNA BE REBEL BADASS but in reality I had like just put my Barbies away (and taken up smoking to further my rebel image). So now if I found him I would probably punch him in the face. So if you date this woman, she will probably find you and punch you in the face in 20 years, and that's going to go hard on you because you'll be so old.

just to clarify one thing tinchy, are you a catholic priest???

jenny is otm, every girl i know who reminisces about dating a much older dude when they were in high school always amends it by saying they think it was weird and wrong in retrospect and they now question the dude's motives.

I'd really like you to unpack that a little, nabs, 'cuz while I understand many of the reasons that we've placed a social barrier between very young adults and older people WR2 dating ("gender roles, women's education and career paths, the ages at which people married and reproduced, economics etc."), the incredibly strong force of the taboo we've attached to the barrier doesn't seem commensurate with the situation.

The revulsion that people now commonly voice to very-young-girl / middle-aged-guy relationships has more in common with the revulsion we feel towards pedophilia. It's profoundly strong, and often vents itself with a great deal of hostility. I suspect that there's a great deal more to it than a rational response to changing women's roles.

There's also a rejection of arranged marriage in that revulsion.

they now question the dude's motives.

I don't question his motives. :|

every girl i know who reminisces about dating a much older dude when they were in high school always amends it by saying they think it was weird and wrong in retrospect and they now question the dude's motives.

― omar little

I dunno. This is true for some but not all the girls I've known who've done something similar (a suprisingly large proportion of the girls I've known, FWIW).

x-post surely it should be less repulsive now due to changing education and women's roles? I mean isn't maturity reached at an earlier age?

I don't question his motives. :|

― atty at LOL (Jenny)

:/

surely it should be less repulsive now due to changing education and women's roles? I mean isn't maturity reached at an earlier age?

Well, you have this contradiction where we expose our youth to more things than ever before, making them more worldly and more mature, then freak out over all of the stuff we've exposed them to and infantilize/remove developmental power/authority from them, so you end up with super-coddled, jaded, spoiled nightmares who are convinced they know everything about everything. (This is not a new thing; I think western civilization has been heading down this road for most of the 20th century, if not sooner.)

obv titchy before u tap that just tell her "no one can ever know abt our love they wouldnt understand" then say some stuff abt society and eventually shell go off to college and u can sit around in yr cardigan and listen to old 78s or whatever it is yr into

xpost

We shouldn't even be talking about America's uptightness: go to any small town in this country and there are enough 30-something layabouts knocking up high-school chicks to keep Judge Judy in business for years and years.

See here's the thing. Even if you can imagine having a perfectly workable one-to-one relationship with this person -- which is totally imaginable -- she is surely not old/independent enough to have some kind of mature one-to-one relationship with you. So you'd think the question would be answered by thinking about what an 18-year-old would be doing with her time, and how much you can really hope to be a part of that. Are you going to be the 30-year-old dude at college-kid parties? Are you going to hang out with her friends? Is she going to hang out with yours? If so, aren't you going to be this weird part of her life that's completely separate from her actual life as an 18-year-old? Most 18-year-olds have trouble even integrating relationships with people their own age into their everyday doings, leave alone reconciling being-18 with dating some 30-year-old. There are a bunch of complications here that make a workable relationship kinda weird, which leaves nothing much beyond being this odd experience where a teenage girl once dated a 30-year-old, and later in life will sigh and go "ugh" before she tells this story, so ... yeah, dunno why I'm saying all this, he's not going to do it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7811686.stm

theres a whole bunch of fairly insulting assumptions about "18 year olds" in what you just posted dude. xpost

Most 18-year-olds have trouble even integrating relationships with people their own age into their everyday doings, leave alone reconciling being-18 with dating some 30-year-old.

Actually, I don't buy the beginning portion of this statement at all. Not everyone is the introverted attracted-to-messageboards-pre-2004 type.

im loling @ the idea of going out to eat w/a 17 y/o

:|

(lol John, I am still remembering when your 19-year-old gf tricked my parents into buying her wine)

i went out a couple times with a 21 yr old when i was 30 and the dinners were :|

and 21 is such a world of difference from 17

PRO TIP: if you date someone below the drinking age while you are above the drinking age, you can always escape from any fight by going to the bar

"hey sicko your girlfriend keeps trying to get into the bar to talk to you but we can't let her in because she's 17"

Contenderizer, it's not really about pedophilia, and people are not mature earlier, really. Go back enough decades and women were kinda considered "done" at a pretty early age, like now all they needed to do was find someone to marry them so they could get down to being a wife and mother. Now, thankfully, we're more likely to look at a 17-year-old girl as someone who is -- ideally -- about to go to college, graduate, work, have some kind of career, date, etc., and THEN maybe start a family. This is basically a good thing, that we expect or hope for women to have some independent experience of the world.

We also have a less practical and more romantic view of love where we expect people in the same age group to get together, more so than the much-older model where we expect men to go off and make some sort of place for themselves in the world, then come back with some money and shop around for good-looking charming teenagers to more or less "hire" as their wives. Again, this is basically a good thing, though it probably presents a few annoyances for women at times.

XPOST -

Dudes, there is nothing "insulting" about saying that an 18-year-old is probably going to have a weirder time integrating a 30-year-old boyfriend into her life than a 30-year-old might have integrating an 18-year-old girlfriend into his. There is nothing "introverted message-board" about that, either. Most 18-year-olds do not have any experience with adult-style dating, they have experience with dating schoolmates and such. These are different things. It is not insulting kids or calling them weird to point out that they just haven't done a lot of this stuff yet. And it's not insulting anyone on this board to guess that any of us, if we looked back on our dating skills at age 18, would say we probably had some stuff to figure out -- stuff we presumably sorted out a lot of later in life!

But people start dating at 13/14 and that's considered normal, no matter how silly these relationships may be.

I mean, imagine yourself at 18, and imagine yourself having a 30-year-old significant other who was used to adult dating. Do you really think you'd be slick enough to handle this in a way that wasn't pretty weird a lot of the time? Wouldn't it probably turn into you spending a lot of time with people your own age (like, I dunno, at school or something) and then having this older person you went off to see a few nights at week, someone who wasn't really integrated into your daily 18-year-old social world?

LG, if you bring high-school dating behavior to a relationship with a 30-year-old, it is going to be kinda weird. I can't figure out why this is even a controversial standpoint.

i think that 18 year olds are a lot more savvy than people reflecting on themselves at age 18 recall being.

I am totally roffling at the fact that nabisco is asking this of John, aka King Of Dating Way Younger Women, and that his relationships were all pretty much centered around both of them sliding pretty well into each other's worlds.

i mean there is kind of a patronizing vibe to this whole idea that yer average 18 year old is a child getting ready to blossom into a real live human being.

xpost yeah part of this may have to do with differing social situations. in the big dumb rocka rolla social caste, age differences dont really mean shit outside of legality.

It won't be illegal soon enough, sure

It really shouldn't be illegal now (and in fact isn't if dude is in the UK). The idea that 17 year olds can't legally have sex is fucking crazy.

The girl in question may well be mature enough to have a good relationship with, probably won't want to punch you in the face later (seeing as she's making moves on you), but a) it is extremely unlikely to be a long-term thing, b) if you actually want to go hang out at bars or gigs or whatever, in today's climate of checking ID unless you look over 25 this would be pretty tough to do, and c) yeah, your friends probably will be a bit o_0.

Quite honestly, the biggest differences between myself at 18 and myself at 35 are:

1) I now own stuff.
2) Better impulse control.

Everything else is pretty similar, if more mainstreamed due to 2). Furthermore, this is true of the vast majority of my high school friends.

Having said that, there are definitely high school acquaintances who have changed somewhat more drastically since then, but a lot of the dating patterns still remain the same. (Looking at my wife's high school friends and acquaintances, I can safely say they all seem to have remained exactly the same as they were back then with regards to fucking up relationships royally, only now there are custody battles.)

No I'm not disagreeing that the relationship would be v difficult Nabisco.

The relationship most probably wouldn't work out, but it's the people seeing it as weird thing that I suppose I'm questioning. Not that I doubt this, but I am sort of playing devils advocate with your reasoning. And just asking why do we see this as weird as I don't necessarily agree with your ideas on that.

Don't we kind of assume the older man is a failure or something? That he can't get someone his own age? Or that he's leading a younger girl on somehow? Is it taken as a given that an older guy can manipulate a younger girl due to more life experience or maturity?

If there are exceptions where this sort of age gap would work out then what factors would make that the case?

Yeah, I concur. I do think drinking/shows/clubs are a bigger deal now, though - I could get into shows in my early teens, but there's pretty much no way that would happen now they've tightened up the checking.

xpost to Dan

the idea that 'revulsion' to this is the same kind of revulsion to pedophilia is v v specious

this whole idea that yer average 18 year old is a child getting ready to blossom into a real live human being

Didn't say this at fucking ALL, dude -- all I've said is that there turn out to be things people learn between 18 and 30, and things about their behavior that change, especially with regard to romantic relationships and how they're integrated into life in general. That's not a child blossoming into a human being, that's a person learning and maturing and changing habits over the course of more than a decade.

xpost -

We might need a setting to talk about this in, because I can think of places I've lived where this would be way less weird than others.

i think that 18 year olds are a lot more savvy than people reflecting on themselves at age 18 recall being.

Haha this reads like a recipe for what a lot of us are reporting, though: like 50% of women I know saying "yeah, when I was that age I dated this much older guy, and ... um, ugh, not sure what I was going through right then." I suppose there's nothing too wrong with being kind of a learning experience for someone, but that seems like a kind I'd have trouble enjoying.

I totally understand and agree with everything you've said, nabisco. You've explained very well why this relationship, if it happened, would almost certainly be awkward and short-lived.

But you haven't said anything about why contemporary society should be so strongly revolted and !outraged! by the very idea of such relationships. A middle-aged guy briefly, awkwardly dating a woman in her late teens or early 20s isn't (most likely) robbing her of the ability to go to school, pursue a career, or settle down and reproduce later on. No more so than some moron her own age, anyway...

What weirds me out isn't that we find such relationships weird or questionable (cuz they are), it's that we often seem to find them borderline criminal.

second par otm...exactly what I'm wondering.

it prob has something to do w/the fact that a lot of older guys who date 17 y/os are borderline criminals

xpost to nabisco

Okay, can I just say "yeah, when I was that age I dated this much older guy, and... um, it was really quite normal"? I'm not sure where you're pulling out this 50% figure at all, and to be honest I don't believe it.

http://images.google.com/url?source=imgres&ct=img&q=http://urbanarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/bob2.jpg&usg=AFQjCNEumoCUpILKE1OOnOgH0m7FroYjIQ

x-post

over the 20th century, thanks to feminism, we've come to believe as a culture that sexual relationships should be based on equal choice and mutual consent (this is an amazing development in human life btw) and should be separated as much as possible from other, differing and differentiating relationships in power.

the whole POINT of life of eons was for men to have more power than women to decide these things, but now, not so much. but age (as a measure of progress-thru-life) remains as something that carries with it increasing levels of power and status, so with enough difference in age there are status differences more or less built in. that's the problem, to us moderns, not 'pedophilia.'

... and we all remain human animals so 17 and 30 year olds continue to be hot to one another and all of us thinks he/she is special and different so round we go

all I've said is that there turn out to be things people learn between 18 and 30, and things about their behavior that change, especially with regard to romantic relationships and how they're integrated into life in general.

yeah, but this is true between 20 and 25, 25 and 30, 30 and 40 and so on and so on. the sticking point still seems to be the difference between what an 18 year old knows and what "older" people know. if i was to say that a 40 year old was dating a 28 year old, no one would be disturbed in the same way.

bagazillion xposts

the idea that 'revulsion' to this is the same kind of revulsion to pedophilia is v v specious

― goole

I often hear such relationships directly compared w/ pedophilia. There's a certain amount of "motive questioning" even in this thread.

x-post to goole, good points, though I would have said that age is less a determining factor when it comes to status/power now than in the past...

I think personally I find societal ideas of "weirdness" to be worthy of suspicion at all times.

And I don't hear the same revulsion to relationships where some other form of power imbalance exists. Rich man poor woman, older woman younger man, etc. No, the widespread social distaste for the role played by older men in relationships with young women is a special and unique thing.

goole is pretty much OTM re: society's suspicious view of many of these relationships, but I'd like to put out there the idea that this idea is mostly perpetrated by post-secondary-educated society for rather obvious, biased reasons ("I didn't want a relationship to keep me from getting my bachelor's/master's/doctorate").

LG 100% OTM about the dubiousness of "weird". It basically signposts "that which we ostracize."

if i was to say that a 40 year old was dating a 28 year old, no one would be disturbed in the same way.

ha i probably would be. 'crisis much, holmes?'

older woman younger man,

yeah total truth bomb, I know it's generally totally lame to say "oh but what if this was a woman" but I have to say the reactions would be v v different on this thread.

Contenderizer: I don't know that contemporary society is revolted and outraged by this, except in the cases where it's actually revolting and outrageous. I don't even personally find it weird once people are, say, past the drinking age and out of any college they do, because lots of people's lives have similar shapes after that -- then it's only weird if people are doing it for weird reasons. I think the distaste you're picking up on is a stereotype that older guys who do this are either stunted or intensely superficial, and that they're kinda "preying" on younger women they can hoodwink in lieu of having equal relationships with women their own age: this is unfair as a blanket stereotype, sure, but it's one of those things that seems true enough of the time that it'll go on casting suspicions on dudes who, perhaps, have genuinely found a connection with someone who just happens to be younger.

(P.S.: I don't even think the dynamic of older/younger is any weirder or more unhealthy than any of the other dynamics that play into people's ineffable relationships, dynamics about who's the smart one or the fun one or the dominant one.)

xpost - E.mily, I don't doubt that plenty of people have a fine time of it. I'm not sure where anyone gets the idea that I'm arguing that it's inherently awful. Right now I feel like I'm just the sole person here bothering to point out that there are indeed things that are a little weird and tricky about being 30 and dating a high-school girl. Which makes me feel like the world has blown up around me.

xpost - Similarly, I'm now going to have to argue with you something that seems fairly obvious to me -- that a lot of life-changing and world-developing stuff goes on around the age of 18, having to do with mechanical stuff like basic independent living and, umm, not being in high school anymore, that makes this maybe a trickier time for a 30-year-old to date you than for a 40-year-old to date a 28-year-old. Again, I'm not saying it's a freaking crime, I'm saying this strikes me as a more significant life-experience gap. Whatever.

"is it ok for 18 yr old me to date this 20 yr old woman?"

"is she hot?"

BUH, 29 yr old woman obv

Calm down, nabisco; you don't have to yell!

I don't know that contemporary society is revolted and outraged by this, except in the cases where it's actually revolting and outrageous

but you opened your posting here by pointing out how weird this guy's friends would find this. you based a huge portion of your posts on this, it seemed to me.

feel like I'm just the sole person here bothering to point out that there are indeed things that are a little weird and tricky about being 30 and dating a high-school girl. Which makes me feel like the world has blown up around me.

Nabisco for about the 50th time nobody is arguing that the relationship might be tricky due to different habits/friends/lives etc. But people are arguing about why society sees this as weird, or whether this is right.

Hell nobody's even arguing that society sees this as weird but you seem to say they do and they don't in that very post.

Or rather that it does and it doesn't.

"revolted and outraged" does not equal "finding it weird"

it need not be wierd or tricky if the expectation is not there to begin with that a man and woman in a relationship be in the same 'world' -- there's all kind of social and class and historical bs going on to determine whether that's the case.

So why do they find it weird? I'm not arguing here to dismiss Nabisco, I just want to talk about the answer to that question.

At 18 I was still about 6 years away from becoming a rational human being with any sense of purpose, so I am the other end of the spectrum w/r/t "18 yr olds are people who can have sex too!"

i think u know weve reached the stage where we def need pix

Not that this should be the standard, but Susan Sontag married a U of Chicago professor when she was 19 and turned out OK.

and to know if he is a catholic priest. x-post

HOLD UP, NATE DOGG

Correction: At 17, while at Chicago, Sontag married Philip Rieff after a ten-day courtship. They were married for eight years before divorcing in 1958. The couple had a son, David Rieff, who later became his mother's editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He also became a writer.

ugh, no

when i was 17/18 i dated a 34 year old, he always said i was "very mature for my age" etc (actually was probably more mature seeming in the more simplistic definition of mature aka quiet, dressed school-marmy, never drank alcohol, read serious novels and never cracked a smile). yeah so that was a disaster. it always baffles me that he was willing to put up with me sneaking around my parents and crap (i pulled the "i'm sleeping over at so-and-so's house shit). what the fuck kind of 34 year old thinks that's okay? yeah, he's a freak and a hobo now.

yeah see that's kind of fucked up

xp, i promise

LG my earlier advice was pretty clearly hyperbolic/jokey, and it was also advice about a specific situation, and yeah, I do think it was worthwhile for him to take into account that he'd have to explain to people that he was dating someone in high school. I wasn't concerning myself with whether it was moral that people would find that weird, only that they would, and that was probably something he should weigh when thinking about it.

I also don't think it's strange that people would find it weird for a 30-year-old to date a high-school girl. Partly for all the "tricky" reasons we evidently agree about. Partly because it would be, in the aggregate, unusual for such people to be in life-stages and have goals that were compatible for a realistic long-term relationship (and if something stable isn't realistic then it just looks like you're just going around banging high-school chicks). Partly for a lot of reasons. So when someone does this, you do kind of expect them to have an explanation for why this is a special and unusual case. Dude was very much aware of this when he asked the question.

NOTE: Like I said above, standards about this differ completely based on things like the population of the area -- I have lived in places small enough that this would be a lot more "who cares" because there are only 30 eligible people around the bar anyway

i remember once someone thought he was my dad

also went to a broncos game and ran into some of his coworkers, they gave serious o_O looks.

Yah I was gonna jump in on the Sontag there woooooow xps you people jesus

looks like Rieff was only 11 yrs older than Sontag ('only')

we've had other threads about teacher + student pairing that turned out about as awesome as this one iirc

Just to throw in my two cents, there is obviously cultural + evolutionary baggage here that isn't necessarily being interrogated as well as it could be. I had a friend whose Sephardic grandparents had gotten married in Morocco at 18 + 13. But they also had a community (and family) to support that, and a culture that considered that the norm, and they were getting married. Which isn't to say 18 year olds should go out and date 13 year olds, but that the argument that "society finds it weird" isn't a bad argument. It's a necessary one. It seems to me like contemporary American society has this tension between wanting to date/have sex with young post-pubescent women (which, as far as I've read/studied is a normal evolutionary impulse to want to spread your seed to younger/healthier women) and what we've developed psychologically (that it's psychologically healthier to be with someone your own age) and culturally (that men preying on younger women are lechers/pedophiles/robbing the cradle, whatever). And that cultural trends develop for good reasons - not just ex nihilo. And if society would find it weird for you to date someone a decade your junior, maybe that's for a good reason (and not just because of bizarre, inappropriate stigma). Or maybe not. But I think those reasons need to be interrogated and not just dismissed out of hand.

nabisco and ice cram consistently otm on this thread.

also while i'm sure the thread reactions would be different, i would think it was pretty weird if an 18 yr old dude was dating a 29 yr old woman.

i have the feeling that prof/student hookup stuff was a kind of weird remnant of classical academe that persisted long after it became frowned upon in the rest of middle-class life -- the shit still happens even tho schools are now explicitly against it.

I think the distaste you're picking up on is a stereotype that older guys who do this are either stunted or intensely superficial, and that they're kinda "preying" on younger women they can hoodwink in lieu of having equal relationships with women their own age.

- nabisco

I think a number of factors play into this. For one thing, we simply distrust male sexuality. We often seem to view it as something inherently suspect, potentially dangerous. Predatory, shameful, "gross", etc. At the same time, we're uncomfortable with the degree to which we sexualize and are sexually attracted to the quality of youth. Sexual attractiveness appears in us when we are rather young, and fades long before many of us die. This seems terribly unfair, especially given that women seem, in many ways, more able to see the attractiveness in older men than vice-versa. And it also seems troubling, given the very strong taboo attached to "underage" sexuality. These latter two factors play into the idea that male sexuality is somehow flawed or degenerate, unevolved. So relationships between older men and younger women trigger our revulsion in a number of ways, calling up the spectres of the predatory male and the pedophile, and also reminding us of the politically difficult aspects of sexual attraction.

That's why, I think, such relationships trouble us. And the revulsion, being taboo-based, is, I think, comparable to what we feel in response to pedophilia. It's not the same, and not as strong, but there is a connection there.

...or, Mordy OTM

old enough to pee old enough for me

this tension between wanting to date/have sex with young post-pubescent women (which, as far as I've read/studied is a normal evolutionary impulse to want to spread your seed to younger/healthier women)

I question this link in the first place, I think the sexualization of youth EVERYWHERE WE LOOK is an enormous factor here and that part of the o_O ness among your friends when they meet your 18-yr old gf is that everyone is supposed to KNOW THAT already. Glorifying youth as a THING leads to Jon Benet Ramsey, logically speaking, and that's totally and justifiably o_O.

XP! XP! XP!

loool

17-18 year old girls date older men because 17-18 year old guys are complete idiots with no clue.

I think though Nabisco, what I'm trying to draw a distinction between is people saying this is wrong for practical reasons versus for nebulous moral ones, eg "it's just weird". I don't think it's outrageous to say that people might judge the man in this situation or suggest he is a loser of some kind.

it would be, in the aggregate, unusual for such people to be in life-stages and have goals that were compatible for a realistic long-term relationship (and if something stable isn't realistic then it just looks like you're just going around banging high-school chicks)

That feels a much better union of practicalities and moral judgement. I know you were being sort of jokey, I just chose to wonder whether it was right that people would react weirdly, regardless of whether you put forward a view of your own on that.

so many x-posts

On the other hand it can be v hard to say if any relationship is going to be a long-term relationship at the beginning. Someone might want to try and see how it goes after a month or two. Similarly if someone is having trouble meeting people they click with then maybe they might feel an unconventional setup like this is worth a shot. Who knows, maybe they're immature??

I think I generally, as I said, am suspicious of things society judges as weird, esp if it's put forward in this "we can all agree this is weird" way. Isn't that kind of dangerous? Maybe it's just the use of the word weird.

I can't deny I would find this weird if I heard about it, and question it, but like everyone else I have plenty of prejudices.

I also think nobody has confronted the idea raised about how people would react if it was an older woman and a younger man?

It's not pedophilia, and it shouldn't be compared to it, but the constantly promoted allure of "youth" above all else just doesn't have any defensible direction to go -- and I think there's an expectation that people we know will be aware of that and proof against it?

just because pinker or whoever says that it's normal to want to bone 12 yr olds doesn't mean it's true

true. also 17-18 year old girls date older men because 17-18 year old girls are complete idiots with no clue.

xp

But isn't it not just quantitatively, but qualitatively different (not the exact dichotomy, but I think it's clear what I mean) to lust for an 18 year old, or 17 year old and lusting for a 10 year old? I agree that we've sexualized youth culturally, but young brides are prized throughout cultures and historically.

oh hey i bet this will turn out to be the longest thread i ever started

Which is why, presumably, we have consent laws in Western countries.

Well isn't the biggest diff a 10 year old is unlikely to want to sleep with an adult, x-post.

(this is a v good discussion)

xxxx-post yeah otm

1. Cont., that's fine and all, but I don't think attitudes about guys being horny superficial opportunists who are just sex with anyone they can trick into bed are particularly close to our attitudes about pedophilia. (For instance, there are no jokes about pedophilia in sitcoms anymore.) I also follow you about distrust of male sexuality, but I am not ready to join the ranks of this argument, because even if it weren't a loser of an argument to bring out too often, I think people's suspicion of male sexuality is -- sadly enough -- too often justified by the actual behavior of male sexuality. So, like, even when that feels true, it's kind of a "too soon" argument.

2. Sontag's diaries just came out, and apparently the early years say nothing about her husband and just go on about how marriage is a prison-like institution that is slowly killing her, after which she divorced the fella and started dating women, so really who knows how he felt about that dating decision. In any case, different context.

3. An 18-year-old dude were dating a 29-year-old woman = if it were just for sex we would probably make jokes and not care, it's true -- this is an understandable double-standard for the time being -- but if some normal 18-year-old dude asked us about a near-30 woman who really wanted to date him, I think we'd all actually be QUICKER about saying "something is wrong here and this woman is probably nuts as hell."

Is it the age, or the age GAP in question here?

Bearing in mine my last 2 parters have been 12 and 13 years younger than me and both have been very functional, mature fulfilling relationships.

Mordy: Yes, for being a) resilient enough to withstand the maximum number of childbirths while also getting up early to feed the livestock, and/or b) for being young and inexperienced enough to be malleable. Neither of which is very desirable?

Admittedly, the trade-off for girls was that an older man might have a settled trade/more $$ and be a better provided or protector, but nabisco's whole point is that if we're doing it right, those should all be moot points now.

Isn't there an entire initiation culture among certain social classes where the young men in the family are taught about sex from an older woman? (I remember reading about this in the Robertson Davis' Depford trilogy, I think the second book)

Well, here's a question: do you-all regard non-sexual intimacy of this sort, exemplified on film by Lost in Translation and Ghost World, as equally suspect? Is it intimacy altogether that is suspect, or just the physical/sexual aspect?

I also think nobody has confronted the idea raised about how people would react if it was an older woman and a younger man?

― Local Garda

people would react the same way other than some jokey "yeah bro tap that" kinda posts, but otherwise it's still, yes, "weird"

Oh, and LG, yes -- thank you for identifying "weird" as a kind of nexus between practical issues and "moral" considerations that spring from them. "Weird" = "when I think through the practicalities of this, they all suggest to me a high probability that there is something unpleasant about you or your motives." Which is different from flat moral judgment -- it's more like a conditional question, a "please explain to me why I shouldn't be suspicious."

I find both movies supremely annoying, so it's hard to say.

I think the sexualization of youth EVERYWHERE WE LOOK is an enormous factor here and that part of the o_O ness among your friends when they meet your 18-yr old gf is that everyone is supposed to KNOW THAT already. Glorifying youth as a THING leads to Jon Benet Ramsey, logically speaking, and that's totally and justifiably o_O.

― Laurel

But, see, that's weird because while we seem to glorify and sexualize youth, we're actually hugely puritan about it, to the point where we more-or-less criminalize youthful sexuality (in the guise of criminalizing the sexual exploitation of youth). For most of human history, in just about every society that has ever existed, the idea of an 18-year-old age of consent would have seemed ludicrous. So, on the one hand you have Britney and the Bratz, but on the other hand you have the fact that we now consider it "weird" for older guys to marry 12-year-olds girls. Which makes it very hard to say what's the cart and what's the horse WR2 truly 0_o stuff like Jon Benet.

Are men ever actually friends, like good, intimate friends, with a woman who is not unattractive to them without wanting to bone her? I kind of don't believe that they are. Maybe they never do it, but the POSSIBILITY is always part of the value of the relationship.

^^ this thread is vexed enough without even touching that one

re point 3: I don't think we should exaggerate beyond the fact that the original poster was 27 to be fair. also nabisco you've flipped this the wrong way. what happened here was the OLDER person asked was it okay, not the younger. so we'd be judging a 27 year old woman who said she wanted to date an 18 year old guy.

would we then be saying she's nuts as hell? I seriously doubt the replies would take the same tone. I'm sure there are reasons why males are judged more harshly like this but it's worth acknowledging.

people would react the same way other than some jokey "yeah bro tap that" kinda posts, but otherwise it's still, yes, "weird"

perhaps...I think people would be far less quick to respond at all, if we're using this thread as an acid test.

people would react the same way other than some jokey "yeah bro tap that" kinda posts, but otherwise it's still, yes, "weird"

― omar little

Yeah, but if the sexes were reversed, I suspect there would be a lot more, "are you crazy?!?" and a lot less, "are you some kind pervert? I.e., still weird, but not dangerous, threatening, borderline criminal.

(My horse in this race comes from befriending a writer when she was 19 and I was 33, never being romantically involved with her but building a close friendship that felt a little unusual given the age gap. I thought her work was outstanding then, and now that she at 24 is winning prizes and getting published everywhere, and I'm not befriending new young folks each year, I feel vindicated about taking a chance building that close friendship at the time, even if it seemed a little wrong back then. Also am glad that we haven't been involved.)

Are men ever actually friends with a woman without wanting to bone her?

lol sry eazy that wasn't a response to you

xpost to Contenderizer - That is because, so far as we know, there are somewhat fewer actual real-world instances of adult women doing creepy abusive shit to teenage boys than adult men doing creepy abuse shit to teenage girls. Don't get so abstract that you pass this over, Contenderizer. It might not fit nicely into abstract systematic rules, but this tends to be the case, and we quite reasonably tend to have different standards because of it.

I think people's suspicion of male sexuality is -- sadly enough -- too often justified by the actual behavior of male sexuality. So, like, even when that feels true, it's kind of a "too soon" argument.

Fair enough, and wise besides. But I like to consider all the angles.

don't we all

In my personal life, I'm generally very careful about being close friends with any woman that isn't my wife. In fact, when we meet new women, I'm generally much more interested in how well she gets along with Char, and not how well she gets along with me. At the moment, the women I'm probably closest too are significant others of best friends (and then they are more distanced, obv, than the best friend themselves). This isn't always considered, but generally works out that way. (Side point to side point: When we meet someone and she's all about hanging out with the guys when we talk about football, and ignoring the significant others when they cluster together on the other side of the room - I'm really peeved. I have no use for close female friends, and no interest.)

(That probably belongs on the thread HOOS just linked.)

Yeah Nabisco that was the answer I was kind of prompting, that male sexuality is treated with more suspicion because men commit more sex offences.

I just feel there's something wrong about that though. It almost seems like abuse by nature involves a male in a position of power. I mean, how much of this is due to society conditioning teen males to believe that sex with an older woman is a triumph? Or perhaps it just can't be a power thing cos the young male still has the power in such a relationship.

XP Obviously there's a lot of uninterrogated gender assumptions in my post there that I apologize for upfront. Probably a consequence of my orthodox upbringing. But I don't think those assumptions are unhelpful ones to have.

That is because, so far as we know, there are somewhat fewer actual real-world instances of adult women doing creepy abusive shit to teenage boys than adult men doing creepy abuse shit to teenage girls.

― nabisco

Exactly, exactly, exactly! Our perfectly reasonable distrust of male sexuality (exploitative, predatory, perhaps pedophilic or even violent) causes us to view old-man/young-woman relationships through a particular social lens, with intimations of creepiness and even criminality. That's 90% of what I've been saying, that this isn't just about changing sexual roles and power imbalances.

Maybe I haven't been playing enough emphasis on the "perfectly reasonable" part...

"placing"

(To soon to mention Teenpop thread, btw?)

LG, I'm not talking about sex offenses. More just about motives and conduct. It's not exactly "fair," but I don't think it's unusual or irrational for people to be somewhat more guarded about certain things, and not just due to actual criminal behavior among men. I mean, look, for instance: we sometimes teach teenage girls to be really wary of boys and especially men, sexually, right? And we don't teach teenage boys the same -- we try and teach them not to do horrible things to girls and women. This isn't just because we're paternalistic about young girls and not young boys (though there is that, it's true) -- it's a response to the kinds of problems that actually occur in the world.

I mean, I always want to make parts of the argument you're making here, because that blanket distrust of male sexuality can be unfair in small, mild ways to the bulk of men who aren't problematic. But as soon as you start to make the argument, true as it might be, it's just ... you know there are other dudes out there right that second, ruining your argument for you.

xpost - Contenderizer I just plain think you're wrong that we view relationships that way, by and large! We don't view plain age differences as having to do with creepiness or criminality. Nobody thinks of Hugh Hefner as a pedophile. We tend to think of those relationships as involving lame guys who are going through mid-life crises or are really superficial or can't have equal relationships with women their own age. We don't consider them criminal, we consider them tacky and lame. I think this is the problem with what you're saying. The only reason "creepiness" has even come into this discussion is that the girl is in high school, which puts a different spin on it.

I mean, look, for instance: we sometimes teach teenage girls to be really wary of boys and especially men, sexually, right? And we don't teach teenage boys the same -- we try and teach them not to do horrible things to girls and women. This isn't just because we're paternalistic about young girls and not young boys (though there is that, it's true) -- it's a response to the kinds of problems that actually occur in the world.

I agree, though don't you think that even the very language you use there seems to suggest we teach boys that sex is something they inflict on people and we teach girls that sex is something that is inflicted on them. That in itself seems pretty flawed.

The only reason "creepiness" has even come into this discussion is that the girl is in high school, which puts a different spin on it.

― nabisco

I accept your argument here, nabs, but respectfully disagree. I think we really do tend to "creepify" relationships between older men and younger women (i.e., we treat them as creepy). This creepification does diminish as the age of the woman involved increases, so sure, it's more about her youthfulness than the relative gap. That said, I'm not sure we can do much more than politely disagree. *shrug*

We don't view plain age differences as having to do with creepiness or criminality. Nobody thinks of Hugh Hefner as a pedophile. We tend to think of those relationships as involving lame guys who are going through mid-life crises or are really superficial or can't have equal relationships with women their own age. We don't consider them criminal, we consider them tacky and lame.

some of us think of them as being people dating other people and who gives a fuck. i do think that a lot of people are airing out some biases that they might not want to fully admit about people dating outside of their appropriate sphere, and hiding it under this whole dangerous male sexuality hoo-hah.

hahahahaha ok totally not quite how i intended to unveil my new jokey username

where, oh where, is momus when we need him?

new "jokey" username

LG, "horrible things" in that sentence does not mean sex or sexuality. It means that, realistically, there is a lot of real victimization going in one direction there, and this affects how we treat these things. I don't want to get overearnest here but seriously: there is a lot of rape and date rape and sexual assault and harassment and pressure and all sorts of stuff going on in the world, in ways that seriously victimize people, and for whatever reason it seems to be pointed in one direction a lot of the time.

Our unequal sense of sex as something men inflict upon women surely ties into this, sure, but this notion is not the base of it, and really honestly isn't enough to just dismiss all that very real victimization as some kind of semantic issue, you know?

Anyway, that stuff is way off the topic of why it makes total sense for people to go "oh, you're 30, and you're going to date a high-school girl? because no offense but I kinda need you to reassure me that this isn't quite like it sounds"

xpost - John I'm not hiding anything under this side discussion of male sexuality and I've said about a million times (that you're not reading cuz you're busy taking quotes out of context) that I don't see these things as inherently weird -- I've said a million times that we suspect they're weird when they present themselves that way.

I mean christ, John, that quote you pulled is specifically from me telling Contenderizer that people's finding age differences weird is NOT because of finding it "creepy" or "criminal" and just finding it flat-out lame and tacky.

(And that's only in cases when something about it specifically presents itself for suspicion, you know?)

Early last summer (me: 26), I went on a few dates with a 19-year old UNT sophomore. Even that age difference was too much to make anything work - we got along well, and she was smart/mature/etc. - but where we were in life and had experienced were so vastly different. (Also: access to bars. I could get her in anywhere, but I'm not asking my friends to serve someone underage.)

Anyone who could have been in elementary school when you were graduating high school - not dateable. At least until you're 30+ and the world has worn you down equally.

god this is obviously a bad idea, but nabisco's posts are hilarious.

(also doing a 17-y-o is creepy but not illegal wtf.)

what im saying is that automatically finding it "lame and tacky" is a bias against people having significant age differences, its just a cuddlier way of presenting that bias. its fine for people to have that bias, but theres no point in trying to dance around it and say that it isnt a prejudicial view simply because you arent branding these people as per se creepy and/or criminal.

XP AFAIK doing 17-year-olds is illegal?

in a lot of US states it's not

true but i would lol hard at any 29 yr old i knew who brought a 17 yr old out as his date somewhere

titchy is UK im 90% sure, and it's not illegal here.

what im saying is that automatically finding it "lame and tacky" is a bias against people having significant age differences

John did you read the ENTIRE POST just now where I explained that the "automatically" in this sentence is NOT WHAT I JUST SAID?

xpost

yeah it'd be ridic but all this 'now women go to university it's so far beyond the pale you'd be an outcast for life...' shit is hilariously parochial.

true but i would lol hard at any 29 yr old i knew who brought a 17 yr old out as his date somewhere

― my fingers is a jellyfish (omar little), Tuesday, January 6, 2009 1:07 AM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

in SC we call that "saturday night at waffle house"

Or any of the million earlier posts where I said that it is not some kind of abstract moral "bias," it is a wariness / guardedness based largely on practical knowledge and observation of the world?

Or the ones where I said that this doesn't apply to age differences in general, mostly just specific ones that people are particularly wary about?

Or the ones where I said that in lots of cases that wariness isn't necessarily a blanket bias, it's a level of suspicion that comes out when something presents as suspicious, which discomfort most people would probably really enjoy having dispelled via some kind of reassuring explanation?

dude, wariness / guardedness based on practical knowledge and observation of the world is still bias, depending on where you are pointing that wariness.

im not going after you specifically on this point, nabisco, im saying that this bias exists in general and pretending that it doesn't is just kind of questionable.

also, despite my new username, which is not garnering the laffs i was hoping for (well, except for Dan), i am dating a 29 year old, so this isnt a personal grind or anything.

my dad was 18 years older than my mom which kind of seemed like nothing next to my great grandparents who had a 26 year age diff.

My ex-wife is ten years younger than me. The lady I just started dating last week is two months younger than my ex. I have learned nothing.

Having said that, I have tried in vain to find women my own age... and the good ones are taken!

Plus, men age more gracefully. At least, this is what my female friends in my age bracket tend to say. Hard to argue.

hmm

yep

gosh nate its a mystery to me why you cant find women your age

need to try a horny prowl

women my own age... and the good ones are taken!

this is ridiculous

I can answer that easily. I'm am deeply involved in the music scene, and work most nights at bars. But I don't smoke, barely drink, am over parties.

So it's easy to meet younger folks. I don't even know what people my age do. And the answer usually seems to be: work, go home, care for children, watch tv, grow old, die.

I dunno. I'm absolutely open to dating someone my age. I have before, when I was younger.

Just being very honest here!

I have a number of really awesome, single female friends my age. They are like my "control group". But they're my good friends and I don't want to date them! (see other thread)

have you ever given any of them a disease to try and discover a cure?

the placebone effect

actual lols at username

ahahaha

i didnt notice that @ first

Sheesh! How can you guys even consider answering titchyschneider's question without knowing where this girl lies on the HB scale

really this question should be addressed only to homosexual ii

...the WB/WNB scale.

And the answer usually seems to be: work, go home, care for children, watch tv, grow old, die.

except for the first part this is actually a lot more fun than music

he does make a valid point that if you work in music you will successfully avoid growing old and dying

i dunno that dying is that fun

how are you going to bone friends who are a lot younger than you if you are dead?

passively

when i was 15-16 i was friends with girls who dated dudes in their early 20s and i didn't think too much about it besides "wow these girls are worldly and experienced", and then a few years later i was like "who the fuck are these guys who are dating 16 year olds?!"

When I was 13 my best friend was secretly dating a 24 yr old and at the time I thought it was really romantic (!) and I was jealous and now I'm just astounded that I didn't find it even the slightest bit alarming and creepy.

passive boning is boring imo

omg truth bomb

;-)

fuckin guy

ugh why am i even on the internet right now

truth bomb

oh shit

that wasn't aimed at the HOOS that's just a general truth.

"And the answer usually seems to be: work, go home, care for children, watch tv, grow old, die.

except for the first part this is actually a lot more fun than music"

Right. Except that music is my job. It's not like it's just a hobby...

When I was in high school and had female friends dating older guys, I tended to think "why the hell would they be interested in 16 year olds?" Now one of my male friends who is 25 and a grad student is dating a 17 year old in high school...I think he is doing his best to be non-exploitative and non-creepy, but if you have to bring that level of caution into the relationship that shows that you really are in different situations and maybe it's risky to be trying in the first place.

Where's Eric Clapton anyway?

I mean, Clapton makes Jerry Seinfeld look like Bud Cort in Maude

This would be really weird of you. It won't be illegal soon enough, sure, and you're probably welcome to sit around explaining to everyone you know that it's not illegal while they make WTF faces and back slowly away from you and make disgusted noises whenever your name is mentioned for the rest of their lives. But what would the point be? You think you're going to be the weird 30-year-old helping her move in at college and then you'll stay together and have a meaningful relationship and get married? No: at best you'll have a weird brief relationship that weirds out everybody you know, because they will assume the only reasons you could possibly choose to have a weird relationship with an 18-year-old, instead of someone your own age, are (a) overwhelming and therefore creepy desire to have sex with teenage girls, or (b) you are maturity-challenged to the point where 18-year-olds are your natural level (which you are not and everyone knows it).

-- nabiscos

Italix yours, bolds mine. Now, generally speaking, I think yr right here in everything you say. The prospects of a healthy LTR are slim, and friends will probably not react well. But there's a degree of enthusiastic vitriol and, well, revulsion present in this language (though attributed to imaginary others) that reads as something very much like prejudice. Like the voice of social condemnation that arises when a taboo is broken. And this kind of visceral, repulsed-seeming language is common in the way we now tend to react to these sorts of relationships. In fact, this post was the main reason I earlier brought up the comparison to the way we respond - with justified revulsion - to pedophilia.

I understand that you may have been overstating for rhetorical effect, or simply admitting that other people out there really are profoundly prejudiced against such relationships. But there's something about, "they make WTF faces and back slowly away from you and make disgusted noises whenever your name is mentioned for the rest of their lives," that at least seems to place you in among the crowd making faces and backing away. The tone doesn't suggest someone who's raising a troubling aspect in the hopes that reassurance of good intent will be forthcoming, know what I mean? It sounds more like the voice of moral certainty drawing a line in the sand.

Understand that you've subsequently refuted this read and clarified your stance, so I'm not pushing you to "defend yourself." Just pointing out where some of the confusion may have come from in the first place.

in all seriousness.. wait until she's 18, then tap that.

If 17 is the age of consent, how does her reaching 18 matter? When you get completely shitfaced on your birthday do you gain new, adult, wisdom and insight or something?

Oh damn Milo did you miss out on the Adult Insight Lotto? How drunk were you?

You think you're going to be the weird 30-year-old helping her move in at college and then you'll stay together and have a meaningful relationship and get married?

haha yes this is my friend's stated intention. me: "she's 17! you can't talk about getting married!" him: "i'm not talking about it with her. i think the biggest risk is that she'll get bored with me and dump me during college, anyway." must be weird waiting for your girlfriend to grow up.

So whats wrong with casually dating someone of 17-20 knowing it wonr last? Need it be a serious boy who aims marriage? Just because someones 25+ doesnt mean they're automatically settling down, either.

(I say this from personal experience, though having said that I admit I am happy to be settled with the guy I am with now).

You think you're going to be the weird 30-year-old helping her move in at college

If you look at all like Chris Isaak, this might be the perfect way for her to be the popular girl on the hall.

This thread is interesting!

Here is a question: I imagine a lot of people here might subscribe in another thread to the idea of 'learner relationships' - a certain about of dating misadventures required to be ready to recognize the right person when one finally finds them. Such relationships are sometimes entered into in pretty bad faith - people are rarely told they're a necessary mistake - and that can make the person embarking on them seem kind of a douche, if we're being analytical? But what is making me think here is: how how can the person who is the mistake be to blame? They are the one who gets grown from & above, no? Like, obviously, it is possible to behave in such ways as to leave damage rather than greater maturity, but we're not really talking about that, here?

i dont know how anyone who is old being in a relationship w/ someone who is 17 cant immediately wonder wtf the 17-yr-olds motives are and be suspicious of those -- i mean its hard enough wondering about ppl my own age, whether theyre 'actually' into me and worrying that im not 'actually' into them, but w/ a 17 yr old its like, 'this person just wants to feel grown up'

is how i break it down to an extent

But deej, what if she likes the same music and DVDs that you like, and likes watching them with you.

*n.b., not advocating anything here

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/old-men-chasing-young-women-good-thing-14203.html

lol

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/old-scientists-chasing-young-women-verey-good-thing-14203.html

when i was 21 i began a two-year relationship with a girl who was 17 - i was very hesitant at first, because of the age thing, but it happened, and it was great, and the age gap wasn't really a problem, until the end. it's a cliche, but she *was very mature for her age, very creative, very smart, a really sharp writer, and really funny and level-headed. the split came from a mixture of things - she was about to go away to college, i didn't think i wanted another long-distance relationship, and my job had made me go into some ego-driven asshole period for a few months. moreover, though, she needed to experience more of life than the first guy she ever met could offer her, needed the freedom to experience as much of life as she could, and so we split.

we're still really good friends, ten or so years later, and i'll never regret the relationship. but it was tough as hell, realising that i had to 'let her go', that the relationship might begin to hold her back or shield her from opportunities and experiences that were just beginning to open up to her - that if we'd stayed together, she'd later possibly regret being in a relationship during that period of her life. i know there are plenty of people for whom this works - and ironically, her next boyfriend would be the guy she married - but in my heart, and hers, we knew it was for the best.

my next girlfriend, who'd known me before and during this relationship, would jibe me about dating a girl four years younger than myself at times, both when we were alone and when we were out with her friends, and i don't think she ever believed that my relationship with my ex was anything beyond a guy perving on a teenager. but the truth is, her youth never made the relationship more thrilling or anything - if anything, we both regretted that we'd met when we had, when the relationship never really had a chance, due to external pressures and growing pains.

like i say, i don't regret it, but the odds are stacked against such a relationship lasting in the long term. and its got nothing to do with people whispering behind your back, or what your 'friends' think (and i got lots of 'friendly' jibes from my friends at first), and everything to do with a 17 year old still having so many changes to go through in their life - college, finding a career, figuring out what they want to do with their life - that would make maintaining a relationship with someone who has already experienced most of those changes really hard. a 17 year old's perspective on life is changing all the time, with every new experience.

the awesome thing about 17 year olds is that "rollin" by limp bizkit is like some old shit their dads listened to

as far as the whole gender reversal thing, when my older sis was 15/16 she went out with a guy who was 30 (or maybe even 31, i cant remember right now) and at the time, i didnt actually see it as so bad cos she liked him a lot. but then i was 12 lol. now however, i do think that was fucking creepy. im sure even my sister would. well i hope so. my parents totally (understandably) hit the roof about it.

weirdly, i went out with this 22 yr old earlier this year and thought after that that early 20s girls were too much at a totally diff stage in their lives/maturity for me to go out with them (though that might have just been this particular one). ive actually had much better conversations with this 17 yr old lol.

it's funny how much the (somewhat arbitrary) age of consent makes such a diff. the americans are like this is morally reprehensible and stuff; i think it's a rubbish idea (more for her than you, perhaps), but shit happens and for much of human history blah blah blah. you should ask the geezers on de subjevtivistm (sp.). they get to blap 12-y-os without worrying about the law right?

When he thought of her, he could call up a vivid picture of her to himself, especially the charm of that little fair head, so freely set on the shapely girlish shoulders, and so full of childish brightness and good-humor. The childishness of her expression, together with the delicate beauty of her figure, made up her special charm, and that he fully realized. But what always struck him in her as something unlooked for, was the expression of her eyes, soft, serene, and truthful, and above all, her smile, which always transported Levin to an enchanted world, where he felt himself softened and tender, as he remembered himself in some days of his early childhood.

Kitty Scherbatsky - 17 y.o.
Levin - 30ish

and this turns out to be the only really good relationship in all of Anna Karenina

Blimey, which language is that a Babelfish translation of "Sweet Child of Mine" ?

xpost

lol

It is though, isn't it? Ol' Axl must be better read than we thought.

my next girlfriend, who'd known me before and during this relationship, would jibe me about dating a girl four years younger than myself at times

This seems bizarre to me. You were young, she was a tiny bit younger - I don’t really see where the problem is. Isn’t the average age difference in a relationship something like the man being 3 years older?

Then again, I would say that as I started going out with my wife exactly nine years ago when she was 17 and I was 24.

You were young, she was a tiny bit younger - I don’t really see where the problem is

I don't know, that four-year gap can feel seriously huge at that age. When I was 21 I set off my own internal creepometer through quite serious flirting with a 17-year-old and basically just ran away (in classic never-returning-calls fashion). She was pretty much as mature as me, and a lot stronger a personality, and blah blah i could have justified it fairly easily, but even continuing to flirt with her, though it was so easy, felt weird - we'd gone to the same school (but never socialised, given, well, four-year age gap) and it felt like I was just... regressing? I was in a weird lost mood at the time anyway, I think I suspected myself of trying to retreat into being a teenager to avoid the horrible reality of my twenties. And of course there were other things around it, the people we knew in common, the likelihood of my leaving town, etc etc.

I don't think every 21-17 relationship is like that - I certainly am not saying that stevie's was - but the fact is that a four-year age gap felt like a problem to me, at 21, and in my circumstances I didn't think it was worth navigating the weirdness, where in other people's circumstances it clearly was.

yeah... when i met her i thought we were roughly the same age, and when she told me how old she was, i had a 'what will people say?'-type pause... but that soon wore off, and i was no longer dating 'a seventeen year old' but THIS SPECIFIC, AWESOME PERSON. and from then on, it was mostly gravy, until it wasn't (and as i said, we're still good friends now)

also, i had a faltering, disastrous flirt with a girl in her early twenties last summer, and very quickly i realised, the age distance was too much... nothing happened, because it seemed really obvious that this was a Route To Madness, and that neither of us was interested enough to want to invite that.

you should ask the geezers on de subjevtivistm (sp.). they get to blap 12-y-os without worrying about the law right?

lolol you think we as music nerds every blap etc. ;)
seriously, the Dutch age of consent is quite strict, Spain on the other hand has the lowest (?) AoC in Europe, iirc.

( as music nerds ever getting to blap etc)

My mates took the piss out of me when I got off with a 17 year old in a nightclub when I was 21.

I also ran away when another 17 year old was flirting with me in a bar a few months later.

Now I think I was being a bit silly.

I necked a 15-year-old for approx. three hours straight in a night club. I was 20. I asked if she wanted to go somewhere more private than a barstool. She said no and left.

;_;

Wizened biker dude.

I'll get all the sleep I need when I'm dead.

i fail to believe everyone on this site is so morally sound.

just get with her ffs and let the consequences inform you, not like it's illegal

har and thus is the touchpaper lit once again

just keep it on the d/l because it's not a good look.

im not asking for advice on that anymore. but im gonna stop replying in this thread now to avoid potential trolling.

Stop replying and start posting pics, bro.

I've dated people much younger than me, though never younger than 18, and have never had a problem or been o_0'd at. In college, one of the best and healthiest relationships I saw was between a guy in his early thirties and a girl who was 17 or 18 when they started dating. (Both of them were undergrads, which helped.)

I don't think there's any substitute for one's own internal sketch detector, though that's exactly what most of society's guidelines are meant to do. The problem comes when the guideline becomes an ironclad rule that has little to do with the underlying principle, so that "Don't enter into exploitative relationships, doubly so with people who are young and/or naïve" becomes "17 is no-go, 18 is OK".

How much of the stigma attached to this comes from our desire to shield women from the (alleged) male tendency to abandon older mates and seek out a younger partner? I don't know too many women who aren't afraid that when they get older their boyfriend/husband won't be attracted to them any more.

Also, I have to wonder about talking dismissively about "superficial" reasons to be attracted to someone. To me, that way lies hypocrisy.

I don't think age should be weighted more than any other general factor.

Also, there's a lot to be said for a dynamic in which one person likes to teach and another likes to learn.

Having said that, there are insights to be learned from anyone that you date or befriend, regardless of age & experience. Even 20 years is a long time on this planet. A few hundred years ago, twenty = middle-aged.

If I've learned anything, it's to weight Honesty and Integrity over age difference.

I'm assuming we're taking into account mental age as well?

That said, it's much easier to meet somebody who's "older" but acts much younger than meeting somebody who's "younger" but acts much older.

Flipping back, you don't realize how much more you share with somebody who's your age +/- 3 years compared to somebody outside that range. It's not a rule by any means (age of consent plus, that is) to give priority to people closer to your age, but it's foolish to discount the unexpected awesomeness of being with someone your same age.

a dynamic in which one person likes to teach and another likes to learn.

ew

So it wasn't just me, then.

well sorry i suck

Haha, apparently I'm a creep no matter what I say on this thread.

there's a lot to be said for a dynamic in which one person likes to teach and another likes to learn

but is any of it good? seems very parent-figure hence the ew

but is any of it good? seems very parent-figure hence the ew

― blueski

Seems like any other kind of preference. To whom it appeals, it appeals. And if not, then not. Doesn't seem intrinsically icky to me.

Then again, calling all creeps.

So whats wrong with casually dating someone of 17-20 knowing it wonr last? Need it be a serious boy who aims marriage? Just because someones 25+ doesnt mean they're automatically settling down, either.

― Trayce, Tuesday, January 6, 2009 5:43 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark

Sorry to be unclear, i don't thin a 17 year old girl generally should be with a serious boy who aims marriage! Might be the older guy who gets disappointed, but it's an age-related mismatch. (um, except in cases of happy ilxor marriages. no offense.)

"but is any of it good? seems very parent-figure hence the ew"

It's not like it's something I seek out. Just something that's happened that seemed a positive aspect of the relationship.

The parent figure part however, is actually the worst, and should be avoided at all costs.

When I was 19, I dated a guy who was 28 who was as mature as a 14-year-old. The only real thing that made me super mad in this relationship that was he broke up with me. Hello! I wanted to call it off. He stole that from me!

was he all like 'haaaaaaaaaaaaaa i beat you haaaaaaaaaaa'

It was the first time in my life I ever felt like a Seinfeld plot.

Excluding that time I wrote a Murphy Brown script.

wow so many ILX chixx dated older dudes when they were teenagers

when in rome

wow so many ILX chixx dated older dudes when they were teenagers

Yeah, the majority of girls I've dated have told this story.

well, stop dating teenagers

but they do so love to learn!

lol

hahahahaaa

wow so many chixx dated older dudes when they were teenagers

i know one girl who dated a guy about ten years older than her from when she was 15 and they stuck it out for almost 15 years. he then ran off with someone closer to his own age.

prince charles?

he's lucky he could still run.

it turns out 17 yr olds are still pretty weird.

29 yr olds too.

I remember in junior high, all the seventh-grade girls going out with ninth-graders and thinking, "oh man when I'm a freshman I'll be all over that."

And then I got to the ninth-grade, looked back and thought "what the hell were those guys thinking?"

that was never in doubt.

I'm 32, my husband is 43 -- we've been married 6 years. I haven't really found it problematic, as far as age difference goes. Physically, it *would* have been weird when we first met...I was 19 and he was 30, but we (cough) met online so we didn't really have to deal with it. I didn't meet him til I was 23, and by then we knew each other so well just from writing back and forth that we really just needed to know that we could be in the same room together. If anything now, it's just amusing...like when the first Star Wars movie came out he was 11 and I was 1. But in the end, we have a lot in common in general, and that's why we work. There's so much more between us that the age difference really doesn't come up. If we had less in common, or we weren't as, I don't know, convinced (?) by our attraction to each other, maybe it would be weird. But I think the way we met definitely helped, because we didn't really submit ourselves for scrutiny. We had time to get used to the idea. Plus if the physical relationship comes first, it's more noticeable. I don't know if that makes sense...

VegemiteGrrrl OTM but I am now dying to know if titchy tried to hit it!

My mates took the piss out of me when I got off with a 17 year old in a nightclub when I was 21.

When I was 22 I made out with a guy a couple of time before finding out he was still in H.S.

Two of my friends who are both around 30 are dating guys in their late 40s and I have to admit it was hard to get used to at first esp as both guys are oldish looking almost 50 year olds. Both couples have been together for 2+ years so somehow they're making it work.

Me: Which school to you go to again? (Expecting the answer to be one of the hundreds of colleges around here).
Him: Um, Hamilton High School.
Me: What now?

ha, where did you meet him?

At a local band's show. He new the people at the club so they got him in even though he was underage. I honestly thought he was like 20-21 and didn't even believe him at first.

argh - That was me, not Roberto.

Two of my friends who are both around 30 are dating guys in their late 40s and I have to admit it was hard to get used to at first esp as both guys are oldish looking almost 50 year olds. Both couples have been together for 2+ years so somehow they're making it work.

― ENBB

I find that once everybody's in their, I dunno, late 20's at least, "people are people" takes over and 10-20 year age differences don't seem so insurmountable anymore. Still there, but 28-year-old + 16-year-old seems way more WTF than 32-year-old + 44-year-old.

^ how to state the obvious

x-post also he "knew" not "new".

Contenderizer - I agree.

lol for a second there i was like "how does berto know so much about this dude"

nice work, roberto

xpost, no, didnt try and hit it. tempted, but decided she was too young. also, shes been dating a guy for a while, but says shes trying to break it off as its just a rship of convenience, she doesnt love him, she wants someone she really feels something for etc etc. anyway, i just told her the age gap was too big, she said i was just making excuses, then said never bring this up again as she doesnt like rejection. which was all fine, as far as this sort of thing goes, but then in the middle of the night, she sends me a txt meant for her bf (telling him that he needs to fix up or its over and she doesnt love him enough to be with him much longer), and then a 2nd txt apologising, saying that her numbers are a mess (lol is this possible?) and that i shouldnt text her. now shes deleted her fbk account.

18th bday isnt too far off though.

lol this chick is truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuubl

run

xp

she sounds like trouble, all caps, with some other letters capped that aren't even in trouble

edit: curse you max!

mark yr calendar!

of course she's trouble she is SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD

but even special kind of 17 trouble

^^appropriate screenname

29 and 17 are worlds apart, the "mature for his/her age" thing is usually not true after awhile

― my fingers is a jellyfish (omar little)

naw man that's beyond just being 17 i think

xps

http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/06/29/kipwinger.jpg

remember: a 17 yr old girl might act mature but she isn't actually mature

― my fingers is a jellyfish (omar little)

17 yr olds are all a mess, let them work out their growing-up issues amongst themselves

omar little is the otmiest all through this thread

i didnt read this thread but here is how i break it down to an extent: if ur an old dude (late 20s+) and u wanna DATE a teenager, u r functionally retarded. wanting to bang one is natural but dating is weird & creepy, and if u were in my circle of friends u would be clowned on w/o mercy

^^^

yep

be careful what you do
don't go around breakin' young girls' hearts
heee

man no one should date 17 yr old girls, not even 17 yr old guys

― 8====D ------ ㋡ (max), Monday, January 5, 2009 5:24 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

heee.

you should do this to 17 yr old girls

8====D ------ ㋡

A friend of mine met and started going out with her now-husband when she was 17.
Another friend was about 16 or 17 when she started going out with this guy who was at least mid-20s if not nearing 30. They were both going through periods of depression but it lasted quite a long time and she was in some ways (not others) wise for her age. She's perfectly fine now but looking back it seems a bigger age gap than what everyone else our age was doing then.

He definitely didn't seem more mature than her or anything, really. They just had loads in common and the age differencewasn't a massive deal.

I think they were pretty much exceptions though - in most other instances this is pretty creepy.

Michael Jackson to thread!

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 25 February 2003 18:25

rofl

hmm...at what age does it become perverted to like 15 year old girls in your culture? Is a 23 year old that likes 15 year old girls a pervert?

-- Heave Ho, Saturday, 11 August 2007 21:23

nicknshaz

big whup, she looks about 30.

"17 yr olds are all a mess, let them work out their growing-up issues amongst themselves"

yeah, i know - it would feel really weird dealing with someone going through all that teen angstiness again. when she said she just wanted a 'casual' thing, i couldnt help thinking 'but youre just a child'.*

*still, kids *these* days...

wanting to bang one is natural

hmm

In seriousness, how many times have you or someone you knew been in a situation where you met someone you thought was smokin' hot, only to discover said person was under 18? The most legendary example of this kept happening to a dude I sang with, where on successive tours he attempted to chat up a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old before realizing how old they were.

a friend of mine tried to "run game" on a 16 yr old once before realizing how old she was

13!

xp

that was incredibly legendary, trust me

thir-fucking-teen

that is well no way

http://socialitelife.celebuzz.com/archive/2007/07/26/shes_13_so_be_nice.php

a few years back when I was working in a record store I got to know this v pretty girl who was a customer and was emailing and stuff. when I realised she was 17 I did feel v weird about it, and I was 22 or something at the time. she was all "oh I'm going to come see you DJ with my friends" then I think she didn't get in, lol.

met her about a year later and she had horrible dredlocks and wasn't pretty anymore, I barely recognised her.

there's a lesson in there for all.

Everyone thought the 13-year-old was another 16-year-old, btw, except for him, and we were just lolling at him. When we found out she was 13, the lolling stopped until he got away from her, at which point it returned with a screaming vengeance.

We were in W. Virginia so maybe he could have pulled w/ no consequences...?

i didnt know there was a 13 y/o lohan this is good news now that lilo is saggy & baggy ;_;

I know you come a long way, baby
But you don't need that heart of stone, no
You proved that you could do it, do it, baby
You could make it on your own

But you can't keep runnin' away from love
'Cause the first one let you down, no, no, no
And though others try to satisfy you, baby
With me true love can still be found
Love can still be found

The second time around
Ooh, the second time is so much better, baby
The second time around
And I'll make it better than the first time

those prussian blue girls looked good on some other thread where they were posted, btu theyre like... 16 now or something

nicknshaz

― what are black holes made of (unregistered), Tuesday, 13 January 2009 21:32 (1 hour ago) Permalink

big whup, she looks about 30.

― max arrrrrgh, Tuesday, 13 January 2009 21:45 (55 minutes ago)

o shi she was 17! momus u big peed lol

"she was all "oh I'm going to come see you DJ with my friends" then I think she didn't get in"

haha.

the difference between the title of this thread and what is being talked about its kinda heavy.

It is because of titchy revive. WTFhorrorLOLZ not yet subsided. But yeah.

I mean, i guess I just have a "ha ha U old" feeling about myself here, because I saw the thread title and thought people would be actually talking about, like, actual relationships that they have with their partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, y'know, uh, grownup stuff. But it's all about celebrities and 13 year olds and such. Which is funny and all, but . . .

theres a lot of people talking about actual relationships that they have w/ their partners!

Drew OTM, in how Titty dating a 17 year old when you're 28 doesn't nearly seem to fit the thread title, but should be filed under 'LOLOMG' more than 'Age differences in relations'.

I'm close to thirty and in a four year relationship with a woman 14 years older, and it's just... well, right. Awesome. The age difference just isn't an issue or 'problematic', and it never threatened to become so. Not to us anyway. Some family members or friends have frowned upon it - and maybe some still do, in silence - but I can't say it matters to me, or us. People must have seen by now that it just works, it's love, and that's that. If people near to me haven't seen that, or are unwilling to, well, that's that then. I lock thread :)

theres a lot of people talking about actual relationships that they have w/ their partners!

― 8====D ------ ㋡ (max), Tuesday, January 13, 2009 7:05 PM

it's hard to read more than 5 posts dude, in fairness

Especially when you are old and have poor eyesight like me!

On this topic, I recall that the seven year difference between myself and my boyfriend seemed like an enormous canyon at the time, and 17 years later it is there but far less significant. The gap between 21 and 28 is way bigger than the gap between 37 and 44.