The splendid sex educator Heather Corinna put up a terrific post at Scarleteen on Saturday: Why I Deeply Dislike Your Older Boyfriend. It dovetails very nicely with the ongoing discussion here about older men and younger women relationships, and Corinna writes from the particularly vital perspective of someone who works as closely — if not more so — with young people as I do. She also acknowledges that though rare, healthy age-disparate relationships can and do exist. Here’s my favorite bit of raw truth:
Some of why he’s choosing to be with someone who is not closer to his same age, nearer to his same place in life is so that he doesn’t have to change. The way he acts and the things he does might hurt you, and your age difference and the dynamics being played out in all that may well be doing you real harm. But, the thing is, in order for him to change he’d have to want to do that work, and to want to do that work, he’d have to care at least as much about you as he cares about himself. And chances are good that he just plain doesn’t. I know that hurts like hell, but I also know that so much of why it hurts is because you’re still trying to get blood from a stone rather than kicking the empty rock that he is aside and saving your love for the care of someone who earnestly wants to care for it. They’re out there, I promise: but they are not this guy. Changing this can’t rest on him, because he’s just not going to do it.
Ties in a bit with what I wrote here.
Read the whole thing, and consider contributing to Scarleteen’s fundraising campaign. There are few worthier causes than giving young people accurate, affirming, sensible information about sexuality. And no site on the web does that better than Scarleteen. Join me in supporting their invaluable work.
My highschool boyfriend (who was in my same grade) said to me once when we were in our twenties (we were on and off again untill I was about 23) that he knew that I wouldn’t (then, at 23ish) put up with the crap I put up with from him when we were 14 and 15 years old. And, relatedly, that I wouldn’t at 23 put up with the crap I put up with from him from someone new and only found it so hard not to dump him because I had gotten so attached to him before I knew better. I forget exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of my being more innocent and open when he got me to care about him.
He was very perceptive despite being unable to make the transition to actually acting like a grownup.
I suspect a few folks are going to throw a fit about this article without having read it, so it’s worth noting that it says right up front: Someone simply being older, all by itself, is not the issue here, but rather, how that older person chooses to behave and By no means do I feel it is impossible for any man to be a good guy in relationships with an age gap.
I remember being chased by the kind of guys Scarleteen is talking about, back when I was a young thing. Ick.
This is actually kind of ironic, because a lot of the things that Heather mentions - you’re more likely to catch an STD, find yourself presured into unprotected sex, and have a kid foisted upon you - are precisely the reasons the ‘older men’ Hugo chastises want to stay away from women in their 30s and 40s.
Yeah, the article was definitely about guys who go looking for young girls who are not yet fully formed adults. Not, say, a 45 year old dating a 30 year old.
Basically, age is a trait that people can use as a proxy for judging whether a person will be vulnerable to manipulation. In general, we figure the younger you are, the easier you’ll be to manipulate. (I’ve noticed that a certain type of guy also thinks that being Asian is a good indicator. When I was a 16 year old Asian girl who looked 14 I was a Perv Magnet.)
That post made me think of a guy I briefly dated when I was 15 (he was 20). Besides lording it over me that he was actually enrolled at the university I really really wanted to go to someday, he kept trying to get me to open up to him, emotionally. And I’d tell him that just cuz we’re having a summer fling doesn’t make him my BFF, thanks very much. Not the response he was hoping for. Sadly I think his character judgment got better and his next high-school aged girlfriend was a lot more susceptible to his crazy-making attempts.
(And I am not trying to turn this into some story where I was too strong to be made into a victim like other people sometimes are. I don’t think I was. What I was at the time was spoiled and stubborn and closed-off and blunt, which often hurt my friendships, but in this instance was beneficial.)
To be fair, a few years later I dated someone else who was significantly older — 28 to my 18 — and he was kind and respectful. We had a good time for a while.
james, in general I think it’s good ethics to date someone who’s about as dangerous as you are, rather than looking for someone a lot more naive.
Also, Heather Corinna mined a lot of statistical data. Where’s yours?
I actually read scarleteen for sexual advice as a teen myself. A very young teen, I seem to remember, around middle school aged. In a lot of ways the internet was an absolute MIRACLE!!! What kid wants to go digging through the sex section of their local library, especially in a small town where the librarian is likely your mother’s cousin! The privacy and social breadth of the internet is both what makes it so beneficial to young teens as well as dangerous (I got my share of both and then some). Maybe if this article had been there when I was in middle school I wouldn’t have gotten myself entangled in the pickles that dominated my high school years…but probably not :-P Couldn’t have hurt, though.
Re: Teenage girls with older partners are more likely to become pregnant than those with partners closer in age. (Planned Parenthood, 2004) Further, girls who get pregnant are more likely to have the baby rather than get an abortion if their partners are older (Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1994).
Horror of horrors! Young women are actually deciding to keep their baby, rather than kill it in the womb! What a horrid, unspeakable situation!
Seldom was the black heart of the culture of death so vividly revealed.
I mean, really, all of you who defend this so-called ‘Scarleteen’, what’s your excuse here? I hear all the time how it’s all about ‘choice’, and how you would never actually ‘encourage’ anyone to have an abortion. I find those arguments morally irrelevant at best, but let that pass. What’s your excuse here? Are you ready to disown this woman?
I believe they’re meaning to say that younger girls are more likely to take on a burden they are not ready to shoulder (especially considering the myriad of disadvantaged realities likely present for more teen mothers that your average older women) rather than consider that they have options or see their situation objectively. I think a lot of young teens in relationships with older men have this sense, and the older men often bolster this as an aspect of their manipulation, that they are more mature than they really are by virtue of their being with an older man. They might also assume that since the man is older, he will help her raise the child, though this is very often not the case, as Hugo notes in his highlighted passage about how older men who date underage or barely legal teens are usually doing so because they don’t want to have to grow up themselves. I think that passage encompasses a lot of factors but can be read in the wrong way.
However, I don’t want to get into an abortion debate.
I do think it’s pretty much impossible for a decent man in his 20s to date a teenage girl. Because decent men have a built-in desire not to be That Guy, and therefore will avoid behaviors (like dating high school students) that mark you as such.
Hector, you think you exposed someone and you did—most anti-choice nuts try to pretend that they aren’t trying to get girls pregnant as young as possible to kill their chances at a career and a life of their own. I mean, you know and I know that’s what this is about, but you’d do a better job hoodwinking the uneducated if you tried a little harder to conceal the fact that you think it’s just great if someone else’s 14-year-old gets pregnant by a 20-year-old and drops out of high school.
Don’t be ridiculous, Ms. Marcotte. I don’t endorse high school students being sexually involved, with anyone, and particularly not with adults who should know better. While I don’t have any problem with women of 19+ being involved with older men, and I’ve made that clear, I think that no adult should be sexually involved with a minor, and that those who do should be punished to the limit of the law. (We _do_, as far as I know, still have laws against that sort of things- your sexual nihilists who want to do away with every other moral norm haven’t done away with them quite yet).
However, none of that is relevant to the fact that _you_, and people like you, are cheerfully and happily defending evil. The fact that you talk about ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ is totally irrelevant. Historically, the language of freedom and liberation can be very easily used to justify bloodshed and oppression. The genocide of the Native Americans, the construction of modern capitalism in England and continental Europe, and in our century the Yezhovshchina were all justified in the name of freedom and equality. The pro-choice cause, is ultimately no different than the Yezhovshchina, which in its day was also defended by many good and decent, but sadly mistaken people.
Hector, you’re on thin ice here. I’ve made it clear that while abortion is a serious thing, not to be trivialized, it is a vital right — and a right I support, prayerfully and reflectively. I am a contributor to Scarleteen and to Planned Parenthood, not because I want more abortions but because I want fewer — and I know that putting power and agency into young women’s hands is the best way to do that. And when abortions are chosen, when they become necessary, I want them to be safe and legal. You can choose to believe that to be complicity with evil, but I won’t let you use my comments section to label my friends, my mentees, and my blogging colleagues as “evil.” I will not “disown” Heather Corinna or Amanda Marcotte. I won’t disown you, either, but you need to make your case here without using that sort of invective.
Hugo,
Fair enough. I know it’s your blog, and you make the rules here. I’ll try to be more temperate in my language in future.
Hector, your attempt to derail a discussion you don’t like by changing it into an inflammatory debate about abortion is duly noted and rejected.
The point of the post, after all, isn’t what choice the pregnant young woman makes; it’s that being a teenager with an older boyfriend is much more likely to put her in that position in the first place. Scarleteen isn’t talking about the 19-21 year olds you’re dying to marry; she’s talking about teenage girls, not adults. It’s pretty clear you didn’t bother to read the article.
james, on the other hand, is a good example of one of those fellows the article is talking about: preferring young women because he believes they’re too weak and ignorant to have their own wants, rather than being shaped by his.
Mythago,
If that’s all Scarleteen is referring to, then I agree with Scarleteen (and you) that they’re wrong. They are also, of course, illegal, as I would note.
The age of consent is not 18 in every state, which means that in many places it is perfectly legal to have sex with a teenage girl, no matter your own age.
You could, y’know, actually read the article, and then you would know what Scarleteen is talking about.
From where I’m sitting, the guy this article was referring to is simply an irresponsible prick. They come in all shapes, sizes and ages. This wasn’t an “age disparate relationship” problem so much as a “capital-L Loser BF” problem.
And Hector, dude, you’ve seriously scarfed down a Double Meat Failburger with Cheese, with a side of Failure Fries and an Extra Large Deluxe Failshake. I don’t often agree with Hugo, but I will say that inflammatory right-wing button-mashing on the subject of abortion is no substitute for an actual argument on the matter, especially when it’s done in aid of threadjacking.
Martin, the article was an imaginary conversation with a teenage patient, and talks about the problems of a particular type of Loser Boyfriend - the one who picks out very young women precisely because it’s easier for him to get away with his crap.