In particular, I am interested in hearing about people’s real life experiences of dating or marrying someone where one half of the couple was a kid when you first met and the other was an adult. I’m not talking about pedophilia…I mean, for instance, a situation where an 18 or 20 year old came to know an unrelated 6 year old (child of a friend or something), watched them grow up and then dated them when they were grown up and perfectly legal.
I’ve always been interested by people’s reactions to this sort of relationship. I’ll say more about what I think/where I’m coming from if the topic doesn’t sink like a stone.
These are people I know, not first-person experiences, which is probably what you want, and not huge age differences either.
In the first case it was 7 years I think, but when I was in 8th grade we had a practice teacher, doing his last semester before becoming a real teacher. Marnie was 14, and not particularly mature for that age, and she fell madly in love with him, and six years later she married him. (She was not the only one of us in love with him, either.)
Actually there was lots of stuff in between–he went into the army for two years, she went off to college where she dated a football player and some guy in a rock ‘n’ roll band. But in the end they got together and, 37 years later, they’re still together.
Essentially the same thing happened to my aunt, but my uncle had graduated from high school at 15 so the age difference was less and they met when my aunt was 16 and he was 19. He was teaching at her school, though.
For whatever reason, once I turned 28, every woman I’ve dated has been 8-10 years younger than me. I haven’t set out to do this, mind you-- they tend to look older than they are, and I look younger I really am, so when we first start seeing each other, we assume we’re much closer in age. (33-about-to-turn-34 now, dating a woman who turned 25 a couple of days ago.) A few times, in discussion early in the dating process, we’ll realize that we’ve crossed paths earlier.
The weirdest was when one young lady remembered me as “the nice candy shop guy” from her childhood memories of going candy shopping with her grandparents when she was 5 and I was 15. (We dated when she was 18 and I was 28-- we initially had guessed each other’s ages as being 23/24.) I actually remembered her from then, too, and was really uncomfortable when she began excitedly telling her family that she was dating the candy store guy. The relationship was fine, otherwise, and we’re still close friends despite the romantic side sputtering to a halt.
A couple of others remember me from social or retail things, when I was 18-20 and they were 8-12 or so. Oddly enough, I’m usually the only one uncomfortable with the age discrepancy. Others, including their friends/family, will bring up things like “oh, she had such a crush on you when she was a little girl!” and then suggest that it’s time I reciprocate that crush. Kinda weird.
Those that I didn’t know will still bring up odd things that make me feel creepy; they like bringing up things like “gee, I was only 8 when you started your current job!” or, a couple of years ago when my first cat was still alive, “funny, your cat is older than me!”
My stepfather’s stepfather married a woman he knew when he was an adult and she was a child. He was 30-40 years older than her–I don’t remember the exact number. He was a relatively wealthy man (accumulating money through his seven previous marriages) and I have to think that she thought he would die in a few years and she’d get his money. But he didn’t die soon, he lived longer than anybody would have thought, and he was quite an unpleasant man. Which proves the old adage, “If you marry for money, you’ll work for it.”
I do remember him telling creepy stories about knowing her as a little girl and a teenager. shudder
There hae been other threads on this, too, I know, so maybe a Search will come up with them. There are a lot of these relationships over here, of course. I’m only two years older than my Thai wife, but I know quite a few May-December matches myself.
Also, I had one grandfather who was born in 1876. He had my father late in life. Married late, too, apparently, because I think my grandmother (his wife) was born when he was in his mid-20s. They got married when she was around 18 or 20, so he would have been about mid-40s at the time.
A pastor I knew when I was a kid met his wife when she was twelve years old.
He was about thirty at the time.
She says that she took one look at him, young as she was, and knew she’d marry him.
He says that he knew that he’d “wait for her.”
They began dating when she was 18, and were married within two years.
At the time I met them, she was in her late 30’s, so I guess it worked for them.
If this were a novel, I can see how it could create a certain magical “fateful” romance–two souls who were intended for each other somehow “recognizing” each other–but in reality, the idea of a 30 year old guy seeing a twelve year old girl and thinking, “I’m gonna marry her when she’s legal” is a bit…I don’t want to say “icky,” but it’s a bit odd, at least. I don’t have a problem with it, and obviously it was a successful marriage.
But it’s just kinda weird, IMHO.
Now if you just happen to run across your future wife when she’s a kid, and then run into her later on in life…that’s a bit different. Coincidental, and thus not as weird as “waiting for her to grow up.”
A friend of mine taught middle school and later high school (he’s since retired). He had a student in middle school who was highly intelligent, compassionate and shared his somewhat unusual religious faith. He was impressed with her then but didn’t really think much about it until he ran into her again when she was a sophomore. He was in his early fifties. He found himself attracted to her and sensed she had a school girl crush on him. He saw a situation that could easily get out of control. He asked her parents and the principal to meet with him–confessed his feelings, his “good intentions,” and asked for their help and guidance.
Here’s one example of how the next two years went: It was impossible to prevent her from taking his classes (he was the only advanced history teacher). But they arranged for a student teacher/teaching assistant for that class so that he was never alone with her.
When she turned 18 her senior year, he spoke to her and they both acknowledged the chemistry and decided to explore the relationship. She was relieved to understand some of the odd behavior of her parents.
We went to dinner with them as a couple around the time of her high school graduation. It was odd since she was younger than our children and he was older than us. But it was also very clear that they cared about each other. He (and her parents) insisted she go to college, which she did. They dated for several years. I don’t know that the age issue was a problem in and of itself. I think the issue became one of “control.” She came to resent other people making decisions for her–even the fact that he told her parents he loved her before he told her, his insistence that she finish college before they could marry, etc. I remember her crying and saying he was the perfect man for her–she just wished she could meet him five years in the future.
For what it’s worth, Joe was a very handsome man and she was only average looking. The attraction included significant intellectual elements (she was a brilliant student and they both had shared deep faith). He has never married. I have lost track of her.
My dad was 25 and my mom was 17 when they married. This was in 1948 and no one thought it odd (as far as I can tell). We just celebrated their 60th anniversary.
This might not be what you’re looking for, but my grandparents are 20 years apart in age and have been married about 20 years now. They married when she was just turning 20 and he was in his 40s. She had two young babies and he had three older kids, so my Mom and Grandma are just a couple years apart in age, and I have a 29 year old aunt and had a 30 year old uncle. It makes for a weird family dynamic, but their age has never really been a factor in their relationship. My grandma’s behaved like a grandma probably since before I was born!
I really just came into this thread to say that there are a lot of romance novels based on the OPs premise, and it always mildly skeeves me out though I can’t explain why.
My husband’s family lives right on the edge of the Junior High I went to. My friend and I would smoke on the side of his house right before going into school each day. On the way home we’d see this really cool older guy (11 years older) working on his really cool car. That was my husband, who I didn’t meet until 8 years later and didn’t begin dating for another 12 years after that. The rest, as they say, is history.
I’m sure I posted about this before, but here goes.
My dad is eighteen years older than my stepmom. He grew up next door to her mother (they were very good friends their whole lives, and still get along rather well considering. More on that in a moment.) My dad lived in the house he grew up in for most of his life, and at the time he and my mother divorced, neighbor’s daughter - my future stepmom - was still a kid, only 12. A year later, my parents tried to make a go of it again, and stayed together for another 8 years. During this time, future stepmom had grown up considerably into a gorgeous blonde with a perfect figure, and when my parents split for good, she admitted to my dad that she’d had a crush on him for basically the entire time since she was 12. (After the first split, my dad spent considerable amounts of time next door, drowning his sorrows in the company of friends.)
They became romantically involved, and married, much to the chagrin of her mother, who had had a crush on my dad for their whole lives. In the end, everyone was happy, as my stepmom’s mother saw how in love they were, and she accepted that they really are a perfect couple.
It’s been 17 years now since they married, and they are still as much in love as they were back then. Lots of people give them a hassle about the age difference, but they joke about it themselves. A year or so ago, I remember going shopping with both of them, and they were getting a few strange looks from other shoppers. Never one to miss an opportunity to screw with people, Dad looked at my stepmom, said “Get over here and give Daddy a kiss,” and proceeded to kiss her very passionately and with much obvious tongue.
Maybe not exactly what you’re looking for, but I once dated a girl who was seven years younger than me. We didn’t formally meet until she was 18, but we later figured out that I had visited her 5th grade history class as a guest of her teacher when I was a senior in high school. She remembered me making an appearance (I was giving the teacher a “Star Teacher” award), but I didn’t remember her.
It was sort of uncomfortable thinking about that early brush with my future sweetie.
When I transferred to a Kentucky high school my sophomore year, I was surprised to find one female classmate who’d actually talk to me easily. Turns out I was no sexual threat to her, she was married. (IMO, the others didn’t talk to me as readily for fear that I may misread the attention as attraction).
16 years old, her husband was 42. You need parental permission to marry before 18 in KY so her parents were in on the deal. Very strange, I thought.
A couple years later, he husband was arrested for child molestation (with other than his wife). I don’t know the results of the trial.
It’s not at all romantic, but one of my best friends is a former student: he’s 20 now, and was 16 when he was in my class. I am 31. His home situation was really really crappy, and I served in a sort of mentorship role–something all teachers do. Somehow from that it developed into a real friendship. There is still a bit of a “big sister” dynamic to it, but less of that every year–by the time he graduates from college I imagine that will be gone entirely. Of course, at that point he may be gone entirely, as I suspect he’ll end up at law school in some other city, but that will be ok. I joke that all my friends were teachers so I had to grow a non-teacher friend myself!
As someone who’s dated women anywhere from my age +13 to my age -12, I follow this phenomenon with some interest.
It strikes me that the older the man is, the less likely the relationship will be a good one, while the older the woman is, the less likely there will even be a relationship.
Of course it all depends on the individuals. The closer in mental and emotional age they are, I think, the better it will be, because they will be closer to being equals rather than falling into the groove of Mom/son, Dad/daughter, or toy/player with toy.
I do think that more than 8-10 years is pushing it for people who have “traditional” gender and marital values - and no difference which partner is the older.
I posted this thread for two reasons. First of all, this has interested me for a long time because I have had people react badly when they find out a story like this from my family, where the girl was 14 and the man was 20 (he was friends with the family who lived next door to her.) Even though they never dated until the girl was 18, people have gotten all creeped out by this.
The second reason is that I am writing a story about this sort of situation – a man who is much older (this is a story with supernatural elements, so much, much older, like 200 years old) falling in love with a girl he has known since she was born (the daughter of a friend.) I am interested to see what people’s experience with situations like this were, and it seems about what I thought so far – high probability of creepiness, but not 100 percent creepy. My story is a bit more on the “possibility of creepy” side on the surface, since he is basically the only male the little girl knows (her biological father died before she was born, and she’s been raised in hiding by her mom and a female friend because of bad people who want to hurt her – there’s a long backstory) and he helps her mother homeschool her by teaching her science, since that’s his field of expertise (he’s a doctor and medical researcher.) Because of the weird looks I get about my family members’ comparatively mild situation, I was interested in collecting people’s experiences of actual large age disparities and how they work out.
Manda JO, you can take this as a compliment: from your posts I would have easily pegged you as mid-forties or older; your posts always exude an incredible degree of maturity and worldly experience.
