Would you date someone way older/younger than you?

[ScaredToBreathe]

Don't be fooled. We never change, just our bodies get wrinkly.

haha well i guess that's true for some guys ::
but i honestly do notice a difference in older guys. all the teens i know are dumb as a doorknob, don't know how to date, and can't even make their own breakfast. at least older men usually are more educated, know how to treat a lady and know how to take care of themselves.

 

[nicole1]

Older, yes. Younger, heck no!

 

[Invisibleman]

Maybe Id date a girl older than me but not by much maybe a year or 2. But I can do younger,the girl I really like now is about a year and a half younger than me.

 

[BiWinning]

Psh. If somebody likes me and I like them back thats rare enough for me to give the bird to the whole "age" thing.
But as a rule I don't associate intimately with 30 year olds or 10 year olds.
Usually...

 

[LifeInternal88]

NOOOOOOOOO. NO NO NO NO NO!

(But then I did have a crush on Hugh Grant:

My answer : Plus or minus 5 years.

 

[Clark Kent]

I would definently not date somebody way younger then me(26) limit would probably be like 23 idealy ..but I would seriously consider dating an older women as long as we "The Chemistry" was all there,and as long as she was not babycrazy right away! Here we are talking ages up to and not necessarily excluding 30,31 or 32 or even 33::

 

[Kiwong]

As a latter day hermit my options are limited

 

[awkwardamanda]

ummm... so you might think that's creepy, but i don't. if a 25 year old and a 14 year old want to date (with the 14 yr old's parent's consent to make it legal of course) and they are both responsible, mature and attracted to each other then why shouldn't they date? it's harmless and they might even end up marrying each other or something.

i knew a 15 year old girl in a relationship with a 25 year old man. they claim to love each other and they have been dating for a long time. they have extremely similar personalities too. and the 15 year old is now engaged to the 25 year old. and im also in my teens and woulnd't mind dating a 25 year old.

Yeah, see, there's the problem. I have a hard time believing any 15 year old willing to date a 25 year old is actually mature and responsible. And they're engaged already?! How young was she when they started dating? I also have a hard time believing any 15 year old is mature enough to understand what love is and to be ready to commit to marriage. And why would the parents think this is okay?

All creepiness aside, the real problem I have is that a large age gap often means that both people are at different stages in life. When one person is barely out of high school and the other wants to settle down and start a family, or if your partner is closer in age to your nieces and nephews or your parents, I just don't see how that wouldn't cause problems. Then again, plenty of people get married for the wrong reasons and don't realize they aren't really in love, regardless of age gap.

 

[anuskas]

I had a boyfriend much younger than me for about 2 years, very childish... I don´t want it anymore. Just older men now.

 

[AGR]

What do women mean when they say "maturity"? You want a man that doesn't play with lego anymore? Someone that doesn't wear trainers? Someone that wants a mortgage and kids?

There is no way to measure maturity,my guess is that women want to feel dominated,wants a "strong" male so they go with older guys,maybe they pass the image of more mature,but it doesnt mean anything because each person is unique,age doesnt tell maturity, also unless someone acts like a 5 year old it wouldnt matter much to me.

 

[Felgen]

My ex-girlfriend was 8 years older than me (I'm 22).

 

[Agent_Violet]

my husband is in his 40's...i'm 29.

i've always dated older men. i have daddy issues and feel comforted and cared for by older men. i'm not comfortable with men my age bc i feel like i don't fit in with them...and i don't feel safe with them. i can be attracted to men my age but that's where it ends for me.

old guys just do it for me

 

[Dead_on_Arrival]

I am of the thought that it does not really matter. If you find someone you share a love of things with, have similar likes and dislikes and can sit down and talk about anything and everything with, then you have found love. Age should not matter, obviously within the boundries of the law.

 

[Vampayah88]

I like older men. I like someone being all protective of me and making me feel safe.

 

[kilojoule]

ummm... so you might think that's creepy, but i don't. if a 25 year old and a 14 year old want to date (with the 14 yr old's parent's consent to make it legal of course) and they are both responsible, mature and attracted to each other then why shouldn't they date? it's harmless and they might even end up marrying each other or something.

i knew a 15 year old girl in a relationship with a 25 year old man. they claim to love each other and they have been dating for a long time. they have extremely similar personalities too. and the 15 year old is now engaged to the 25 year old. and im also in my teens and woulnd't mind dating a 25 year old.

I have major issues with teenage girls going out with 20 something guys + especially young teenagers.
It seriously upsets me to hear about it.


I have no issues with age differences so long as everybody's over 18.


I'm 26 my best friend is three years younger than me. This is something very close to her heart. She was always the youngest in our group and she was always a lot more mature than others her age. From the age of 12 she started seeing older guys, first it was 16, then it was 18, then 19 then by the time she was 14, she was seeing some guy in his 20s. then some guy in his 30s And there was no talking to her. She was impossible.


I actually asked her looking back why didn't it work? what specifically was the problem? and how do you feel about it now? and this was her response word for word.

* I just get sick a little in my mouth. Yes I see it everywhere and it pisses me the $%^&* off when I see those smug *******s walking around with much younger girls I just want to punch the head off them.

*When I was 12, younger even, I felt much more mature than other people my age. It made sense to get out with somebody older with the same maturity, I had a serious chip on my shoulder and I felt insulted that anybody would even think of me like a 'normal' 12 year old. It was the worst insult anyone could have said, Nobody understood me....or so I was utterly convinced. Looking back I see two alarming things that had I been a bit more mature, I would have copped onto.

1) I may have been more mature than other 12 year olds but I was not at my own full maturity of an 18 or 19 year old version of myself. I look back and cringe. How could I not have realised that????!!! I've cried over it a thousand times. At 12 I was 12 and maybe older than other 12 year olds and I thought I had it all down. But I didn't. I didn't have a clue compared to what I know now. Yes I knew A LOT more than kids my age and I looked and sounded older but compared to how I am as an adult, I was about 5 in maturity in terms of my own development!

2) Those guys were* a lot more immature than I realised at the time. I now look at it and realise there was something wrong with them. They did not go out with me because I was mature. I fooled myself into thinking that it was my personality and our wonderful chemistry and ' age is just a number'. That's what they told me and it was a crock of ****. They went out with me because they could manipulate me. They could give me what I craved. I needed to feel older, I had a chip on my shoulder and they made me feel like a woman because they held me to a woman's standards. They made me feel good about myself and they supported my backwards beliefs about being older. They watched too much porn and they just thought I was pretty and had a great body. That's* what they were interested in.


*Now I have a son. he is three, in 9 years he will be where I was when I was going out with 19 year olds. IT TURNS MY STOMACH!!!

* I thought that each older guy I went with was 'different' I went out with some of them for years. They were not different. There was something wrong with them. THEY needed to go out with someone much younger and much more inexperienced to make them feeel bigger and better about themselves. There's a word for it.....p.....

* If I could go back in time I'd roar and scream at myself and try and tell myself just how much this is going to **** me for all realtionships I'll have in the future. However I can't do that. I was stubborn and arrogant and I thought I knew everything and anybody who tried to tell me that I was too young or I didn't understand or I was more immature than I realised or too young to be sexually active. I hated those people and they made me more determined to prove them wrong. Age is just a number bla bla. The more somebody tried to stop me, the more I rebelled, the more he and I stuck together. They probably even ensured it lasted longer than it would have by going against me. I would hear none of it, and I snook around so my parents wouldn't find out, my dad would have cut of his balls and hung them on the gate outside as a warning to other men.


* I might have been mature for 13 but I certainly did not have even a fraction of my 23 year old maturity that I have now. And now I'm 23 I DO realise that I don't have a fraction of maturity I'll have in my 40s and so forth. I'm perfectly happy with my age and my maturity now. Now it would be okay for me to go out with someone older because I am mature enough to know that I don't know everything and respect others and listen. Nobody was trying to ruin my relationships for the sake of trying to hurt me or take me down a few pegs. they were trying to save me from myself.


*There's nothing anyone probably could have done to stop me. If I could go back and talk to my 12/13/14 year old self I'd say ' Really? ' When your 19 would you even consider going out with a 12/13/14 year old?' And I know what the answer would have been 'NO!!!!'



Anyway her sceal went on for a bit. But that's the jist of it. She's now training to do counselling courses with this particular age group of young pre-teen s and teens.

 

[Beatrice]

Jewel, good post. This is something that frustrates me but there isn't much you can do to change people's minds once they're set on it. The whole "age is just a number" cliche is pure BS. And whenever I say that, I always bring up brain scans. We KNOW for a fact that children and teenagers' brains are physically different from fully grown adults' - that they are more impulsive, etc. The part of the brain that handles judgment and decision-making is not yet fully developed. Any more maturity they have over their peers will pale in comparison to the maturity they will attain once they are a little older.

Of course, this takes into account life experiences and such, but how can you argue with the images of major differences in brain structure, especially when it comes to areas such as judgment?

My 14-year-old sister is probably more mature than the majority of her peers. She's into things they aren't into, like certain books and ideas and all that. She likes to talk about things her friends think she's weird for (haha). But does that mean then that she is mature enough to choose to date, say, a guy 10 or 15 years older? Absolutely not.

This is also true of 20-something-year-olds. The brain continues to mature into your early 20's. So I still have a lot of growing up to do

Just so you don't think I'm making it up, there are plenty of links on it if you Google it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124119468

http://www.edinformatics.com/news/teenage_brains.htm

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web1/epowell.html

Besides all that, it's very interesting. People blame teenage moodiness and behavior on hormones, but it seems it has more to do with brain structure and neurology and much less hormones. They play a smaller role than what was once thought.

 

[Beatrice]

As for myself..... Younger, a year, two at the most. Older.... yeah, by maybe five years at the most.

 

[BiWinning]

I've noticed the ones who tend to take the view that love is 'wrong' if it's not shared between two adults are...well, religious followers. Or in my case,Christians. Get whatever you want from that, I guess I'll 'offend' if I share my view.
Ohh,and I hate generalising, so this doesn't apply to...everyone. See,this is one of the world's biggest problems: ignorant people make assumptions which leads them to generalise. And thus we get one form of the stereotype.

I repeat, you can't help who you love. You don't look at age, you look at how incredibly beautiful that person is. (Not just in regards to the physical, but...how much fun you have together, how much you love interacting, how you can share anything intimate with them without the fear of being judged, etc.)
If you're mature enough, you're mature enough, regardless of age. I know some adults who still aren't ready for like...friendships, nevermind relationships. Maturity is all based on subjectivity, the only basis for maturity is experience that...I guess comes mainly with age, but that's it.
And we all know that experience isn't the only variable when it comes to maturity, that's why, like I said, some adults just aren't ready for relationships before they've worked on themselves yet. One example would probably be my brother.

So I know you may think of it as 'wrong,' if there's an age gap, but...I mean, it has nothing to do with you really if you're just a stranger passing judgement. A genuine love for an individual (and it has to be mutual) is better than having absolutely nobody at all, is it? And I'm sure if you were in the situation of loving someone much younger or older than you, you wouldn't regard it as immoral. It's all about empathy and understanding. But granted, like 99% of the kids I know are not ready to be..****ing unleashed into society, nevermind form relationships. So I take your point about that, but if you're as mature as meee, you'd have no problem getting there

So what is your view on pedo's?

 

[BiWinning]

In that respect,I am ashamed to admit, I am a conformist. Haha.

It's cool.
But I am confused about on thing, you state Christians are usually the ones who have the big problems with the age and love thing; then you also say stereotyping and generalising causes one big mess.

Isn't saying one group of people usually do one thing generalising?

I mean, I'm an atheist, so I'm not biased towards that religion (Judaism is my favourite)

Sorry if I sound like a jerkface, I'm just wondering...

 

[userremoved]

It's cool.
But I am confused about on thing, you state Christians are usually the ones who have the big problems with the age and love thing; then you also say stereotyping and generalising causes one big mess.

Isn't saying one group of people usually do one thing generalising?

I mean, I'm an atheist, so I'm not biased towards that religion (Judaism is my favourite)

Sorry if I sound like a jerkface, I'm just wondering...

I guess because Christians tend to be old fashioned when it comes to a lot of things. Especially when it comes to relationships. When I used to be one, my church was adamantly against living with someone you weren't married to. Being engaged didnt count. I guess they were afraid you might be tempted to have sex before you make your vows.