I have some friends who have a 16 year old daughter. She is cute, but never dated. In our extended circle is a 21 year old guy. He is very socially awkward and youngish, but a senior is college. He has also never dated, and had never even kissed a girl. He is a great kid. Really nice and respectful.
Well over the months we noticed the 2 of them spending a lot of time together. We suspected they liked each other, but they denied it. He was staying at the girl’s house, with the parents permission until 2am sime nights (even school nights).
Fast forward and now they are “seeing each other”. The girl told her mom that they had been making out. The dad found out and was furious. The mom told her just not to let her father hear of it again. Yeah - weird I know.
But the dad called me today and was asking my opinion. On one hand, we know this 21 year old, and he is harmless as far as wooing the ladies. If she wasn’t dating him, she would be seeing some horn-dog 17 year old who would be trying for the panties on a regular basis.
The dad wonders why he isn’t interested in girls his own age…
But the ultimate question - how weird is the 21/16 thing?
It’s not a weird age gap, and in fact larger age gaps were and are common. Where it becomes weird is the different stages of life the two are in. Most people would not think it strange at all if a 40 year old man was dating a 35 year old woman–5 years just isn’t a huge gap.
The reason this is weird, in my opinion, is because the two are in very different life stages. A 40 year old man and a 35 year old woman are both at about the same place in life, they’ve been out of their parent’s wing for a long time and are both “middle aged.”
With a 16 year old and a 21 year old, one is still a minor from a legal standpoint. Meaning she isn’t really allowed to make decisions on her own, she hasn’t truly become an “adult.” I’ll be honest though, some people age and mature slower than others and some faster. I think most 16 year olds aren’t really ready to be in a serious relationship, and I think most 21 year olds who are interested in 16 year olds are interested because on some level (even if it isn’t an intentional, thought out process) they recognize a 16 year old girl is probably much more easily manipulated than one their own age.
At the same time, some 21 year olds may just be very immature and ill-developed for their age, and it sounds like that may be the case with this kid. It honestly sounds like to me they both might be emotionally at the same age, which makes it seem less “weird” to me, but at the same time I do feel the 21 year old should be more mature at his age–but he wouldn’t be the first person at that age I’ve heard about/known who is still for all purposes a child.
Until very recently that would apply to homosexual intercourse between parties of any age.
I’m not really against the concept of statutory rape, but I do think that most civilized countries and many states set the age limit at around 16 for a reason. The 18 year old age limit to me is more of a recourse for angry parents than a real cutoff to protect children.
The parents shouldn’t have let their 16-year-old daughter have a 21-year-old guy over the house if they didn’t like the idea of a 21-year-old guy having sex with their daughter. They were being naive.
If the daughter admitted to “making out”, the reality is probably that he has violated her at least three different ways.
A 16-year-old is too young for any 21-year-old, regardless of gender or level of social skills.
IMO, sufficiently weird if I were the parent of the girl - heck, probably if I were his parent as well.
Sure, 5 years down the line a 5-year diff wouldn’t matter. And there might be a few instances of extremely worldly 16 y-os. But I’d find it sufficiently odd to be problematic for most high schoolers to be dating someone he/she did not at least meet in HS. So the extreme would probably be for a HS freshman to be dating a HS senior - then the next year you could have a college Sr. dating a HS freshman. Or maybe a HS Jr. or Sr. could start dating a college Fresh/soph.
But I would likely share the guy’s parents concerns of why he isn’t seeing girls his own age. And with a 16 y-o there is the whole statutory rape thing.
Days like today I’m really glad to be old. I dated college boys when I was in high school, as did many of my friends. It wasn’t weird then, but its apparently unacceptable today.
This wasn’t uncommon in my high school years either. Note this was in the early 70s, and a frequent complaint of high school guys was that a lot of the girls were only interested in college men. Now, a senior in college dating a 16 year old would have still been a bit out of the ordinary, but it was very common for Freshman/Sophomores in college to date high school girls. Usually most guys who were at the 21 year old age range had already more or less become engaged or married.
When I was 16 I was dating a 19-year-old. We started dating when I was 15 and he was 18 (HS freshman and senior). That said, it was about the maximum age gap without getting skeevy, IME. The girls my age who were dating guys older than that were usually headed for trouble. (Possibly b/c that made the guys legal to drink, now that I think about it…)
Although it’s certainly possible that they are having intercourse, they may not be. Some guys are capable of understanding that a 16 year old virgin who has never dated is not someone to rush or pressure if they genuinely care for her.
I think if I were the parents I’d sit the girl down for a serious talk about the consequences of sex, including the legal consequences for him. A 16 year old girl dating for the first time may not know a lot of stuff. Then I’d start providing the appropriate level of supervision for a 16 year old dating for the first time–which does not include 2am makeout sessions. If he’s still interested in dating her when it involves things like family dinners and an 11pm curfew, then let young love run its course.
A five-year age gap is not necessarily a big deal, depending on the age of the people involved. At 21/16, there’s definitely something weird going on. Anybody who’s 21 (almost done with college) and dating a 16-year-old (still in high school) has some serious personality issues or they’d be dating someone closer to their own age/maturity/life experience level. Which seems to describe your friend to a T–“socially awkward and youngish.”
So remember, kids–instead of being flattered when you’re in high school and someone college-age or older asks you out, think to yourself, “What is wrong with them that they’re not dating people in their peer group?”
I don’t think I qualify as old, and I’m also confused by all of this. At 16 I was dating a 20 year-old man, and I just don’t see how that extra year is all that big a deal. Perhaps the legal ability to buy alcohol is a factor, but that doesn’t seem to be an argument being made in this thread.
I don’t know where the “skeevy” line is drawn, but for me this isn’t it.
I think that he’s too old for her and she’s too young for him. I believe the “Half your age plus or minus 7 years” standard for what age range is ok to date is a good rule of thumb for what’s appropriate.
Many teen pregnancies are caused by adult men. Just because this 21 year old is socially awkward doesn’t mean his sex drive is not just as high as a more experienced guy, so if the parents are going to let her keep seeing him they should put the girl on birth control. They shouldn’t kid themselves that a 21 year old is necessarily any less horny or potentially reckless than a teenaged boy would be.
Concur with most of what’s been said. Five years is nothing for most adults, but when the parties involved are 16 and 21, it gets creepy. My husband is 10 years older than I am, but it’s nothing because we’re both old. Sometimes, though, we’ll get into a conversation about what happened in year X, and it’ll come up that when he was in college, I was still in elementary school. We get a chuckle out of it. Our age gap is fine now, but had he been hitting on me when he was 18…
As a (recently turned) 22-year-old male, I’d say this is a little unusual. It usually shows a lot more about the older party’s maturity, in my experience. My friends and I see girls that young as basically children. I just can’t see the appeal of dating someone like that, and all the guys I know who have dated that young tend to be (a) unable to get action elsewhere or (b) have sort of frozen their emotional development at the end of high school. One acquaintance, for example, graduated from high school, kept the job he had over the summers during high school, and stayed around all his high school friends (who were living in a similar pattern). Five years out, he was still interested in high-school girls because his life had sort of stopped developing there.
I’ve seen this sort of thing before, and I’d say it’s not very weird, just a little. Without knowing anything other than the ages, I’d say the dude is immature. Well, looks like he is.
It’s probably not a sustainable relationship, and while I think the parents should keep an eye on them, I also think it’ll fall apart without interference and (hopefully!) both will be a little wiser.
The thing is, us humans have been through times, fairly recently in social evolution terms, where this was completely normal; back the frontier days when women were in short supply and frequently died in childbirth.
I knew a girl, who, when she was 30, dated a guy of 17. They eventually got married, had me, and stayed together until his death. Where did they go wrong?