To think a 22 year old dating a 16 year old is dodgy?

A one year age gap???

16 is underage to a grown adult of 22. The 22 year old is a pedophile.

I do think it's too much of a gap given her age. He's a fully-fledged adult and she's a schoolgirl. I know there are examples here where it was fine, but I'd venture to suggest that more of these relationships are not fine.

This makes me wonder if the age of consent should be raised to 18. Would help stop older men preying on schoolgirls and would help to protect said girls. Would also help protect girls from sexual pressure during GCSEs/first year of A-levels.

the current attitude of any teen sleeping with an over 20 is groomed is a little restrictive imo. My dd(16) was warned and mocked for dating an 18yr old boy by all her friends. It spread to her being made fun of, and her (fucking ridiculous) wellbeing teacher having a word with her. She ended it, despite the relationship being healthy, normal and her and him being happy. That he was an “adult” made him a perv.

meanwhile I was 17 when my 26 year old husband met me 25 years ago. He was a young 26 I was an old 17 and we grew together. We were more in love with every passing year.

Half your age plus seven should be enshrined in law.

It really depends when this happened. Times have changed hugely in the last twenty years, but this would have been normal in the 90s and any time earlier.

I was briefly in a relationship with a 27 year old the year I turned 16. I dumped him after a few months. It wasn't remotely abusive and I wasn't preyed upon, but obviously many girls / women are, regardless of age gaps and so on.

I don't think I'd have contemplated it if I were 15 now, and neither would he. Very different times. Back then, girls were kind of considered grown up from about 13-14, now some of them are still kids til about 25.

I know 16 is technically the age of consent but I consider it noncey. Why the fuck would someone old enough to have graduated uni be interested in a child studying their GCSEs, they are in totally different life stages. Its not the equivilent of a 22 and 28 year old.

Back in the late 90s this was almost normal. Now I'm 42 I look back and think there was definitely some noncey fucking grooming going on, but when you're 14/15/16 and your 20+ year old boyfriend shows up at the school gate to pick you up in his souped up corsa with bean can exhaust, you feel super "mature" as he takes you to the local macdonalds car park to impress you with revving his engine and doing donuts. And also he can get served for cigs and booze at the local shops... Swoon...

There's alot of emphasis on Asian grooming gangs, but I think thats the tip of the iceberg when you look at ALL ethnicities, we just don't talk about the boy racer white grooming gang types (accept we didn't label them grooming gangs, just groups of 18+ lads going out with literal school girls) and we all know they were everywhere.

I was 16, he was 23, we’ve been together 25 yrs now, married 19 years. We met in a pub so he initially thought I was older, I had been getting away with saying I was 18 for a good couple of years by that point.

My sil was 17 when she started going out with my brother. He was 23. They married when she was 21 and have an amazingly happy marriage. She did like him from 15 ish ( brother worked for her grandfather ) but my brother knew she was too young.

And unfortunately it sounds like you're still being gaslit by him if you believe this was okay. Personally I would find it impossible to trust this predator.

It doesn't make it okay though does it? Think back to when you were 21, would you date a 15 year old boy?

Yes, and thank goodness it's that way. It's frightening the number of older people on here who think it's normal for a grown man to date a child.

WTF? So that makes it okay? Unreal

I'm sorry but that's disgusting! You were a child!

When I was 15 I dated a 21 year old who was in the army. It wasn't that uncommon back in the 90s, plenty of my girlfriends were seeing older guys.

It depends on the time period. 50’s it was seen as standard - now definitely not. I had an ex who was 30 and contacting (aka sending nudes to) 16/17 year olds - when I called him a pedophile he told me the legal age was 16, so he wasn’t doing anything wrong. And whilst in the term of the law, he was correct but when he was seeing out girls in school uniform and things, we know what he is.

im going to say it, men and women who date young kids, wether that being 16 or that being 20 when they’re 30 themselves - they often do it because they’re abusers and know that the only way they’re able to manipulate a partner if they’re young and naieve as people their age would see right through it. I was 19 with a 29 year old and I look at how immature and vulnerable I was at 19 compared to at 25 and it’s so obvious that is the exact reason why abusers get with younger kids.

Quite!

Why on earth would a one year age gap be noncey?

And, just for the record, whilst it may be distasteful for an older man to have sex with a 16 year old, it's not paedophilia, 16 year olds aren't children.

Noncy? Give over.

I had a 23 year old boyfriend when I was 16 (mid-eighties), it felt completely normal for the time, but now, no way. My children who are late teens and early twenties are quick to label anything over a 1 year gap as “noncy”. At a starting age of 16 I think they are right.
It’s all about the times you live in.

I was 17 he was 23. A million years later here we are still together.

I'm not going to get too concerned about 16 year olds and 22 year olds, they're very often at similar stages of maturity.

My first boyfriend was 22 and I was 16, he was a really lovely bloke, we had some great times together and we split up amicably and as friends when I went to University at 19. We're still friends 35 years later.

Absolutely no grooming or weirdness was involved.

That's not to say there aren't predatory men who take advantage of vulnerable younger women, there's plenty of that.

There are also relationships with a bit of an age gap that are based on mutual respect and friendship, I think it's a bit off to brand all men predators and all women victims in these cases.

Yes, it's grim as fuck.

I've been a 22 year old man, and the idea of being interested in a 16 year old would have repulsed me or any of my friends.

I was 18 when I met my now DH who was 24 at the time. 8 years later and we are happily married with a dog and a mortgage. Never thought it was a big age gap or odd, although I will say I think there’s a huge difference between 16 and 18!

My friend was 17 and her (now) dh 29 when they met. At the time I thought it was weird and he was ancient. They’ve been married more than 40 years now and there’s actually a bigger age gap between dh and myself, although I was 10 years older when I met him.

My 19 year old was seeing a 17 year old recently and I was uncomfortable with that. She had left school but still seemed quite immature. I was glad when it ended.

Forgot to add - he was 33