In retrospect, the relationship was damaging for me because I was involved with and subjected to adult things are sooner than I think I should have been. I believe most relationships with a similar make-up are similarly damaging to the young person.
It has little to do with the relationship itself as much as it has to do with adult “things” versus adolescent “things.” I apologize if my explanation is aloof, but it comes from a mindset of maturity now versus what I remember then. It should have been a time of exploration and learning with peers who were going through and learning similar things about life. Instead, I was involved in far more serious and adult situations which none of my friends had any knowledge of or interest in.
I was forced to grow up considerably faster to “keep up” with said boyfriend. Even after our relationship ended, I was already jaded and found subsequent relationships wanting in that I considered myself too mature for my contemporaries after that.
To add – after thinking about this – I know that adolescents these days are learning about sex considerably earlier than we did 25 years ago.
And while I was not a virgin when I got involved with my Older Man, I did learn and was subjected to sexual acts that would have best been discovered and learned with another who was also just learning and discovering. Of course every situation is different, but I suppose in retrospect THAT very thing is what is sticking out in my mind right now. In all my relationships thereafter, I was the more learned and experienced partner and did not ever have the benefit of really learning and exploring some of those things with a peer or contemporary.
It seems that a relationship is best when it’s one of equals. Naturally there’s no way ALL things can be equal and we really wouldn’t want it to be. Still, there’s no way possible you can even be playing in the same ballpark of equal between a 35 year old and a 19 year old who just graduated high school, lives with her parents, and has never really had a boyfriend before. So you ask why would anyone want to be in a relationship with someone who is so clearly not their equal?
Of course the answer isn’t usually some EVIL reason and I’m not insinuating this with the OP. For me (and nobody much gives a shit what I think) there’s something not quite right about someone who wants to be the person with that much of the upper hand in a relationship. It doesn’t seem healthy and IMHO it’s pretty squicky.
I really agree with your quote above. The younger person usually ends up losing out on those growing experiences of being young and dumb and learning their lessons along with their peers. The older person has all the advantage mentally, emotionally, and in almost every other way.
Of course in the relationships like this with people I know the younger person almost always ends up ditching the older person when they start interacting more with people their own age, too.*
Yes, yes… I know there are plenty of people that end up staying together and I don’t really care about hearing 20 stories of your exception.
Fried Dough Ho, I was glad when you first shared your perspective and I am glad to see you now sharing in some more detail. Thank you.
Since the sexual relationship seems to be at the root of your concern, I’ll say that I do truly believe that my girlfriend and I have a very healthy sexual relationship. Talking openly with one another has been of utmost importance to both of us since the very beginning.
She set the pace as we began exploring, and she was always very comfortable putting on the brakes when she wanted to put on the brakes. And, most importantly, she always trusted that I would respect her boundaries.
During this first year since we’ve been dating she has completed a year at college, just now beginning her second year. At this point her peers are just as sexually experienced as she is. Although I can not predict the longevity of our relationship, it is still going very well and I don’t see it ending anytime soon- thus giving more time for sexual growth and experience among her peers by the time she’s back in the dating market.
Add to that, we really aren’t especially kinky. There’s plenty of territory unexplored, plenty of experiences that she can learn with future partners.
Just to be clear, when we started dating a year ago she was 18 going into her first year of college (just graduated high school), now she is 19 going into her second year of college. At no point are we talking about a “19 year old who just graduated high school”.
You’re throwing out the term “equal” without any qualifiers. Thus, I would answer “why would anyone want to be in a relationship with someone who is so clearly not their equal?” with, well she is my equal.
Now I assume you mean equal as in “equal in life experience”, suggested by the rest of your post. Well, I’m not equal in life experience with everyone my age either. Even so, life experience is only one aspect of who a person is.
We are together because I love the person she is and she loves the person I am. Loving the person I am, she knows my history and life experience. Loving the person she is, I know her history and life experience. We also know so much of all the other aspects of each other’s personhood, and in knowing each other we have developed a deep personal connection.
If “Lack of Life Experience” is the specific aspect that the older person finds attractive about the younger person, if the older person seeks out inexperienced partners, I would join you in calling that “squicky”.
For two people who find they make a deep personal connection and want to be together because they recognize the whole person that their partner is as someone they will be happy with, an inequality of life experience to be but one aspect of each person’s whole self, for two people to explore a relationship in such a case as this, no I would not call that “squicky”.
I see. Not discounting your feelings about your own life experience I’m not sure how feeling more mature in other relationships to the point of being dissatisfied is the equivalent of being damaged.
I get the sense that perhaps you were pushed or pushed yourself into things you weren’t really comfortable with because of your older boyfriend and some concept of maturity. I don’t think that’s a given with any relationship with a drastic age difference. I don’t think being more sexually experienced has to be a negative.
There are a lot of people out there that vary widely in maturity level and experiences. There are people who have had dozens of partners by 30 and people who have had 1 or 2. One is not superior to the other. IMHO it’s a matter of mutual respect and consideration that hopefully comes with love.
My oldest daughter wound up in a bad relationship with a jerk of a guy her own age. That was damaging. My youngest is highly intelligent and very focused. In high school she found there was a great gap between her and most of her fellow students. She was sometimes ridiculed because she was more mature. After struggling with it she realized there were people she just wouldn’t be close to because of their differences and others she could be. She had a smaller circle of friends among her own age group but at 24 she is beginning an impressive career and her maturity has served her well.
IMHO the OP seems thoughtful and genuinely concerned about the girl he is dating. It may be a somewhat unique relationship because of the age difference but I just don’t see that that automatically equates to damaging.
Advantage? Is every relationship adversarial?Certainly if a young woman was so inclined she could press her advantage, of being a desirable young woman. Life has a lot of different experiences and dating someone older is one possibility. You learn lessons through whatever life experiences come your way and what you choose for yourself. I don’t see any distinct advantage in being with other people who are young and dumb.
I’ll just share my reaction. I also feel that this kind of age difference is highly unlikely to produce a good long-term relationship in today’s world.
But I find myself much more convinced by his posts than by yours, especially this one.
I agree with both of your points, with the addendum that the fact that this relationship is unlikely to be a long-term one is not necessarily a count against it.
There is no question that every situation is different and my own experience could have been entirely beneficial instead of damaging. And undoubtedly every person here could start offering their own burgeoning life experiences as examples of how any particular situation can produce a different outcome.
I simply offer it as one example of how a younger girl and older man relationship was ultimately detrimental to one particular young girl’s life. There has already been another poster in this thread who is a young woman involved with an older man and how it has been successful for her so far. I would simply like her retrospective on that relationship 20 years from now.
I wanted to address this point specifically – and I apologize if this appears as backpedaling. I don’t believe the damage I experienced was so much related to an immediate subsequent dissatisfaction as much as it shaped how I entered and viewed subsequent relationships. Frankly, the damage became more apparent as those subsequent relationships ended for one reason or another. I rarely define any relationship which no longer exists as a “failed relationship” as they are simply part of life’s experiences. But suffice to say I am middle-aged, single with no prospects or family. Do I blame that one relationship I had as an 18-year old? Of course not; but it did help shape the person I am today and I can’t help but believe that in many ways, I am a damaged person in my solitude.
Maybe you missed my earlier post. I met my now-husband when I was 18 and he was 30. We moved in with each other when I was 22 and he was 34. Got married when I was 24 and he was 36. I’m now 33 and he’s 45 and we’ve never been happier.
Every relationship is adversarial to a degree. We are not in perfect concert all the time. There is give and take, growing and maturing, power struggles in some cases.
When we get into relationships of any sort with people we perceive as having higher status or being somehow admirable, many if not most of us will start changing our behavior to please them, to fit in. We will start shaping ourselves to their mold. We will submerge our conflicting desires. We will be irrevocably influenced by them. One of the pluses of everyone being a similar age is that these imbalances shouldn’t be too great. One partner shouldn’t be too able to dominate the other. At this very young age, they are still finding themselves and are going to be very vulnerable to external shaping.
One of the advantages to getting older is that we are more likely to have established ourselves emotionally and mentally. Most of us have stronger senses of self. We are harder to distort.
Now, 19 isn’t 5, but it isn’t 25 either. Every relationship has power dynamics at play and every relationship has the potential to change one or both partners for the rest of their lives. The younger they are, the more likely the change is to be permanent.
