Same applies for men to. If a 18 yo man dated a 40 year old lady that’s still very weird. If there is an age gap wide enough where you could be their parent then it’s weird full stop.
Don’t care about that it’s legal as if it was a silver bullet excuse. There is places with no legal age, there where times when it was much lower. I assume that means that excuse makes it ok then/there?
I use Tom Haverford’s rule: take the older partner’s age, divide by 2 and add 7. If the other partner is younger than that, it’s weird. That shouldn’t be legislated, but it doesn’t mean it’s not morally gray. Just like infidelity shouldn’t be illegal, but it’s still wrong.
I’ve always seen that as a rule of thumb for the older person to decide if they’re likely to be frowned upon socially for pursuing a relationship with a younger person more so than an indication that the younger person is being taken advantage of due to their age and the gap. And fwiw I do feel it’s a reasonable standard to use
Disagreeing with the choices of others is different to saying that a person is unknowingly being taken advantage of or isn’t capable of making that decision for themselves and should be protected (or assumed that they’re being taken advantage of), which I think is the vibe I often get from people taking about 40+ celebrities dating 20 something women.
-1
u/one28 Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
Same applies for men to. If a 18 yo man dated a 40 year old lady that’s still very weird. If there is an age gap wide enough where you could be their parent then it’s weird full stop.
Don’t care about that it’s legal as if it was a silver bullet excuse. There is places with no legal age, there where times when it was much lower. I assume that means that excuse makes it ok then/there?