Ask the 35 Year Old who has for a year now (and counting) been Dating a Teenager

[Hector_St_Clare]

@bienville

ORIGINAL OP UPDATE
Sorry. I never subscribe to Threads and didn’t know it had been revived the other times. This time someone sent me a PM.

I did become aware that it had been revived before, but by the time I was aware of it the Thread had dropped into obscurity again and it didn’t seem to make sense to revive it yet again.

However, when I saw a similarly themed Thread:

Thanks, Rhythmdvl, for fully quoting me from the other Thread- makes things a lot easier.

So, that was Feb. 2013.
We’re still good friends and hang out occasionally. She still from time to time has social interaction with friends she met through me- she’s been a guest on my friend’s podcast 3 times, all after we broke up. She still has a good happy social life of her own and still does well making friends.

About three months after I made that Feb. 2013 update, she started dating a guy who she is still together with- so, that relationship is just over a year old now. He is older than her, but not as old as me- and she of course is older than when this Thread started- so it’s not so significant an age gap: 10 years, started dating when she was 22 and he was 32. I seems to be a good relationship. I haven’t met him yet, but that’s really just mostly because she and I only see each other once in a while so we plan things just the two of us so we can catch up (the fact that he is totally o.k. with her hanging out with her ex-boyfriend is one of the factors that makes me feel like she’s found a good guy).

So, all in all, it seems like no one was ruined. No lives were destroyed.
We dated for 27 months, some of my happiest times ever.

Well, I’m sorry it ended, but it seems long in the long term it ended for the right reasons (incompatible goals about children) and not for the wrong ones (idiot busybodies trying to undermine your relationship). Our society has a lot of criticism of age-disparate relationships, particularly when the younger partner is in their late teens or early twenties, and I have no doubt that it dissuades a lot of people from entering these sorts of relationships, and causes them to be less stable. In my view, such people (some of whom are on display in this thread) are not really any different from those who would criticize interracial relationships, same-sex relationships, etc., and as FriarTed notes it’s pretty amusing that some of the same people who would indignantly defend same-sex partnerships, etc., are so critical of age-disparate ones.

Anyway, hope both of you are doing well, and I’m glad you can still see each other now and again.

[bucketybuck]

I am utterly shocked that the relationship didn’t last!

[Acsenray]

@bucketybuck

I am utterly shocked that the relationship didn’t last!

Is that the sole criterion for whether any particular relationship should have begun? The vast majority of relationships are temporary.

[Hector_St_Clare]

@bucketybuck

I am utterly shocked that the relationship didn’t last!

Do you have any evidence that 18-and-35 relationships have a higher likelihood of breaking up than 18-and-18 ones?

[drewtwo99]

The kids thing is really important to get out of the way early on, for me anyway. A lot of people just assume that the person they fall in love with is going to feel the same way they do about having kids or not having kids. For gay guys, it’s even more complicated of course, but there are tons of childfree straight folks out there too who still want to fall in love and get married with someone else who doesn’t ever want to have kids.

So it’s a bummer that the relationship didn’t last Forever and Ever, but it didn’t have anything to do with the age gap… it was just because neither one of them ever brought up the kids question early on. And as the OP said, it was some of the happiest times of his life, and that’s great in and of itself. If she had been on the same page as he was (or vice versa), they might still be together today.