American Beauty
If you’re gonna have a midlife crisis,
you might as well do it right.
The other day, Steph and I were playing Scruples with friends when I was given a pretty interesting question. The premise was that if I get divorced, would I invite my new girlfriend to spend the night with me while my adolescent children were home. This transgressed into a conversation about how as I’d be in my mod 40s, my new girlfriend was likely around 19, which led to my commenting about how one of my life goals is to bed an 18 year old once I turn 36, just because there’s something magical about banging someone half your age.
Amazingly, I am still in a relationship.
Anyway, Steph and Kim stated that they thought it was wrong for someone in their 40s to be dating a teenager. George and I maintained that while a little out of the ordinary there was nothing specifically wrong with it. Obviously one could look at the breakdown of our little survey of four and determine that, well… men are pigs. This may be true, but I actually had a little more logic to it than that. The girls theorized that because of the age difference between say, a 43 year old man and a 19 year old woman, the two could never have a compatible enough life experience to have a relationship and that it could only be about raunchy, dirty, unbridled sex and that that was slimy. While I have no problem with basing a relationship on raunchy, dirty, unbridled sex, I personally feel that assuming two people aren’t right for each other because of their ages is just as prejudiced as assuming they can’t be together because of their races, religions or genders. It just seems wrong to me. Maybe the 19 year old is amazingly mature. Maybe the 43 year old is amazingly immature. Maybe neither and they’re just people.
I’ve always heard the “rule” that you should only date people who are older than half your age plus seven. But does that really hold true? So I’m wondering, how do other people feel about this sort of thing.
Also, Pittsburgh people: I’ve decided to get a group of people together for some post-Thanksgiving karaoke on Friday. Not just karaoke, BAREOKE! At the Tennyson Lodge. Basically, its karaoke while strippers dance around you. Its great fun. Anyone else interested in going with us? (men and women welcome, of course)
Mine was the “5 year rule”, which essentially says no 5 years older nor younger than myself. Outside 5 years, our ability to have similar enough tastes and levels of maturity tends to be glaringly different.
I have a similar lower-bound rule: “Don’t date anyone younger than MTV.” It’s a nice linearly-progressing cutoff, and doesn’t involve any of that pesky math.
interesting. That puts a definite lower bound of 26. I dunno about that. I’m pretty sure I’m older than you, right? And I certainly know people who I’d date who are younger than that. It seems way too arbitrary. I mean, I guess it makes a catchy slogan, but I don’t know how meaningful it is.
I’m 31, so I think so. It would keep me from dating anyone more than five years younger than me, but yes, it would probably get less and less meanigful as I got up in years.
well, I’m only 2 years older than you and that range still seems rather short to me.
see, I think 5 years is way too little. I have tons in common with lots of people I know both 10 years older and younger than me. But as I said, I don’t think its fair to make it a function of age. I mean, if you’re saying odds are, you won’t find anyone 19 or 65 attractive, that’s fine. But to blanketly dismiss it as a rule rather than on a individual personal level seems prejudiced to me.
Speaking from some personal experience, there’s a *huge* difference between a 43 year old dating a 19 year old, and say a 53 year old dating a 23 year old. The former is moderately skanky. The latter is no big deal.
see, I’d be more inclined to accept the 43/19 relationship than the 53/23 one. At least without knowing anything else about your fictional people than their ages. The latter one sounds a lot skankier to me. It has an aura of “dirty old man” about it.
Of course it does, “dirty old man” is part of the charm!
The difference is that, post college or living as an adult for a couple of years, the 23 year old is much less likely to be manipulated or otherwise taken advantage of.
again… I totally think that depends on the individual… I know some very together 19 year olds and some very not together 30 year olds. I don’t think you can make that generalization at all
Well, I always say age doesn’t matter unless you’re a cheese. In reality, there’s probably few 19- + 43-year-olds that would have a huge amount in common, but there’s sure to be some, and besides that whose god damned business is it to judge the relationships that other people choose to be in short of said relationships being abusive?
that was pretty much my entire argument in a nutshell, yeah.
Thing is, it’s a bit beyond “are they good for each other” and “do they have anything in common” an age difference that extreme (20+ years) deals with issues regarding sense of authority and imbalance of power. Think to why pedophilia is bad. Not that such age differences are the same as pedophilia, but to that extreme, it is very likely that they contain similar issues, though not to a criminal degree.
I don’t think it’s impossible for a healthy relationship with a 20+ year age difference. I just think it’d be a rather rare exception.
Pedophilia’s bad because the child is pre-pubescent. They’re by definition not ready for any sort of sexual relationship. Ephebophilia (loving adolescents) is bad because our society says it’s bad. Colloquial use has blurred the two concepts and attached a lot of the negative connotation of the former to the latter. I’m right there with you regarding the imbalance of power and abuse of authority, though. That’s a real concern.
see, as I was saying, I’ll the unbalance of power issue if its based on deceit or manipulation, but I don’t think that that’s always the case. I can see a very real possibility that you want a stronger person. Maybe you’re just submissive.
And I still don’t think that its a given that the older person has all the power. I’m pretty sure that Anna Nicole Smith was more dominant than her 90 year old husband.
That’s why I said that it was a concern, not a given.
that’s fair
Ok, I’ll grant that’s a possibility, but I don’t think it really has to be limited to age. I know plenty of people where one partner certainly dominates the other and they’re around the same age. I don’t think its even necessarily bad if that’s what the less dominant person wants. It might not be the kind of relationship you or I want, but if someone wants an authority figure for a lover, isn’t that their business?
See, I think that would be a concern, but not a universal. Certainly a 19-year-old who thinks of themself as a kid and thinks of “adults” as authority figures (and there are certainly a plethora of such 19-year-olds) is probably unhealthy dating the vast majority of 43-year-olds. But I don’t think one can assume from just the ages that such a power dynamic is going to exist.
I think power/authority is an important thing to avoid in healthy relationships. For example, I’m very hard-pressed to imagine a situation in which a high school teacher is dating a student of theirs and that is healthy, even if the student is say 18 and the teacher is say 24. I wouldn’t find anything weird about a 24-year-old dating an 18-year-old, but I think that high school teachers are presented as and generally understood as authority figures. While I still think it’s a little sketchy, I have far fewer concerns about a college student dating a professor while in that person’s class. I think that there’s far less perception that college teachers are authority figures over their students in the way that high school teachers are. I still think there’s some amount of authority figureness going on there, and thus it’s sketchy, but a professor who is 40 dating an 18-year-old student gives me far fewer concerns than a high school teacher who is 24 dating an 18-year-old student because of different power dynamics. (But really in such cases, I think if they like each other they should just wait until they’re not currently in a student/teacher relationship and then date.)
Uhm… I don’t think it’s like pedophilia at all. Pedophilia is sexual interest in pre-pubescent persons. Pedophilia is bad (in my mind and I believe in reality) because one who is pre-pubescent does not by definition have developed sexual desires as we know it and MUST be being controlled/pressured by the person with the developed sexual desires. Of course, I refuse to acknowledge the media standard of calling stat rape “pedophilia”. Attraction to post-pubescent 16-year-olds is utterly normal.
see, there I’m on your side, more or less. I think the moral issue with dating a student, whether in college or in high school is important because there is a power issue. It could go either way. Maybe the professor has undue influence over the student due to position and its unhealthy for the student, or maybe the student bangs the professor so good that it improves the students grades unfairly, which is unhealthy to the professor and unfair to the rest of the kids in the class.
Maybe neither of those things are the true, but in a class setting, the perception that its possible by the other students, I think creates and unhealthy class environment that I think should be avoided.
Then it’s official. Tell your lady friends, “Nice try, bigot!”
I’m sorry… but I like having a girlfriend. 🙂
Okay, first up, that whole age thing is just one more thing that society has saddled us with. There’s nothing absolute about it; it’s about as arbitrary as you can get. Personally, I don’t want to have a relationship with any teenagers because, well, I don’t like teenagers in general.
On the “half plus seven” rule, as you get older, that becomes less of a rule and more of a rough guideline. At thirty-six, half plus seven is twenty-five, which cuts out four post-twenty years. Hell with that.
So, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with a large age difference in a couple or two people just having sex. I’m also unsurprised that Steph and Kim do think it’s inherently wrong.
it doesn’t surprise me that they feel this way either. Not really, but that said, when I explained my reasons why I disagreed, they seemed unable to give me a cohesive argument for it other than basically “its wrong” or “you can’t have anything in common because your life experience is too different.” The “it’s wrong” argument is lame and essentially comes down to “eww, its icky” which holds no water with me. The other argument I’d entertain, I just want someone to explain to me how its any different than arguing that whites shouldn’t date blacks because their life experiences are so different. (Steph and Kim’s only argument here was that our life experiences aren’t that different. George and I totally called bullshit here)
Man, Samantha’s father pulled the “different life experiences” argument. It was ironic because our life experiences actually hadn’t been all that different.
An age difference argument I could get behind, to get back to the subject at hand, is when the older partner is an “adult” and the younger partner is a “child”. That potentially falls under abuse of authority to me. If the younger partner is past the societal age of majority, then that doesn’t hold water. “It’s just wrong” holds less water than a sieve.
but again, to me that’s an argument of maturity. There are plenty of 33 year olds in this world that I wouldn’t date just because they are in a different place in their lives than I am. Either less mature or more.
“Potentially” is very important. It’s by no means automatic.
again… fair point.
I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with a large age gap in a relationship.
However, I’ve never found anyone attractive who was more than a couple years older or younger than me. So large gaps still kinda make me go “eew”.
see, to me that’s different. You’re speaking on a personal level. There’s a big difference between saying “I don’t find black men attractive” and “I don’t find blonde women attractive.” and “white shouldn’t date black people” or “brunettes are too smart to date blondes.”
You’re attracted to what you’re attracted to. That’s fine. I’m not attracted to men, but I don’t have a problem with men who are.
One more thing for people to consider: is there a difference between older man/younger woman and older woman/younger man?
Yes. And Ashton Kutcher must PAY for keeping Demi Moore from filming at Bareoke in various states of undress.
Speaking of which, if Gabriela and I are back in town early enough (*and not totally worn out) we’ll try to make it!
cool… give me a call when you’re back in town.
to me, no. But I think it’s a quite interesting side conversation that deserves to be had.
Society as a whole would probably disagree with you on the difference. Everyone knows what a MILF is, but I don’t think there’s even a term for the other way around.
I think it varies by sub culture. For instance, in my grandparent’s time, it was far more common for an older man to be with a younger woman than the other way around. Even going less old than that, look at current presidential candidates Dennis Kuncinich and Fred Thompson. Both of them are married to women much younger than they are. Outside of late-night talk show hosts, I don’t think anyone really cares that much.
well you already know i can’t go on friday but my friend is leaving town forever in december and if its worth it that might be his going away party.
let me know how it is
Oh, I’ve been before. It’s great.
The long and the short of it is that very few people have the same things in common when they have that much of an age gap. A 19 year old woman is not looking for the same things outta life as a 40 something man. Sure, law of averages says that a compatable coupling could occur, but the odds are pretty slim.
So yeah, you can date that young and have fun and what not, but the odds of finding anything that will last are pretty slim. I mean, you don’t go looking for wine in the grape juice isle.
And my rule was no long term thing with anyone who is five years younger. But that was just me.
see, I don’t think its fair to say that the 19 year old and the 43 year old are looking for different things. Maybe they both want a serious relationship. Maybe they both want sex. Who’s to say? I can see saying on average they want different things, but individuals are individuals.
Five years difference seems like way too little to me. I mean, I’m 33, and I certainly can see myself dating a 23 year old or a 43 year old.
Yes they can want the same broad generalities, but i find that they want alot of differnet “specifics.” Things like traveling, relocation, stable jobs, children and what not all factor into what it means to have a “serious relationship.” I have found that not alot of people in those varying age groups are looking for the same specifics. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, just means that it is less likely. So If i am dating a nineteen year old, I am not really looking for it to last forever. I mean, it could, but the odds of that are significantly slimmer than if I was dating a 27 year old.
well, to be fair, I could say that a 43 year old might not want those things. Maybe he’s just looking to have fun. But there are certainly some 19 year olds who do want nothing more than to settle down into a serious relationship.
I’ll grant you the statistics pointing to averages being more likely one way or the other, I just don’t think its so set in stone that one should make a hard fast rule.
Oh, I don’t make a hard and fast rule abou tit. But as i said, you don’t go looking for wine in the grape juice aisle. If you happen to find it there, so be it, but you really don’t expect it to be there.
a wonderfully colorful analogy you have there… also, you said “tit”
hehehe
I dont really want to talk a lot about it, since its still so new, but my “new friend” is 14 years younger than I am. And right now we are having a great time. And honestly I try not to think too far ahead, and just focus on the good time we have right now. I think one of the reasons we are getting on is because we have a similar background of interests [we are both theater people] so there is lots to talk about and share there. There are different life experiences [for instance she has a young daughter] but I think if you care about someone you focus and listen to everything they have to say and share and just enjoy that persons company.
And there have been times where I have argued [mostly with myself] about the kinds of women Id want to be involved with, but had I stuck to that I would never have been having the wonderful time Im having right now. I think if your single it always helps to keep your mind and your heart open. You just never know…
That’s my main point, I don’t think it makes sense to just dismiss something for so simple a reason.
OH! I might finally have time to go to BAREOKE! Woot!
What are you thinking, time-wise? And…are people carpooling?
they open at 8. But we don’t need to be there that early, and yeah carpools could happen.
I would potentially take you up on the karaoke but I have Avenue Q tickets that night.
ah cool… enjoy it.
I was 35 and he was 19, that’s close enough, right?
Uh…and I’m not going there again. I now play by the “they have to be at least half your age +7 rule.”
as a 43 year old…if I wasn’t married, I’d definitely be hitting on any moderately available lady between about 20 and 50. Because, really age is just a number.
I take it this is Jim, right? And I think I’m in the same boat as you.
Okay, Mav and I have talked about this at Phantom (the comics shop), and having had some personal experience I feel compelled to respond.
First of all, the age thing just doesn’t matter to me. If people click, they click. In the long term there may be problems, but I think we all know couples who are the same age who haven’t been able to make a relationship work. Everyone has issues and some times you can work them out and sometimes you can’t. Age is one of them.
4-5 years ago I was in a relationship with a girl 20 years younger than me (she turned 21 shortly after we started dating). We both knew it was a “just for now/no long term” kind of thing. We dated for a year and then she moved on. In the long term her goals included marriage/kids, etc. I was never the option for that and we both knew it. It was a good year, we parted as friends, and I think we both learned a lot from it. She was mature for her age and I think it can be safely argued that I’m not, so maybe that helped. What we both wanted right then was an intimate friendship. I think I brought her a different perspective on men and relationships than she was getting from the 20 year olds she had dated, and she brought me wonderful conversations and an enthusiasm for life that a lot of people my age have lost. It wasn’t about the future, it wasn’t about the sex, it was about the friendship.
As an update, she is now married to my best friend, with all the plans for the future between them. House, dog, planning kids, all that stuff. There’s 15 years between them and they seem to me to be the most compatible couple I know. And we’re all still friends. It was a valuable and life changing experience for all of us, one I wouldn’t trade for anything. If I had dismissed the possibility out of hand because of her age I would have missed many of the best experiences of my life.
It all depends on who the people are and what they want out of it.
and for the record, I never found you guys icky in the slightest. Well her, anyway, you’re clearly a dirty old man.
Seriously, you’d be a key example to this issue, there’s no rule that says that your personality is based on your age, so there can’t be a rule that says your age necessarily controls your compatibility with someone else.
I dont think you can hang it up just on age alone
At say… 19… you run the chance of the girl either not being mature enough, which is very possible… or actually being quite mature, and able to handle a relationship with a 40+ male
I personally view age as just a number, but then, my wife is 10 years younger then me too, and mature enough to handle such a relationship
Truth be told, she is more mature then many women my age, and for us, it works
We both are very happily married
I dont think basing a relationship just on sex is a good idea… but to be honest and fair, different people base their relationships on different things… for some, a relationship built on sex, while we may view it as shallow, is perfect for someone else
Who are we to determine right or wrong there
I do happen to agree with you on the idea of bedding a woman half your age, I think that is a very common fantasy amongst guys… I know it is me lol
-Marc
The relationship based on sex thing is a side issue I think. I think the assumption is that a man 40 year old man could want nothing more with a 20 year old woman. I think that assumption is faulty to begin with, but even assuming its not, I don’t see the problem with it. It’s their own business. That was my only reason for bringing it up.
The real crux of the situation is what you mentioned first. I don’t think its fair to assume someone’s personality or maturity level based exclusively on their age.
It’s a good rule of thumb
Personally I think half your age plus seven is a great rule of thumb. That would mean that, for an unmarried me, the range is 23 to 52. I will tell you that that would be pretty much perfect – I wouldn’t want to seriously date a college student and I don’t think I’d be attracted to a women in her mid-fifties even if she looked great for her age.
However – I think of it as a rule of thumb, not a moral law, and would only apply it to serious dating. Would an unmarried me hook up with a college girl? Sure. And I don’t think it would be unethical.
Re: It’s a good rule of thumb
see, I think that looking at is as a rule of thumb is fine. But you’re speaking purely on levels of your own personal attraction. I certainly understand that. For instance. I tend to not date blondes. I’m just more attracted to brunettes and redheads. That said, I would never say “brunettes should never date blondes because their intelligence level is too disparate to have a real relationship.” I know plenty of intelligent blondes. I just happen to prefer brunettes. I’d say your age example fits in their just as well.
Re: It’s a good rule of thumb
There’s more to it than just attraction – I also think that a mature adult (mental age over 30) really has no business in a serious relationship with the typical 18 year old girl. Most 18 year olds are really children and adults really should treat them with kid gloves – I just don’t think it’s good for them emotionally.
I have a rule about ME not dating people who are younger than 19, but that’s not because of the age differential. The age-of-consent (in my own little mind) stays at 19 whether I’m 27 or 87.
And I have no rule about myself not dating older partners, no matter how much older.
In general, I don’t think it’s skanky.
out of curiosity, where did the magic number 19 come from?
Experience.
19 is the smallest age of any partner I have ever had (regardless of my age at the time) where the good sex outweighed the drama. Younger than that, and (historically) the drama has outweighed the sex every time.