From your responses, it sounds like you are finding the upside of the overwhelming negative responses. Is there a back story to your original question?
There are things you learn only through age. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how emotionally mature you are. Some things only come with living year after year.
And it’s not only the older person doing the chasing. I have worked with young people (under 20) and they actively persue older people.
But the thing is these people pretty much have issues. Or they want things. If a person who is 15 tells me, “I’m too mature, I can’t relate to people my own age.” That kid has issues. You should be able to relate to your peer group.
This isn’t to say love between ages, can’t happen, can’t be workable or even real. It can be for sure. But when age gaps are sought out to exclusitivity then you know something is not right somewhere.
People also tend to make the same mistake in the other direction. People with positive experiences in similar relationships often say “well I was 29 when I met my wife, who was 16, and we’ve been together 50 years, so how bad could that be?” They don’t realize that it’s not necessary to impugn or invalidate their own 50 year relationship in order to conclude that* in general* relationships with large age differences are ill advised. One specific positive relationship, even if true, doesn’t imply that they are positive in general. In fact, for many reasons they’re better off avoided.
If a person who’s 38 and a person who’s 18 form a relationship (just to make up some hypothetical ages) then presumedly the two people involved are looking for a relationship based on greatly different levels of life experience. And that can’t be the basis for a long-term relationship. When the older person is 48 will he or she still be interested in a relationship with a 28 year old? A 28 year old is no longer going to have the same qualities of innocence that he or she had as a teenager. And the 48 year old will no longer appear as the older and wiser mentor that presumedly attracted the teenager’s interest. The relationship was between a youth and an adult - now it’s between two adults.
There have been people who have come to this board in the past in order to talk about and defend their attraction for minors.
I don’t really understand why people are so negative about it. It doesn’t seem to me that the stereotypes usually apply very well.
But then, I’m in a LTR with a man 17 years older than I, and we started dating when I was 19. There have been zero issues re: the age difference. Of course, he’s a really good guy, we went into the relationship with similar intentions, and I made sure I was confident of that before I got even a little serious with him.
You seem to be assuming that the only thing that attracted the youth and the adult originally were their specifically youthful and mature traits.
It’s true that the thread hasn’t kept stricly to the OP and people have commented not along about the OP but on the topic of older vs younger.
The OP was talking about a minor* over the age of consent. In a lot of places, this would mean 16-17. Would you have the same opinion of a 36 year old man having a relationship with a 16 or 17 year old woman?
I cannot say that 16/36 would always be bad, but there’s something iffy or strongly suspicious about it.
- The majority being 18 in the overwhelming majority of US states.
I would in no way qualify the responses as overwhelmingly negative. The question was it innately inappropriate and I would say most agree it is not innately inappropriate.
I understand. That was not my intent. My intent is to understand why people find it so inappropriate.
Good to hear. I know they exit, but people are so slanted against them.
Thanks for the clarification, but the question is why do you assume it must always be bad?
It’s in degrees.
If an 18-year old was dating a 17-year old (here in AZ the age of consent is 18) I wouldn’t be bothered at all. If a 30-year old is dating a 17-year old, it’s a completely different story.
The threads started by people wanting to discuss the possibility of a relationship between them and someone who is not necessarily underage, but much younger than the OP. This younger person is incredibly smart and well-read and witty and should have their own chat show and so forth. And perhaps they are all those things, but that doesn’t mean much the first time something happens like the guy not calling when he said he would.
The question was why people find them inappropriate not simply your opinion.
It doesn’t require an age difference for a guy not to call.
I meant that an 18 y/o woman might react in a different way from how a 38 y/o woman would.
I’m not picking on you, and I think you are an interesting poster. But I think you may still not have as much perspective on this as you could. You are still quite young and very invested in the relationship.
I spent my early twenties in long-term-relationships with people who were not older than me, but certainly more mature, and at the time it seemed like a great plan. Now that I have more perspective, I’ve realized how much I stunted myself. I let too much of my still-developing emotional growth get wrapped up in another person when I needed to be making myself whole and complete. Instead of doing the experiences that you can only do as a young adult, I chose to do the one thing (playing house) that I have the rest of my life to do. And frankly I wasted a lot of sexual currency that I can’t get back- if I had any idea of the adventures i could have had and the interesting people I could have been meeting, my life would have been so different. Anyway, sowing your wild oats is a lot less fun at 30- when so many men are in relationships or married and you’ve picked up some wrinkles- than it would be at 23 when men were basically on the same page.
Anyway, in general I would advise young people to avoid overly serious relationships. There is plenty of time for that, but only one time to be young.
And I’m saying that people don’t find them inherently inappropriate.
Two 17 year olds are dating. One is a few months older and turns 18 and the pair continue dating. Now he’s a child molester, right?
People find the extreme relationships (30-40 to 16, 17, 18) inappropriate because it’s an adult with years of experience dating an inexperienced child. Whether the law declares a person to be beyond the age of consent is irrelevant. If murder was made legal that wouldn’t change my moral outrage in regards to murder.
If you don’t understand, we can’t tell you.