Ten Year Olds, Dude

[joeymichaels]

“I’ll be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”Some of you might remember my formula for calculating appropriate ages a person can date without meeting societal disapproval. Basically, take your own age,divided it in half and add 7. For example, I'm 48 so the youngest person I can date without ooging people out is 31. I think that's

Comments

[comedychick]

I'm amused at the 30yo dude coming to prom. But also surprised he'd even want to go to a prom in the first place at that age

[joeymichaels]

Obviously, my math formula isn't set in stone - but it does, I think, reflect how American society regards relationships with age gaps.

[kickthehobbit]

My current partner is seven years older than I am (36 to my soon-to-be 29). I think that's enough of a gap.

I've dated people that were significantly older than me, including when I was in my teens. I look back on it now and I'm unsurprised that the relationships I had with them were abusive-because it's impossible to have a relationship of "equals" when you're 28 and dating an 18-year-old. I don't think every older/younger relationship skews that way, but as someone who is in their late 20s, I can't fathom dating a teenager. :|

[joeymichaels]

Yeah man, our brains aren't even fully formed until our early 20's. Its hard to see that when we're younger, but reflecting on being a teenager I can certainly see that, for myself, I wasn't the same person mentally.

[xo_kizzy_xo]

One of my coworkers (early 40s) dated a woman in her early 20s. They met at work when she was still in high school. He didn't ask her out until after she graduated.

They had issues. He'd bitch about her behavior much of the time. We always told him that the age gap between them was too great, she's 20 years old, SHE'S A KID, of course she's going to act like that! Gradually we learned that my coworker's *issues* had a lot to do with why he'd choose to date someone that young

[joeymichaels]

Obviously, every couple is different and some will work and some won't work based on a thousand different factors, but wow does a generation gap make a relationship more of a struggle.

[joeymichaels]

As we get older, the differences sort of shrink - one of the interesting things about my formula is that at a certain point, people can date people with some pretty big age gaps between them.

[scarykarrey]

Hey, Nineteen/No, we can't dance together/No, we can't talk at all.

[joeymichaels]

Exactly!