I sometimes talk about age difference in romantic relationships, but I'm usually talking about older men and younger women, though there are a few exceptions, such as this and this:
If both parties are, say, over the age of 30, people tend to NOT really care. It's when some skeevy older guy ONLY dates "barely legal" girls that people start going "Dude, that ain't right. Get therapy. No, you aren't invited to my pool party next weekend."But there are also exceptions to that general rule. I personally never cared that Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher were married. They were both rich actors and beautiful people and business owners. I figured they had a lot in common and I never thought "Oh, he's her victim. LOOK AT THE AGE DIFFERENCE!"
I'm usually writing from the perspective that heteronormative culture strongly encourages women to marry for money and/or put his career first and what this costs us.
These days, women with serious careers sometimes marry younger men. They do so in part simply because they CAN.
If you make enough money to support yourself, it's not essential to "marry well." You can marry someone you like just because you like them and not because you need their paycheck, so it's easier to marry someone younger who is less established in his career.
This is a problem space I've contemplated overly much in life in part because I was molested as a child and had entire fleets of baggage. I tend to find older men attractive and also when I was younger felt poisoned by that, like there was something extremely bad about it.
It took me a long time to sort that and not feel like me liking older men somehow was because I was molested or, worse, somehow was WHY I was molested. So both my ex husband and my boyfriend before him were technically younger than me but only by a tiny amount.
The idea that I liked older men felt so bad that I couldn't deal with anyone being even slightly older than me and the idea that I was a bad person taking advantage of someone because maybe I'm a pervert -- "a child molester myself " -- meant that initially everyone I got with was born the same year as me but after me.
Most people would view those men as the same age as me rather than younger. But it helped assure me I wasn't some freak who liked being molested and I wasn't some pervert abusing people.
I eventually concluded that one reason women tend to like older men is because women tend to be more socially savvy than men, if only because we get schooled to be so from birth, and so older men are more likely to be on the same page as her in terms of social stuff. If you have to explain too much social stuff to your guy AND he's younger, that can start feeling really skeevy, like you're his mommy, not his girlfriend.
After my divorce, I concluded that one reason career women may prefer younger men is because they are more likely to cook and clean and expect to do their part at home. Older men are more likely to be "old fashioned" and even if they would like to believe they are for women's lib and equality, they were raised in an era where real men didn't do women's work, they don't know how to do that stuff, they feel threatened by the prospect of learning it and so they basically NEED a woman who will do that for them.
It's an uphill battle to try to get an older man to learn that stuff even if he's willing to learn and many are not. So if you want to not be chained to the stove and having the burden of women's work quietly destroying your career, a younger man may be less of a problem even if he STILL doesn't actually do as much as you do in that regard.
Post divorce while I had a corporate job, my sons took over most of the women's work at home so I know men can do women's work though in my heart of hearts I don't believe I will ever be in a romantic relationship with such a man. I had a 1950s style marriage and I seem to routinely attract men who expect me to be an excellent little wifey and LA LA LA not listening to anything that contradicts their unilateral plot to politely enslave me for the rest of my life as chattel property supporting THEIR career because that fantasy appeals to them.
Huge turn off for me. Thanks but no thanks. I'm happy to remain alone if that's my only option. (I've seen jokes that suggest some other women have similar feelings, like "Turn ons include men who vacuum.")
And they imagine I should be happy with it as "my only hope of escaping poverty." If it is my only hope, it's because so many men see me that way and this closes doors for me career wise, not because I don't want a career or because I'm not smart enough.
Another reason I don't much talk about younger men is because it's assumed they are sex objects and this often is more or less framed like she's a pervert.
Women aren't supposed to want sex at all. We are supposed to marry for love and tolerate sex because we love our husband and want babies.
Men are supposed to want sex and if she's not too much younger, society tolerates the implicit assumption that a younger woman appeals to older men because she's a sex object. A woman treating men as a sex object generally rankles people in a big way even though no one bats an eyelash at it if it's an older man and younger woman.
In the movie The door in the floor, an older woman has an illicit affair with a much younger man and it's implied the young man looks like or reminds her of one of her dead sons. That detail of the movie really didn't sit well with me though I liked the movie a whole lot overall for other reasons.
Both the movie and an interview with Kim Basinger -- the older woman in the movie -- touched on how uncomfortable it could be for an older woman to get pursued by a younger man. I mostly found the movie therapeutic because of the blonde little girl growing up in a house haunted by events that occurred before she was born but also found the movie food for thought on this touchy subject of an older woman and younger man. (I happened to watch it the summer my ex moved out.)
In the movie The Banger Sisters, there is a scene where Goldie Hawn's character approaches a young man sitting in a truck because she thinks he's hot for her only to be extremely embarrassed when the girl giving him a bj sits up, thereby explaining the look on his face and that it has nothing to do with Goldie Hawn.
Having gotten married at age nineteen to another nineteen year old, it was only during my divorce that it was even possible for me to have a relationship with someone much younger and I eventually realized I just had a blind spot in that regard. I just didn't think of younger men as potential partners or in my dating pool. They just didn't make my radar at all in that regard and I also didn't want to feel made the fool of like that scene in The Banger Sisters.
This became something of a minor problem at my corporate job because I was in my forties and saw myself as fat, ugly and middle aged and in my mind no one in their twenties would do anything but laugh out loud at the idea of getting with me.
So one day I cracked a joke about hooking up with a good looking guy in his twenties on my team because I was certain the entire planet agreed with me that was RIDICULOUS. He was at my desk in a flash and I had to figure out how to politely walk that back without over explaining a lot of stuff that wasn't his business, like "Oh, ha ha. Just kidding. I'm actually celibate for medical reasons."
Note to self: Unlike your butthead ex, the entire planet doesn't see you as fat and ugly.[1] Don't assume that specific people would think that. They might not.
Also note to self: Don't crack ANY sex jokes of ANY kind at work, you moron.
Thankfully, my boss didn't feel the need to send this to HR, though he did review the email exchange.
In another incident, a good looking man in his twenties sometimes said nice things to me and I was super sick and having trouble socializing so I would gush at him "Thank you very much!" hoping the team wouldn't hate me. Because I mean OBVIOUSLY he wasn't hitting on me. Right?
He was clearly just being nice to an ugly old woman. Completely platonic. I was sure of it.
And then time passed and two things happened that made me feel like I didn't want to encourage his niceness.
For one, we hadn't become friends so it felt weird to me for him to say those things to me. I wanted it to stop because we weren't close and that just seemed inappropriate to me.
For another, I got healthier and men began noticing me in a way they hadn't been for a long time. I was still celibate for medical reasons AND no one at work knew that. Most people didn't even know I had a serious medical condition.
So I didn't want him or anyone else at work asking me for a date because I felt like if the first time anyone heard I have a serious medical condition and I'm celibate because of it was to explain why I don't want to date them, they would not find that credible. Like "Nice try with trying to spare my feelings, but what lying bullshit! Try harder next time."
So I felt the only good answer for continuing to both keep my job and protect my medical privacy was that everyone needed to see me as unapproachable and no one should ask for a date. And I got to nearly five years before anyone did ask but me deciding to walk back my gushy "thanks" to something less gushy landed the two of us in HR because he didn't like it when I stopped gushing at him.
So one day, after six weeks of me being less warm about his compliments, he said something in a team meeting that was sort of flirty. I couldn't avoid team meetings so I felt that if I didn't say something immediately, it would escalate and essentially become sexual harassment while flying completely under the radar of everyone on the team and if I waited for it to escalate, people would act like I was being ridiculous to object at that late date.
So I emailed him and copied our two bosses and this got referred to HR.
It also made me wonder if he had, in fact, been hitting on me and I liked him -- he was prior military which always reads to me as "real man" and I generally get along better with people with some kind of military association -- but he was in his twenties and I barely knew him and etc. I eventually concluded that it would scream "They have one thing in common. They're both good in bed." and that's a NO from me, so I never bothered to ask or whatever "Were you hitting on me???"
Like I basically concluded "We could have an affair and that might work if I wasn't so sick, but I can't introduce him to anyone as my boyfriend. I would die of embarrassment and shame."
And I was super sick so whatever. Moving on. Nothing more to think about here.
During my divorce, I had two serious boyfriends and both were older than me. After much analysis, I eventually concluded that, like me, they both had a long marriage behind them and children similar in age to mine because I married young and had kids young.
So basically we had similar expectations for a relationship and the age difference was mostly a matter of happenstance.
There were a few younger men who liked me enough to essentially go "Hey, stupid, I'm hitting on you." so I did have a few relationships to younger men and found they were ok for short term fun but didn't make good candidates for marriage in most cases.
I've thought about it a lot and concluded that if I ever have career success and money, I could do like successful men do and get a cute little honey younger lover but I've also concluded that women latch onto things like "the perfect wedding" as SYMBOLS for love and emotional bonding because that emotional stuff is critical to the ability of most women to get all hot and bothered.
I've concluded that contrary to whatever bullshit society would like you to believe, emotional bonding IS how women get hot and bothered, so when women are trying to get you to commit and do right by them, they ARE trying to get their sexual needs met.
It has nothing to do with being uptight. They are trying to say "Hey, stupid. I really want to let my hair down with you, hubba hubba, but I NEED this from you."
And then men roll their eyes about her wanting to be a ball and chain and flee in the other direction.
So I'm still at "My magic eight ball predicts long-term celibacy for me." but maybe someone else will find this tale useful for sorting out how THEY can be both a successful career woman AND not a spinster because of it.
Footnotes
I'm celibate for medical reasons. I write about such topics because I find social stuff interesting and hope to be helpful and make money off my work, not as a coded message to every single member of the lonely hearts club called Planet Earth that I'm looking to hook up with YOU in specific though I have no idea who the hell you are and we've never met.
[1] I imagine my ex had a rude awakening when we divorced. Having gotten married young, neither of us had much prior experience and during my divorce my observation was that experienced men, regardless of age, compared me to women they had actually been with in the flesh and gave me good reviews.
Inexperienced men compared me to what they saw in movies and magazines and found me wanting.
If you are an inexperienced man and want experience, let me suggest you get a clue and stop having completely unrealistic expectations for what real flesh and blood women should look like naked because even the models and movie stars you see in movies and magazines don't look like that without makeup and Photoshop etc.
Insulting your date is a good way to make sure she never takes her clothes off for you again. Experienced men know this and have the good sense to say nice things about women who take their clothes off for them.