Ok, I met this couple… they weren’t married, she was 17 and pregnant (due to give birth just before she turned 18). They were quite open in discussing the fact that they’d been together since she was 12, and that he’d taken her virginity at age 13, that both of them had a lot of other partners over the years because they kept breaking up - however they thought it hilarious that they’d always cheated on every other boyfriend/girlfriend they’d had, with each other.
Obviously, you’re not thinking “Couple of the Year”, these people were rather awful, but it gets better - or should I say, worse.
The guy cheated on her nine times while she was pregnant - one for every month! In one case, he used the baby as a sob-story to pick up a girl he met through his girlfriend! He also convinced her to hock everything she owned - to buy him cigarettes. When their baby came along, they were back together, but between them didn’t own a stick of furniture, nor an article of clothing for the baby. He hit her, and smashed the bedroom door in the house she was visiting (MY house! My stupid roommate invited her to stay), and since he wasn’t supposed to be in the house, she had to make up a story about someone else doing it (got very complicated). There was a lot of really bad stuff going on, too much to detail here.
Hate this guy? Prepare to hate him more. He was eight years older than she was. He had sex with a 13 year old virgin when he was 21 years old.
Not to seem argumentative (although I probably will anyway)… but at some point, do you ever feel like you’re something of an enabler? I mean, if this guy can be a complete sh*t but still can count on his friend or friends to always stick by him… Let me start over. Most of us, hopefully, have a sense of personal integrity that keeps us from doing things that are morally or legally wrong. But even where that is lacking, the threat of losing others’ respect for oneself can do a lot to fill in the holes. If I cheated on my husband, I know my friends would kick my ass and possibly stop speaking to me. Whether or not they intend it to be punishment (they might do it just because they are sickened and don’t want to know me while I’d do such a thing), it would be punishment from my perspective. Not that I need disincentive on this particular screwup, but I can assure you losing my friends would be a big one.
I guess that makes me sound like I’m arguing that we are all our brothers’ keepers–but I guess I feel that we all make up some sort of social fabric that enforces our mores. When you disregard other’s bad behavior, you’re not enforcing those mores.
Yumanite, that’s a tough question. Obviously, it’s not as if it’s terrible to have sex with a 17-yr-old but okey dokey to have sex with her/him on his/her 18th birthday. That’s just an arbitrary distinction between whether or not it’s actually legal. (I was once kicked out of bed for being 17, he was 19, we were both in college.)
And it’s not just the age difference, because I see nothing wrong with a 50-yr-old having sex with a 40-yr-old. It’s that one participant is a grown man and one is a teenager.
When I was in my second or third year of college, and was 18 or 19, I remember once driving by a high school near campus and thinking to myself, “I could totally score with these high school boys. It would be so easy.” This is because I had that much more experience in the wide world than they did, and that much more confidence, due to having more adult responsibilities. I could have predicted every move they would make. But even at that time I realized it would have been unfair to the high school boy, and I wouldn’t have done it. That’s me. By the time I was in my mid-20’s there’s no way I would even have considered taking such unfair advantage. It would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. So it amazes and disappoints me that a full-grown adult will move in on a young person. I realize that everybody matures at different rates, but I think it’s fair to say that in general, high-school age kids are not adults. My personal feeling that 21-yr-olds are, generally speaking, the absolute upper edge of being too young to be considered full-grown adults, although there are exceptions.
The fact that older people poaching on younger ones is very widespread doesn’t make it any more acceptable in my mind. Now, once people turn 22, I say they’re fair game.
That’s my humble opinion. Maybe we should start a thread on how old you have to be to be a grown-up.
There’s no way I could be friends with Badtz Maru’s friend, if I knew what Badtz Maru knows about him. Maybe I have friends that are just as bad, but I don’t know it.
A WAG about older guys and young gals: Most men have had horrible experiences when it comes to dating / wooing a girl. While a 20-something female might consider high school boys easy prey, a 20-something male might consider high school girls as unattainable as any female. Regardless of actual “power” in such a relationship, an older guy might not feel that he has an advantage at all, much less an unfair one.
Anyway, my rant is about one of my roommates. She’s a slut. Nothing wrong with that. If she wants to sleep with every other guy at her place of employment, that’s her choice. What gets me is that she knowingly lies to them. She’ll be seeing two or three (or sometimes four) guys at once, and I hear her talking on the phone to one of them about how no, honey, there isn’t anyone else. You’re the only one. Blah blah blah. Lie lie lie. It makes me sick when I think about how I would feel if I were one of those guys. I’ve been tempted to pick up the phone during one of her lie-fests and tell the guy point-blank that she’s lying to him and that she’s seeing (and screwing) several other guys.
Living with her makes me so paranoid about having a relationship with anyone. I keep fearing that I’m being duped as well.
Your response illuminates why you disapprove of the husband, and I can certainly understand that. However, it seems to me that you have to make a large number of assumptions about such a relationship in order to place a moral judgement on it. It was already mentioned that you don’t really even know if they were having sex when she was 17. Also, you have know way of knowing whether he took advantage of her lower maturity level – although it is a possibility, and certainly likely, it is not really fair to jump to that conclusion, given the lack of evidence.
You asked in the OP if you are being too uptight. I think you are, because you are basing your judgement on conclusions which you’ve drawn too quickly. I would agree that it would be difficult to like a wife beater, or a man who preys upon younger women, or any other kind of rotten person, but hearing that they MIGHT have done something bad (or even that they probably did), or assuming a worst case scenario for them and then disliking them on that basis is uptight and potentially harmful.
I realize that you are not going out of your way to dislike people based on hearsay – you are just having an emotional response which is understandable. As long as you do not let it affect how you treat the person, no one has the right to force you to think differently. If I were you, though, I would try to be aware of the basis for my feelings and try not to let them get out of hand if they are not firmly grounded in fact. Innocent until proven guilty – that sort of thing.
I imagine that you are already doing this, or you wouldn’t be concerned enough to write the OP. Anyway, just my perspective – I intend no offense and apologize if any was given inadverdently.
FWIW (not much)I find it hard to make the distinction between social disapproval and things that could/should be tactfully ignored. It’s tricky and I don’t have any answers but I DO believe that some things merit social disapproval.
Most times I pointedly ignore anything relating to the sex lives of strangers because it’s none of my business and I DON’T want to know. If they’re politely going about their lives, more power to 'em. The ones I resent are exhibitionists who hold strangers as a hostage audience to their bedroom activities. They’re trolling for reactions–shock? approval? judgement?–and it’s tedious as hell. (A look of polite boredom comes in handy.)
But some things DESERVE “the cut direct”. Example: (a few details changed for the sake of prudence) A very successful local man is a known, ajudicated batterer. His poor, zombie wife is still with him, usually with barely concealed bruises, casts, etc. Their teenage son was a suicide; their teenage daughter has been hospitalized multiple times for anorexia, among other other things.
Yes, he’s probably mentally ill. Yes, the system has failed. But the fact remains that he’s a wealthy, prominent, violent, abusive jerk who’s still wreaking utter havoc with his family. He makes my skin crawl. I’ve turned my back rather than greet him or shake his hand. No matter the “why”, WHAT he’s done and is still doing is wrong beyond my ability or wish to ignore it. IMO granting him even ordinary civility is too damned close to condoning his behavior.
I’m muddled on this and may be wrong. It’s as much a visceral reaction as an intellectual/moral choice. But there ya got it, for whatever murk it spreads on the discussion.
Not really, as I don’t believe I could do anything to change his ways. I did help convince him to quit smoking crack, but I was just a contributing factor to that, he was already getting really tired of that scene and what it was doing to his life. His cheating and occasional physical altercations with his wife are an ingrained part of him, though - he doesn’t see anything wrong with cheating on his wife because she cheated on him once near the beginning of their marriage, and when it comes to the fighting he’s somewhat justified - his wife gives as well as she takes, and he’s never given her a beating, just hit her once (after which he has to leave because she would probably kill him otherwise). Their culture has a lot to do with it, too - he’s Mexican, she’s a Cajun, that’s just asking for trouble. 8^)
