Age Gaps

[Magdlyn]

NYCindie, I love your post and can relate to it! I feel sorry for your friend with her rigid views! Ugh.

So funny, the guy I've been seeing since January, casually, has told me he needs to take time away for various personal and family reasons. He is 69 but does not have his shit together in many ways, and he knows it. sigh...

So on Saturday I messaged a cute, very cool seeming, married poly 34 year old guy on OKC. He responded immediately and very favorably, and even asked me out for the same night! But his dad is, sadly, dying and he needed to drive back to Maine to the hospice with his wife and child early the next morning. He wanted a break from the madness, but I was also tired so I declined. So he is on the back burner.

However, that same day, 2 other 34 year olds also got in touch with me! One I had chatted with before, but I let him go when I was dating the two other guys this year. So we have been texting a lot over the weekend and will meet on Thursday.

The other one is new to me, and one of those "old souls". His profile states he prefers older people, even platonically, to those in his age group. He told me how interesting and beautiful I am. We had some nice exchanges in text, and we are going to dinner tonight.

 

[YouAreHere]

I sometimes feel that 18-20-year olds are silly even if they are tecnically grow up. [...] they think going to IKEA to buy their first furniture is exiting

Whoa, whoa, whoa... back up a minute. I'm 44, and I still think of IKEA as an amusement park. But I live in the US, and the closest one is over an hour away, so I only tend to go every now and then.



I dunno... I see a wide range of differences, from the younger hires at the company who are bright and mature, to folks at my high school reunion who never seemed to move on from high school.

That said, I'm not really attracted to young (20-something) guys, and physical attractiveness doesn't really do it for me as much as having a connection with them on a personal level does.

 

[Reverie]

My views on this have changed over time. For a long time, I didn't see anything weird about relationships with large age gaps, hooking up with an 18-year-old at 14 (a large gap for that age range) and a 24-year-old when I was 16, and having 2.5-year relationships with a 30-year-old when I was 19 and a 36-year-old when I was 22. I'd just always had older friends and dated older and didn't think much of it. People my own age seemed much less attractive to me.

But as I got older myself, I started to realize that a lot of the people my own age (especially guys) who go after much younger people do have a certain "creep factor" to them. This is not true of everyone, but it does seem to be true of a lot of them. Either they are valuing physical beauty over intellectual development, or they are looking for someone who will overlook their own immaturity, or they want to have the power in the relationship and to be able to manipulate someone impressionable. Simply put, people their own age would not put up with their crap, so they date younger. Of course, there are exceptions—my own boyfriend is involved with someone 14 years younger, and he's totally not creepy...he will date older or younger or same age or whatever.

As for me, I have a pretty hard rule where I don't date under the age of 28. It's not even necessarily a gap thing (though I guess maybe it might turn out to be if the floor raises as I get older) and more like I feel like people seem to hit some sort of life-crisis at 27 or 28 that makes them examine themselves and be a lot more adult after it sinks in, and I am really only attracted to people with that level of self-awareness and perspective. I have recently kissed and been attracted to a 23-year-old woman, but I don't think I'd ever have actual sex with her or try to date her; a kiss at a party is harmless fun. I'm sure there are a few people in the world who could be exceptions for me, as I am a fan of "never say never," but as a general rule, 28 seems like a good cutoff on the low end.

On the other side, would I ever go 14 years older than myself again, like I did when I was 22? I am unsure. I guess it depends on a lot of factors. I don't have a lot of experience interacting with people in their late 40s who are not my mom when she was that age (she's currently 53, so her being in her late 40s is pretty fresh in my mind). I guess if they were cool and laid back and liked to have fun. But I am kind of a "young 33" myself, still liking to go out and drink and play/watch music and live a more carefree life than a lot of my contemporaries who are settling down doing the suburban house/kids/SUV thing. Most of the people I meet out in the places I go are significantly YOUNGER not OLDER and so it seems unlikely that I'd come across a much-older person who still likes to live my raucous lifestyle. I guess I wouldn't shoot them down as a matter of course, though.

My most serious relationships, the ones that I really thought have had lifetime potential, were with people 2–6 years older than me. I think that's kind of my "sweet spot." When I had an OKC profile, I had put a range of 28–42.

 

[LizziE]

I have mixed feeling on age in regards to dating in particular.

As a long-time OKC user, I didn't originally discriminate about age. However, I dated a few guys who confessed to me on the 3rd (or later) date that they were significantly (5+ years) older than they stated on their profile, because if they told the truth about the age then "certain women would NEVER look at them, and certain other women would ALWAYS be after them". Those comments caused me to feel objectified for MY age and I did both think poorly of them for the lie, and break it off because I didn't care for the way it affected our dynamic.

In general, I will look at any profile, regardless of age, to see what we have in common. I have noticed that I've only gotten one response from a man my age or younger than me, while I had something like an 80% response rate from men 5+ years older than me.

From women, it was a much more mixed bag. I didn't notice any major difference in how women responded in relation to our ages.

I also don't necessarily identify well with people my own age - or rather, I didn't in adolescence and early adulthood. Most of my friends were at least a few years older than me. I chalk this up partially to being an only child and thus being socialized to be more "adult-like" from a fairly early age, as well as having a lot of interests that simply weren't popular with people in my age cohort. The three big things that people in my grade school cared about (movies, music, and clothes) I was worlds away from having in common with them. The rural area that I grew up in was very focused on being "normal", having "normal" clothing/music/movie tastes (basically, whatever was on sale at Abercrombie & Fitch or Aeropostale or Express at the mall/whatever was in the top 40s list/whatever was popular and had famous people in it). I did my own thing in all of those things, which made me pretty uncool and limited my ability to make friends.

As an adult in an area with a much larger pool of people, I found "my people" (who I don't necessarily have much in common with in clothes/movies/music, but we do share common values) years ago and they span the gamut quite a bit, age-wise. One of my closest female friends is about ten years younger than me. I have a number of friends who are 20+ years older than me.

So all that said, I think that I'm much more likely to think of age being just a number when it comes to friendships and relationships with women. When it comes to relationship with significantly older men, I'm much more likely to be wary that I'm being objectified for my age, and if I catch a whiff of that, I'm out of there.