About AoC ISTM the issue in the latter posts is that the raising of the AoC in industrial, urbanized societies was not originally driven so much a result of religious posturing as it was by social reformers who viewed child-bridehood as a practice of backwards peoples. Many churches and “christian cultures” were fine with 13 y/o brides (hello, Jerry Lee Lewis) for what seems like ages.
(Even in more recent times you get changes in the social/cultural consensus with relatively little input from religion or social science. When the AoC around here was raised from 14 to 16, some justifications presented in terms of “as anybody knows” terms were that it would help curb teenage delinquency and pregnancy – no evidence presented of the rate of over-16s impregnating girls of 14 --, and that “most modern laws in other jurisdictions make it 16 and undercutting it sends the wrong message”. Not exactly rigorous scholarship, but there was no crusade from the churches either, they were more worried about what the law would say about gays.)
This is most likely a case of the law in question reflecting the traditional age among some part of the population for (arranged) child-bride marriage -- it may be just flat-out illegal in Yemen to have ANY nonmarital sex at all.
But alot of times I like younger women because like another poster said they’re new. They haven’t ruined their bodies from endless drinking every weekend. They don’t have issues due to failed relationships in their past.
As an aside, sometimes I wish the old me, when I was about 18 or 19, would come back. I have emotional issues due to some of the failures of my past and think I just may have been a more attractive person back then than I am now.
Basically, I feel that the “you’re too old” excuse when young women turn down older men is a bit disingenuous. It should be “given your level of success in life, you’re too old for me”
That’s one difference between men and women. A woman’s success usually does not make any difference in a mans’ assessment of her attractiveness:
e.g. in broad overgeneralizations:
Scenario A: 55 year-old man: How you doin’ ? 19 year-old girl: Eewww! You’re old enough to be my father. Get away from me you old letch! 55 year-old man: I’m worth 15 billion USD, and I own 6 mega corporations. 19 year-old girl: How you doin’ ?
Scenario B: 55 year-old woman: How you doin’ ? 19 year-old boy: Eewww! You’re old enough to be my mother. Get away from me you old hag! 55 year-old woman: I’m worth 15 billion USD, and I own 6 mega corporations. 19 year-old boy: Eewww! You’re old enough to be my mother. Get away from me you old hag!
Scenario B, take two:
55 year old woman: How you doin’?"
19 year old boy? Ewww! ect. Looks over Oh. You’ve kept yourself looking fit via age creams and some surgery. How you doin?
Doesn’t often happen, but then how often does a young woman meet a man worth billions?
Actually, a woman’s success does have an impact on her attractiveness- for the negative. Many times in my life, in many cultures (including our own US of A) I have heard young women advised not to pursue advanced degrees, etc. because it would hurt their prospects for marriage.
You see tons of relationships between lawyer men and teacher women. You don’t see a ton between lawyer women and teacher men. Why? Men are intimidated by successful women. Women are also expected to give up their career goals for the family, whereas men aren’t. A woman who would rather not do that is going to have difficulties finding a man who will accept that.
The question is not how often does a young woman meet a man worth billions, but, given that she meets a 55 year old man worth billions, what are the odds that she is interested?
And compare than to the odds that a young man is interested when he meets a 55 year old woman who has billions or who has “kept herself looking fit via age creams and some surgery”.
I don’t have any personal interest in the “right” answer – a 21 year old is too young for me, unless I become filthy rich.
It seems to me, though, it’s not only a question of psychology, but physiology, and maybe even more the latter than the former. When is the body ready for sex and childbearing? Apparently not immediately after puberty, if what someone upthread said is true – that very young women have and their infants have more serious health issues than older women.
How one would legislate this, I don’t have a clue.
Yes. Generally when adults going after teens happens, it’s b/c the adult is very emotionally stunted and only sees “pretty frosting” (to borrow from the pretty cake metaphore) They don’t understand the dynanmics of what makes a good healthy realtionship. Like they don’t understand that a woman may be overweight and not exactly a looker…but she might be freaking amazing to make love to.
Also teens in general vs adults are just so…different. I mean I’m kind of “young for my age”, but I can’t imagine dating someone who’s in high school, even an older high schooler.
Admittly I am in love with a girl who is eight years younger then I am (Im 29, she’s 21) However that’s really not a HUGE age gap.
I have changed a lot from when I was a young twentysomething…and I’m sure that a lot of other people would say the same thing.
For example a lot of the kids who were dating each other in college have since broken up, even thou they were in it hot and heavy. Only a very small percentage of kids I know who were couples in college have gotten married since then.
I also think it’s incredibily skeevy…People are all " Oh age is just a number!"
In high school, it came out that the jr high gym teacher was having sex with two girls. It had started in eighth grade, when we were 13-14. All I can say is…ewwwww. I may think someone’s cute or something…but I’m not gonna mistake that for “they’re the ONE!”
And it’s the traditional marriage age because that was how long a particular prophet* waited on his prepubescent bride. She had her first menses then, so it was determined to be okay for him to marry her.
Most followers of that prophet that I know of claim he didn’t commence relations with that wife until she was older.
*Name withheld to hopefully stem unenlightened debate on the subject. And “prophet” in this instance refers to someone claimed to be a prophet by a significant number of people.
When I just turned 18 I dated a 24 year old guy (and I was still living at home). I don’t think there was much difference between the time I was 17 and 18. I was done with high school and was working a job that had near-equal earning power to his. The relationship was equal, in part because he felt that the time he spent in the service had removed him from the dating pool to the point that he actually felt he had lost those years in terms of dating/relationship and civilian life savvy. We lived together for a little over a year.
When I was 19 I began my relationship with my son’s father. He was six years older than me. The relationship didn’t last, but it wasn’t because he was more worldly than me. It was because he was less mature and a “man whore”. He ended up marrying the babysitter, who was 15 (he was 30). They were together 15 years when he died. Dysfunctional for sure, but again…less to do with the gap and everything to do with the fact that he was a dick. The sexual aspect of the relationship had dwindled just a few years into their relationship.
I think the gap between a 20 year old and a 33 year old is probably too complex for it to last any length of time, but there are lots of exceptions out there that would disprove that theory.
Hmmm. When I was 26 I went out with an 18 year old. And I find a lot of the comments here to be absolute bullshit.
Was I unable to maintain a relationship with women my own age? Well my previous girlfriend had been 2 years younger than me and we had been together for almost 4 years. My following girlfriend was 3 months younger than me and lasted 18 months. So I’d say that kind of puts the kibosh on that idea.
Was I unable to get women my own age? Hell no. While it had been almost 18 months since my previous serious relationship I don’t think that’s not unusual given how long we had been together. And I had dated in that time, I just didn’t want to get any deeper with those women. Most of them called it off precisely because I didn’t want to get seriously involved.
Was I trolling schools looking for teenagers? I met her at a party. She was the ex-girlfriend of a friend of a friend from my rock climbing group. My friend was 23 at the time. His friend was ~21. The girl was 18. Nobody was trolling schools.
Did I go out of my way to chat her up? I initially dismissed because she was too young. We were both in a group conversation, then somehow the group dissipated and we were in a conversation on our own without me even noticing it. Even after that it took several months and several more encounters before she made a move on me. Only then did I re-evaluate things and realise that dismissing her because of her age was silly.
Was she capable only of discussing Britney Spears and Twighlight movies? Are you people serious? Is that all that you were capable of at that age. She was studying medicine (never did well enough to enrol in medicine but is currently a nursing specialist), and our shared interests ranged from politics to British comedy to hiking. Needles to we had lots to talk about.
Did my life experiences and money mean that I dominated the relationship? No more than any other relationship. I’ve had a fairly “interesting” life form early childhood. I rarely met people my own age that have the depth of experience that I had had by the age of 26, and even now it’s uncommon. I have only twice gone out with women that weren’t earning substantially less than me. That doesn’t mean that I dominated all my relationships does it?
Was I attracted to her because of some perceived “freshness? Compared to fellow 26 yos? That doesn’t even make sense. Innocence? In some ways she was more experienced than I was.
Was the relationship otherwise unequal? Not so as you’d notice. I admit I was a fairly immature 26 year old despite holding down a professional job with a lot of responsibility. It may have been the work responsibility that made me immature. I couldn’t be bothered being serious outside work hours. So we went out to the same places, shared the same circle of friends mostly. I have to admit I had much time for most of her friends her own age, but as already mentioned she had quite a few older friends and I quite a few younger, so it wasn’t major issue. And I’ve never got on with all of any partner’s friends.
Was I only in it for my own benefit? Nope. No way of objectively proving this of course.
Did either of us treat the relationship as a joke or become excessively involved? Nope, both of us seemed appropriately committed. We didn’t move in together. We didn’t spend every minute together but we weren’t just in it for sex either.
So I went out with a woman 8 years younger than myself. Lasted about 6 months. We had a lot of fun. She ended up cheating on me, but I can hardly blame that on the age difference.
Beats me what’s skeevy about that? Beats me. Why was I attracted to her? Well she was smart and pretty and fun and interesting. What’ not to be attracted to?
Why are men generally attracted to younger women? There are two reasons I think. Firstly because younger women are more fun. Most older women are so damn serious and so desperate to get into a relationship that it stops being enjoyable. Having said that I’m currently with a 33 yo woman who is a tonne of fun. But she’s very much the exception.
The second reason is biological. Younger women simply have more years of reproductive life. Time invested in developing a relationship with a 16yo will return 30 years of reproductive life. The same time invested in a 35 yo will return 10 years. That’s a pretty strong reason for men t favour younger women even without the decline in fertility with age.
Your 18yo daughter moved in with a 25 yo man against her parents expresses wishes and then became a drunk, a druggie and allowed him to repeatedly beat her. That speaks volumes about what your daughter had learned about her self worth and about making moral and relationship judgements in the preceeding 17 years. That’s all. No myths are implied.
Yeah, I’d heard the same thing and it seems to work out about right.
If you’re 16, you can date a 15 y.o.
21 -> 18.5
32 -> 23
50 -> 32
I’m 42 and while I can appreciate the physical attractiveness of women younger than 28, the minute they open their mouths (stop thinking that!) they immediately become unattractive. And teenagers all look way too young.
That’s so cool. I’ve heard of pickup lines – I didn’t know there was a pickup formula!
I can see this working pretty well. You walk up to an attractive woman and ask her age. Then you start scribbling on a notepad, or punching numbers into a calculator. When she asks what you are doing, you tell her you’re calculating her dateability. There is your icebreaker, right there.
I think this statement speaks volumes. You are correct. 30 something women tend to be looking for someone more serious so they can raise a family. But a lot of 30 something guys still haven’t grown up so aren’t looking for a woman who wants to settle down. Ergo, they seek out younger women.
There are plenty of older women who are fun to hang out with though.
One you graduate college, people aren’t moving through life lock-step together one year at a time. In the work force, I routinely interact with people age 22 through mid 40s and older. When I go to a bar with my friends, I don’t know if the girl I’m talking to is 25 or 35. I know I’ve even encountered teenagers who either had fake IDs or the bar just didn’t check.
I would agree it had nothing to do with “can’t get a girl his own age”. That doesn’t even make sense. You can date an 18 year old but not a 30 year old?
I don’t think it’s so much “can’t *get *a girl his own age”, as “can’t *keep the interest of *a girl his own age”. It certainly doesn’t apply to everyone who dates younger women, but it applies to some of them.
Well, you said “or even a 20-something”. I’d certainly agree that teenage girls have no idea how to give head, but I wouldn’t say the same about 22-year-old girls.
Keep in mind that for the vast majority of humanity’s existence, the life span was maybe 30 years. As soon as a female became sexually mature, at around 12 to 13, she became a potential mate. That way, she would become pregnant, have the baby and be around to raise it until it reached sexual maturity, and then die off and get out of the way for the next generation.
It’s only been…what, 6 or 7 centuries or so…that we have lived longer than that. It’s hard to overcome a million years of biological conditioning in that short a time.
When I was in the military, I also worked at a pizzeria. One of my coworkers was a the wife of a sergean major (but not in my organization). They had a 17 year old daughter. I was 25 or 26.
Yeah, you think you have an inkling of where this is going, but it’s not.
My coworker – the mother – made a real, real effort to hook us up. The father must have agreed, because sometimes they’d order pizza and ask for me to deliver.
So, I agreed to take her out. I felt like a cradle robber the entire time. She was into me, and I was getting into her, but the fact of her age just made me uncomfortable. Our first date was to see a movie based on a video game; I was into foreign movies at the time. She talked about her high school friends; I was a soldier with an electronics profession. She was into high school stuff; I was an adult. In the end, we didn’t “break up,” but just kind of stopped seeing each other. We were from two, entirely different worlds.
Of course, that applies to relationships. Now that I’m older and have more non-technical self-confidence, I see young chicks and think to myself, “man, I’d bang her. I bet could, too.” There’s no sense of wanting a relationship; there’s no way that’d work. It’d be all about two consenting people wanting to get hot with each other. On the other hand, I don’t rise to the challenge, because a temporary, fun thing in no way is comparable to a loving marriage with a woman who thinks, can express herself, can share experiences, and is a true partner. My wife is older than I am, and if she were 18 again, she’d probably be called a cradle-robber. There’s no way that I’m going to tell her about this thread, though!
