Cage Match: Is it anyone’s business how old your adult girlfriend is?
Q
Hello all. I’m 24 and my girlfriend is 36. I’ve always been mature for my age, always dated older people, had older friends, not really related to people my own age very much. My girlfriend has never dated someone younger before me, I had to pursue her very hard to convince her to even consider me an option! Okay so recently she saw a TikTok that was like “unpopular opinion but I think it’s really fucked up for full adult women to date women under 25” or something like that. Of course the comments were in full agreement, she shared it with me, and now she is seemingly on this side of TikTok forever…. the side that is making her paranoid that she’s a pervert for being with me?
I guess what I am maybe asking is like, help me convince her that it’s ok for her to date me? I am starting to feel disillusioned with queer community in general. Everything feels so black and white these days, strangers making blanket statements about what’s okay or not for all relationships. Like aren’t we supposed to be full of nuance? How would someone on TikTok know more about my relationship than I do? Why are we deciding what is okay for other consenting adults to do like why is it anybody’s business?? Is this even an advice question?
A
Summer: I’ve found the turn against age gap relationships among young people to be really puzzling. Sizable age gaps were the default for most of human history. They often originated in an environment of hegemonic patriarchy and unequal access to resources, but an age gap isn’t inherently indicative of harm in relationships. But I’m sure you know this.
This… honestly sounds like your girlfriend, a 36 year-old is somehow letting her TikTok scroll erode her ability to think rationally about her situation. That’s not what I’d expect from someone of her age, but the endless barrage of repetitive, polarizing content that apps like TikTok supply are enough to erode anyone’s sanity.
This is destabilizing your relationship and I think you should address it. I’ll recommend the classic: a serious sit-down conversation where you discuss the issue and its consequences. Preferably with some evidence or support that isn’t TikTok dreck. If she’s not the kind of person who responds well to that kind of thing, I’d consider supplying her with nuanced (even entertaining) counter-perspectives from other online media. YouTube videos exploring this issue as it relates to queer people perhaps? Essays? We have some work on this site about the topic.
Before I go on too long, I wonder if there’s something else at play in your girlfriend’s psyche. People who are in a good space emotionally don’t flip their views this hard based on TikTok content when it may jeopardize their relationships. When people act out, they’re often trying to preserve their relationships, not develop misgivings. This may be a manifestation of a deeper issue and it’s just appearing as uncertainty about the age gap. But that’s out of my paygrade.
Valerie: I think a lot of people’s hesitancy with age-gap relationships is that very often, there’s a power imbalance at play, and the younger person is being taken advantage of and they don’t even realize it. So people generalize, and they stereotype, and they assume. Only you and your girlfriend know your situation, and if your actual friends and family and people who know you best aren’t raising any red flags, then it’s really none of TikTok’s business. It sounds like these videos are playing on some of your girlfriend’s insecurities and like Summer said, you should talk about how she’s really feeling and why these videos are affecting her. For me, the “ick” I feel about gap relationships aren’t actually ever about age, but about life stage. I’m much more likely to find red flags in boss/employee, student/teacher, adult/college student, or even famous person/fan relationships than in the actual numbers. I have a feeling that’s what people on TikTok also feel – on top of the psychologically egotistical “I am not attractive to people x age, so therefore I cannot fathom anyone else is” – but nuance is dead and empathy is dying. So I would just have this conversation with your girlfriend, reassure her that her age doesn’t bother you, and borrow her TikTok to watch videos of carpet cleaning or lesbians chopping wood to cleanse the algorithm.
Nico: TikTok is so toxic. It’s an algorithm that rewards having strong opinions (or what someone might have once called a hot take), and I agree, there is a lot of black and white thinking these days that isn’t going to help anyone. Also, TikTok can amplify insecurities because the more someone pays attention to a certain topic, the more the app is going to show it to them. I recommend that when you talk to your girlfriend, that you ask that she consider taking a break from TikTok.
Age gaps have been a normal part of queer relationships for a long time. There are fewer queer people than straight people and the dating pool is smaller. Sometimes, when queer dating, someone you have a lot in common with has some interesting and striking differences — age for example — that might be considered more unusual in a relationship by mainstream, more hetero standards. Another great example of this is the tendency for queer people to date long-distance as necessary, because sometimes someone you’re really into lives hours away. These are things that happen in relationships in our community. With an age gap in a relationship, the power gap is the most important thing. If you feel you two are on equal footing and no one is being taken advantage of, like you’re going to be taken seriously when you have this conversation, for example, then the age gap is probably not the issue. You don’t mention in your question, but is there anything else going on with your girlfriend or with you? It might be good for you to take a look at the landscape of your relationship and lives overall and try to identify where there might be pressure points that are contributing to your girlfriend’s sense of unease.
Riese: I have some empathy for your girlfriend’s paranoia — TikTok has that effect, especially if she’s someone who doesn’t always trust her own instincts for whatever reason. I think when you’re deviating from the norm, or what you’re used to, you often ask for outside opinions and are easily impacted by them as well. (Once upon a time, and even still today, this applied to queer relationships in general.) Unfortunately TikTok just delivers unsolicited outside opinions to us we didn’t ask for!
Listen — there are nearly always going to be power differentials in relationships. Age gaps are easy to put parameters around — and it’s an easy thing to moralize about — but it relies on vast assumptions about where people are in life and generalizations around maturity levels, when there are so many things in relationships that contribute to power imbalances. Stay in regular conversation about the ways in which the age gap is challenging or complicated for you both — as you should for any power differentials. Don’t be afraid to press her on this, you’ll come out stronger or at least have more clarity on the other end.
Passover has… passed (and is now over), but still: What if your gay brother’s political line in the sand with your parents is driving you nuts?
Q
I’m gay and so is my brother, and since the election he’s gone no contact with my parents because they voted for Trump, which he says is voting against his rights because he thinks Trump is coming for gay people and will take away our marriage rights. I get it but I don’t feel like white gay men are really the population in the most danger right now, sometimes he drives me crazy with this shit because stuff is ALREADY HAPPENING to trans people and that’s what is scary TO ME but he is on some other planet of hypotheticals.
Like I am mad at my parents for voting for Trump because of what Trump is doing to trans people, because I have so many trans friends. But okay that’s not even actually what I am upset about, that I’m writing about today.
I am upset because okay, so we are all Jewish. My parents are very VERY pro-Israel Zionists. And I have been fighting with them about this for a long time now to the point where I have wanted to cut ties at times, but didn’t because as my BROTHER POINTED OUT TO ME, it was good to stay in dialogue with them about it so at least SOMEONE in their lives is speaking up for Palestine. Also I feel guilty because they paid for my college and grad school and they’re old and my dad is sick.
But like I want to strangle him for opting out of the family over the election? Passover is coming up so we got in a huge fight about how he didn’t want to come to Passover but now that means I definitely have to come to Passover, they can’t have neither of us at Passover? He said finally that he would go if I INSISTED that he go, but he really doesn’t want to. It’s kosher for me to insist, right?
Who’s the asshole? It’s my brother, right?
A
Summer: This sounds like you and your brother both experiencing valid and understandable emotional stress due to the current administration’s stance on… everything. I resent the fact that people who are ostensibly on the same team are in conflict when we are all being threatened by a greater source of hostility. Like arguing over dinner reservations on the Titanic.
But look, if your brother has allowed himself to go no-contact and has done so successfully, why can’t you do it too? You’ve got the same parents. His parents are old and sick too. They paid for his upbringing. And he went no-contact. If anything, his ‘success’ at this unpleasant task should be a precedent that it’s possible for you to do so as well. No, I don’t think it’s fair that he’s asking you to stay in contact after he already bailed.
The bottom line is that this decision is yours to make. To me, it’s rather hypocritical that he’d ask things of you that he wouldn’t do. So no, you’re not the asshole here. I can understand that your brother has a tempest in his mind about many current events. I don’t think what he’s doing is seriously immoral, either. But it’s not fair. And isn’t that what so many sibling disputes come down to?
Nico: So he’s gone no contact and won’t be going to Passover, and that makes you feel like you have to go to Passover? That’s just not the case. You can make your own choices, just like your brother made his. Plus, if dialogue hasn’t worked yet, maybe it would be okay for your parents to realize that their actions have costs for them, too, not just for other people.
That said, it seems that your brother is someone who you could really have a dialogue with. He’s already concerned about, well, everything we’re living through, and you could probably get through to him that, yeah, we aren’t dealing with hypotheticals and that many people are already actively being harmed and in many cases, killed. It sounds like your brother expects labor from you that he isn’t willing to give himself, too, that he thinks you should be the someone to dialogue with your parents, for example. That’s not a fair expectation and I think you should feel free to address it.
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“How would someone on TikTok know more about my relationship than I do? Why are we deciding what is okay for other consenting adults to do like why is it anybody’s business??”
Because there are hundreds, and maybe thousands, of young women in the world who dated someone much older when they were young, and really enjoyed the relationship at the time (thought they were ‘mature for their age’) only to hit the age their partner was when they started dating (or maybe just like, late 20’s, or 30) and realized how taken advantage of they were or all the ways in which that relationship was fucked up that they couldn’t see at the time. And many of those women are desperate to try to prevent others from having that experience, because it cause lots of serious damage, so they talk about it online.
So, I think there are some good reasons for the skepticism around age gaps, and I would probably encourage you to do some therapeutic introspection around this issue, but! All that being said!! If you have done lots of introspection about this issue, if no one else in your life has any concerns about this relationship, and if you feel you can talk through this stuff with your partner openly, then great, awesome. I definitely think that queer relationships make this issue much more complicated, and that they are, as is pointed out in the answers here, much more common historically for queer people, and they don’t have the damaging/dangerous connotations that heterosexual relationships have (for good reason).
Q1: social media is a place composed of black and white. It doesn’t do shades of grey, the nuance you are after. While there is something to be said for an accessible platform from which to share horror stories and warnings, in the hope that readers will avoid learn from the bad experiences of others, social media can also become an echo chamber reinforcing simplistic assumptions and censorious judgement. Yes, an age gap relationship has the potential to contain power imbalances, but this is not fait accompli. Getting off TikTok and searching for healthy age gap relationship stories (there are some on Autostraddle) sounds like a good call for you & your gf. Trust me, they are real.
Age gap:
Very good point about small community that creates the need for age gap and long distance relationships.
That said, as someone who has been on the other side of that age gap, and who has also been the persued- i want to draw attention to that fact:
If you had to persue her, she was probably unconfortable with that age gap from the start, and tictoc just enforced that.
Being much older in a relationship can give you a really creepy feeling that cannot be overcome by the partner “being old for their age”. Because there is also the physical body reality that your partner perceives constantly. Even if they look young to you, as many queer people do – You look even younger to them. Imagine yourself being persued by a 16 year old.
And there is another factor apart from financial or power inequality: Experience inequality.
It might be different nowadays, but many queer people used to start dating much later than straight people, as in early 20s versus 14 or 15 years. So this can also add to the huge gap in experience that can feel like dating a person who is an additional 5 years younger than they are.
So while I’m totally not a fan of tictoc activism and hate the smug black and white thinking, i find your partner’s behaviour very understandable. If the younger partner is below 25-ish, and the age gap is 10+ years, the above listed factors are objectively there and might strain or break the relationship.
This is interesting to me, this question 1. I could have been your girlfriend. My ex was 9 years younger pursued me, and I didn’t take her seriously at first. Because I was older. I am also a bit of a loner. She was so gregarious and popular. I had just moved to where she had lived all her life. She knew everybody there. She was full of energy. I was flattered by her interest. She had been living on her own since she was 16. I had just been in a 5-year relationship with someone my own age who had been living with their (wealthy) parents for a while and was struggling to find direction. There wasn’t anything wrong with that, but I think that is part of why the younger girl; seemed older to me, because she had her own place. She was in graduate school.
We were together for around a year, eventually we broke up because she cheated on me. Was that a result of her age? I couldn’t tell you. When I hear people talk about these age gaps now, I do look back and think, was I doing something wrong? Was it wrong of me to date someone so young? Sometimes it did feel like what she really wanted was a reliable mother, and sometimes I felt like I was in that role. She said she preferred older women. I never preferred younger women, but she made me open to it. I did have a financial foothold that she did not. I think, maybe, we should have discussed that more, openly. To tell you the truth, I didn’t feel like I had power over her at the time, because she was so outgoing and popular and physically attractive, and was always getting hit on. I think in society; the way we are socialized as women; is to see youth as power. Not age. But of course; nothing is that simple, is it?
Well, these always do give me a lot to think about.