I think it was a snarky way of alluding that the OP is not necessarily independent, secure, mature, etc…
Given **cosmosdan’**s other contributions to the thread, I somehow doubt that. I took it to mean that just because someone is young doesn’t necessarily mean she lacks power, money and status, among other things.
Well she’s 33 and seems happy, mature , and well adjusted after being in the relationship for 15 years.
Your initial post seemed stronger than just offereing one perspective. You seemed convinced that the age difference meant the young girl would be damaged. IMO what makes a relationship work or not work, a nice memory or damaging , is something much less superficial than an age difference.
So you’re damaged becasue you’re not in a relationship? Again, I’d have to say IMHO it probably wasn’t the age diffference that was the issue in that relationship or the ones that followed.
We all are capable of carrying baggage from previous relationships into new ones. I know I’ve done it. IMO the baggae issue isn’t usually about age
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I wasn’t being snarky.
Two things:
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Most people, in my (perhaps limited) experience, change drastically between the ages of 18 and 22ish. If you perceived her not growing as a result of your relationship with her - would you consider ending it?
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Were I you, I would be a little concerned with why she hadn’t dated anyone prior to you, even though she was 18. I mean, are you saying ‘no serious relationship’ or ‘didn’t date anyone’. That, plus her age, sends off alarm bells to me. Why hasn’t she dated prior to you?
I don’t know, when my daughter gets to be 18, if she wanted to date someone who was 35, I wouldn’t feel good about it. I suppose it could all be up and up. There’s also not a lot I could do about it, but my initial impression of the situation would be one of suspicion…
You’re right we’re not. IMO , and looking back at mistakes I made, it’s about expressing what you want, and what’s important to you, being willing to really hear those things from your partner, and finding a way to be happy and fulfilled together if you can. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to figure out how much compromise is giving up too much of yourself.
That’s assuming they are willing to be heavily influenced even against their internal voice, and that the older partner wants to do that. The influence we have on others can also be very positive in encouraging them to express themselves and supporting them in their endevors rather than reshaping them to fit our personal desires. A 19 year old may not have the life experiences but can still have the idependence and presence of mind to not be manipulated against her will. Detrimental domination only takes place when one wants to dominate and the other cooperates. The age difference doesn’t make either of those a given or even highly probable.
And maybe we are mature enough to not want to distort anyone else.
By 18 I’d say basic tendencies are already in place and the potential for good or bad change is contained within those tendencies for both parties. It’s hard to explain why certain people are attracted to each other, but depending on why they enter the relationship and why they stay in it, it can be either a positive or negative experience.
Reading the OPs posts I don’t see any desire to dominate or negatively influnence this young girl. She hasn’t dropped out of school. They haven’t leaped into marriage. They are taking it one day at a time and both weighing the situation. The attitude seems to be that as long as it is still working for *both people * involved then keep enjoying it for what it is.
Sure, at 19 and this being her first real long term boyfriend , she hasn’t had a lot of life experiences. That’s what’s going on right now. This is her chosen life experience for now. Nothing wrong with that. Do you think out partying with her friends would be better? Dating some guy her own age who has potential at being a jerk?
I just don’t get the assumed negative.
All the arguments about a 19-year-old’s inexperience and vulnerability tells me that they are better off with a 35-year-old s.o., who is more likely to be aware of the risks and behave more responsibility, rather than another 19-year-old, who is likely to be inexperienced, and thus, more likely to be clueless and callous.
Getting dumped or otherwise hurt in a relationship is the same regardless of the age of your partner. Teenagers are more likely to cause hurt as a result of their inexperience.
It could also be seen as a learning process, that may be needed for the development of a person, life experiences, etc. I’m not saying it is needed to go through this stage as a teen, but feel it is something we are made to go through to find out who we really are, and may manifest itself later in her life. Right now she might not be able to have a ‘teenage like’ relationship.
Oh no, Bricker isn’t convinced by my posts. I will give that all of the consideration that it deserves, to be sure.
Well she isn’t his equal in idependence because she is still living at home. I assume that’s because she’s going to school. That doesn’t means she isn’t just as independent in mind and spirit are far as being her own person.
Money? I don’t see enough money involved to make a significant difference.
Security? What security do you see the OP as having that she doesn’t have? If they bike up tomorrow she’d still be living at home going to school.
Status? Again, what are you talking about?
Power?
Maturity and experience? Kay, but what does that mean? Maturity may mean her older boyfriend treats her with more respect and consideration than someone other 19 year old might. Maybe not. again, I think it’s about character rather than age. Life experience. I already mentioned that. Decades can go by and there can still be a vast difference in people’s experiences depending on their choices.
It seems you’re assuming there are vast differences that may not exist.
You seem to be assuming that all those things equate to some sort of negative. I don’t think they have to. It depends on the people, and I haven’t seen anything from the OP to suggest a strong negative.
Every relationship carries positive or negative potential. I already said, I’d be concerned if it was my daughter dating someone that much older but having seen goodness and manipulation from people of all ages I don’t assume a negative. If it was my daughter I’d remind her to continue to pursue her own goals and to make sure she was being treated with consideration and respect. {just as I would with any relationship she was in}
And it should be noted that it doesn’t have to be long term or happily ever after to be a positive experience.
According to a lot of posts in this thread, it’s very important to date and spend your time mostly with people within 3-4 years of your own age and in the exact same stage of life, and to make the typical [stupid] age-appropriate choices alongside them- this is necessary to develop your bland, shadowy 18-year-old personality into that of the real person at the same time your peers do-‘after the brain is fully developed’.
Suffice it to say this attitude makes no sense to me. I’ve lived the opposite, so far, and I’m thrilled I’ve been able to do so.
Seriously. Really, I don’t think I missed out on anything significant by never having dated 19-year-old guys. I am basing this on every 19-year-old guy I’ve ever met.
+1. This is the best
No, actually it’s this…
But on a serious note, echoing what other posters said: this would be a lot more reasonable if she worked and went to school and lived on her own. Living at home is just way, way bizarre. I see a lot less weirdness in a 21 year old dating a 55 year old than a living-at-home 18 year old dating a guy in his mid 30’s who’s suffering a case of Arrested Development in real life.
She’s also going to school. He met her after she was out of high school, and probably had an arrangement with her parents to live at home while she went to school. It seems to me that her relationship has not altered her direction , which would be one concern of mine as a parent. If she quit school to move in with him and get a job I’d be much more concerned.
Would it seem different if she was dating someone 19-21 while living at home and going to school?
Life’s too short to criticize other people for who they wanna date. Sorry, but I just can’t work up the slightest bit of outrage over this. If it makes you happy and nobody’s getting hurt, I say go for it and everyone else can piss up a rope.
It probably won’t work out in the end… but then, most relationships don’t work out in the end, so really it’s just electing to play keno instead of roulette. Best of luck to the OP.
I read the whole thread, as I always do, so I know she’s going to college (albeit community college). Of course it would be different if she were dating someone her own age, but I’ve seen relationships end because one had never lived on their own (or at least physically on their own, still on their parents’ teet) and the other was, with just a few years’ difference. I also see problems with the fact the OP said she mostly hangs out with him and her mom. Big problem, not leaving the nest to make new friends and immerse herself in new situations.
I don’t really care what they do, I’m not casting stones, it’s just definitely weird and very very unequal. My parents are more than 10 years apart and they got shit for it - but getting together at 25 and 36 is a drop in the bucket when you’re both out of school, working, and in the same field.
I just realized that the situation I described is commonly referred to as ‘college’. I didn’t go there. Not entirely because I have loathed being around groups of people my age since I was a toddler…
I was responding to the assertion that were aren’t equals when that assertion was not made using any qualifiers. Your reply includes a long list of qualifiers.
Absent any qualifiers, every person on Earth is my equal- I’m talking the foundation of things, human dignity, self worth, “we hold these truths to be self evident” kinds of things.
Yes, lots of people are better than me at basketball.
I still stand by the rest of my “she is my equal” post: we are not equal in life experience but life experience is just one aspect of any individual’s personhood.
Your post offers more qualifiers than life experience, every individual aspect that we could compare one or the other of us may measure with higher status. Still, I think it’s a concern, not necessarily impending doom.
This may be the best critique in the Thread. I’ve never expressed it quite so eloquently, but it has always struck me as an area of concern.
It is something that I’ve reflected upon throughout the relationship. Now, jsgoddess, you are the one who made the equally eloquent post earlier addressing my regular self-refection telling me that thinking is not a substitute for doing. My answer to that was that the self-refection hasn’t just been thinking, but that the way we’ve actively conducted ourselves has in many way been fashioned according to the concerns found in such self-reflection.
Now, as I remember being 18-19, I agree with you that this was a time of shaping my sense of self and I was heavily influenced by the people that I admire- I wanted to be shaped by the people that I admired, which I think is normal when going through such self discovery.
The difference made by a relationship like this, is that while going through that self-discovery most of us do not have any one single person in our life whose influence eclipses other influences- such as would be a concern in a significantly power-differentiated relationship.
In this area I have taken very conscious action to avoid this as much as possible. She is, thankfully, proudly a stubborn person. When a friend and I disagree on an issue, whether a trivial pop culture matter or a broad social or political issue, I will argue tooth and nail, playfully beat them down in argument (because my friends all give as well as they get, so it’s fun), and insist on “winning” the argument.
I have never allowed differences of opinion to play out this way with my girlfriend. I always validate her point of view, present her an opportunity to pick apart my point of view, question her in ways that allow her to assert and expand upon her own opinion, concede her good points, and move on happily agreeing to have different opinions.
This is never the way it plays out with my other friends.
I would definitely love to see her making new friends. Simple fact is that the social scene at her school sucks- all commuters with the same friends/ social life they’ve always had. I’ve gone through periods that I’ve been in situations where my opportunities to make friends has been limited, it sucked, but it wasn’t because I was stunted in anyway- some situations just aren’t conducive to socializing. When I’d ask her during the past school year if she was meeting anyone cool, she said she thought she’d make more friends once she was taking classes in her specific area of interest- which will be the case this semester.
During the summer, while her friends from highschool have been around, she has had a WAY more active social life than I have had. She has lots of fun in the time we spend apart and, as I mentioned earlier, we are by no means glued at the hip.
You don’t say that this loathing has ever ended. Now, in your thirties, do you still loathe being around people your age?