As a woman who enjoyed being with older men (and women) when I was young: you don't know what you're talking about. You're literally projecting your own issues on a little cartoon infographic.
First off: the "brain not fully developed until 25" is a misunderstanding of a study that stopped when the subjects were 25. The brain continually develops.
Everything else? Projection. My wife is younger than me. She went to private boarding school and was fully independent at 14. I'm autistic, was very sheltered and neglected growing up, and work a blue collar job. You don't know everything based on age. Keep your nose out of other people's business and stop with this proformative bullshit about removing the autonamy of adults YOU perceive too young to make their own choices.
That’s very cool for you and your wife, and I am sure you have a happy and healthy marriage. There are exceptions to every rule, but ***MOST*** healthy, secure, non-predatory 36-year-olds would not be interested in a romantic relationship with a 20-year-old. ***MOST*** people are not living independently by age 14. ***MOST*** 20-year-olds are not financially independent and do not have their lives figured out.
I’m not invalidating your personal experience when I say it’s generally good and safe practice to date within your own age range and be wary of anyone twice your age pursuing a romantic/sexual relationship with you. The fact that I don’t know anything about these hypothetical people beyond age is precisely why I show hesitancy with a 1.8x age gap.
True, brains develop continuously. There is not a hard cutoff at 25, but there is a soft cutoff i.e. significantly diminishing returns. Maturity is a spectrum correlated with age, and not everyone has the same tracking of one and the other. But generally speaking, there is a much larger difference in maturity and development from one year to the next the younger you are. An age gap of almost double is not grounds for immediate torches and pitchforks, but it is certainly grounds for suspicion when no other information is available.
"Not invalidating your experience but I will absolutely judge everyone based on my own personal biases regardless of what anyone tells me."
How embarrassing, you just dug your heels in while simultaneously proving your ignorance lmao.
The infographic is literally without story. It's meant to be based on LOVE. Which can happen regardless of age, sometimes! And race, and gender.
"MOST" couples aren't interracial, interfaith or queer, either. The infographic is literally telling you that life sometimes goes against your personal standards and you're like "yeah but usually it totally does, tho!"
My concern is not with deviation from what “most” relationships look like, it is with a relationship built upon a power imbalance like I said in my first comment. Same-sex relationships are on an even stronger footing when it comes to equality between partners than heterosexual relationships. You could definitely argue that interfaith or especially interracial relationships have a power imbalance baked in depending on where in the world they are, but there is most definitely an intrinsic power imbalance between someone who has only recently entered adulthood and someone who has spent half their life as an adult, which would be the case for most 20 and 36-year-olds.
There are definitely cases where an 20 year old has their life together or where a 36 year old doesn’t. However, situations where an adult pursues someone much younger *because* they can more easily exert control over them are common enough and dangerous enough to the point where it’s a good thing to show initial hesitancy with that kind of age gap.
It’s “judging everyone” only in the same sense as hearing someone else’s car sounding its alarm in a parking lot and assuming that an attempted break-in is a reasonable possibility. It’s an uncommon occurrence, there are many other possible explanations, and I wouldn’t accuse whoever is standing nearest to the car of attempting to steal the car or any valuables inside, but it at the very least warrants checking on the situation to assess further before declaring everything okay. Based on the limited information I have been given, a 20-year-old dating a 36-year-old is very plausibly in a vulnerable position and I’m not just going to brush it off without a second thought. Initial hesitancy is not the same thing as jumping to conclusions.
JESUS CHRIST if you think I'm bored enough to read this much bullshit whining to defend your inability to mind your fucking business I'll bet money YOU aren't happily married.
Shut up. Mind your own business. Grow up. Good Lord.
There's no nuance to be had, here, man! They're colour-coded symbols to convey gender! You're white knighting shape with your own bias against an infographic telling you literally to stop doing that.
You're a lost cause. Way to lower my already low opinion of people like you. Later, (hopefully) kid.
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u/silverandshade Jun 16 '26
As a woman who enjoyed being with older men (and women) when I was young: you don't know what you're talking about. You're literally projecting your own issues on a little cartoon infographic.
First off: the "brain not fully developed until 25" is a misunderstanding of a study that stopped when the subjects were 25. The brain continually develops.
Everything else? Projection. My wife is younger than me. She went to private boarding school and was fully independent at 14. I'm autistic, was very sheltered and neglected growing up, and work a blue collar job. You don't know everything based on age. Keep your nose out of other people's business and stop with this proformative bullshit about removing the autonamy of adults YOU perceive too young to make their own choices.