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

Yeah this wasn't usual for 2010!

It wadnt that ling afo that most 16 year olds were working.

I was 16 when I got into a relationship with a 25 year old. That was 15 years ago and we are now married with 2 kids.

Very common up to the mid 2000s in my experience. I was 17 when I meet my ex & he was 22 in the late 90s. Nothing abusive, he didnt take advantage of me & we were together for 3 years. Stayed friends & he attended my wedding a few years after we split up.

My DC however couldn't believe it when me & DH were talking about relationships we had before we got together. They were both 15/16 at the time & kept telling me id been groomed! I certainly hadn't (i was the more mature one in our relationship) but they were & still are, now insistent about it.

DH knows my ex & he agrees with me that this wasn't grooming (we meet at a club which id managed to get in underage) & was very normal in his circle of friends in the 90s too.

Pretty much all my friends had similar relationship at the same ages.

I dont think it would be considered appropriate now but it used to be & it wasn't an issue for me but accept that it may have been different in other relationships.

If your relatives seem happy I'd leave it at that.

I was 16 and my DH was 21 when we met. We've been together 25ish years now. There was never an imbalance in maturity levels. I was absolutely never taken advantage of or controlled in any way. We're equals in every way and always have been.

I'd just about finished school when we met, and we met in an adult environment as my friends were mostly older than I was. It wouldn't have been clear or obvious that I was only 16 either.

I think there is a bit of cognitive dissonance going on. It was accepted and normalised in the past and most of us will have experience of relationships of this nature. To realise that even the nice and seemingly harmless ones were rooted in abuse and predatory intention is hard to process.

When you look back though there is no other explanation as to why 20 plus year old men were interested in children. What do they see in such young girls that they couldn't get from women their own age?

I remember ages 19 at uni thinking anyone having a relationship with a 16 yo was a creep. We all changed so much in those years. So yeah 22 is weird af.

No, both points of view aren't valid. This is about child protection. A 16 year old is legally a child and will be so for two more years. The fact you think that a full blown adult in their 20s can legitimately have a sexual and romantic relationship with a child is just wrong.

We had it wrong in the past regarding 16 year olds and how society perceived them. We know now about how the brain develops and that 16 year old brains are nowhere near fully developed. I remember being 16 and feeling that I knew everything and was super mature but ironically that was a sign of my immaturity. This is why we need laws to protect people of this age. They are much more likely to be vulnerable to exploitation than adults. Nobody is safe from abuse, but pairing a child with an adult in their 20s in what is supposed to be an equal relationship is obviously hugely problematic. The opportunity for a power imbalance is enormous as the 22 year old is far more likely to have more experience, maturity and money on their side.

16 year olds can't marry or join the army without parental consent. They can't operate a meat slicer. They can't drive. They can't vote. They can't drink alcohol or play the lottery. They can't do any of these things because they are a legal child. Yet you're telling me that they should be in sexual relationships with 22 year old men and that the reasons why the law doesn't let them do any of the other things don't apply to this. I'm sorry but I find your views scary.

I dated a 22 year old when I was 16, I turned 17 a few weeks later.

stayed together 2 years. He was respectful and kind. Nothing in appropriate or weird I was just a lot older than my years. I never dated anyone in my school.

I can see why it’s a little odd, but it depends entirely on the situation.

I am now married to someone 8 years older

I was a teenager in the 80s. This was quite normal back then. People got married and had their children very young, usually before they were 20. My Careers Master told me that I shouldn't worry about uni, what I needed was a nice little office job to tide me over until I settled down and had a family. I was in the top stream for everything too, god only knows what he said to the girls in the lower sets.

You think it's sick and wrong whereas I don't. Both points of view are valid. At 16 people used to be able to work full time, get married, join the army. So I can't see the problem with a 16 year old going out with a 22 year old. It's hardly the same as a 16 year old going out with a 32 or 42 year old.

There's no guarantee that someone having a relationship with a person within a year of their age is going to be treated wonderfully is there? Abusive relationships happen between people of the same age. Some 16 year olds are mature and sensible, others aren't, the same as some 22 year olds aren't.

This. Some very outdated views on this thread.

I was 16 in the mid 2000s and even then it would have been unusual to date someone in their 20s.

I think it's utterly wrong and I am seriously worried about posts like this that justify the whole thing on the basis that it was common years ago and some relationships forged this way are still going. We know better now and understand a lot more about power dynamics, abuse and how girls in particular were exploited in these kinds of relationships.

Someone who has just turned 16 was a child a few months ago. The age of consent is obviously a tricky balance between not wanting to criminalise young people around the same age wanting to experiment and to protect young people from older adults looking to exploit them.

Someone who is 16 would have just finished their GCSEs and aren't allowed to vote, leave education, drink alcohol or drive. What on earth is a 22 year old who has been able to do all these things for years and has potentially completed their A levels and university and living as a fully fledged adult have in common with someone that is basically a child?

I'm from the era you describe in your post and it was exploitative and disgusting on reflection. Why on earth weren't these men chasing after women their own age? Why were they targeting kids? It's sick that you are defending it

Jonathan Ross started going out with his wife when she was 16 and he was 26, they married 2 years later and are still married. Do all the hysterical people on here think he is a paedophile?

I have some good friends who met when she was 17 and he was 27. They carried on their relationship while she went to university and married when she was about 25, have been married for over 35 years.

Before ID was required for pubs and clubs it was really normal for 16 year old girls to go to those places to socialise. I went to an all girls school and in sixth form we almost all went out clubbing and pubs and bars from 16. It's easy for 16 year old girls to look older when they're dressed up and wearing make up. That meant we often met older men because there was no way 16 year old boys in general looked older so they were never allowed in or didn't bother trying. So we were meeting men who were at least 18 if not older and so it was normal to have older boyfriends at that age, especially as we didn't meet boys through school.

It’s disgusting.

Awful isn't it.
Imagine finding out your 16 y/o son is seeing a 22 y/o woman.
Not many mothers would be happy with that scenario at all.

In the 80's and 90's this happened a lot.
We know better now.
I am sure us girls who were in high-school in the 90's remember men in their 20's showing interest in us.
So wrong by todays standards.

I should clarify we are still very happily married, been together nearly 24 years.

We were rather concerned when our 19 year old started dating a 15 year old.... In some ways he was immature (first relationship) and she was mature for her age, but that didn't change the fact that legally he was a man and she was a child. His father laid down the law about the need for her parents to know where they were going and when they'd be back.....she tired of him after about 18 months.

I was 17 he was 26, we've been married for 52 years

The boy in his 20s was a MAN

I think it’s creepy af and would stay away from him. My son is 22 and there is no way he would be interested in 16 year old girls, they’re children, the age of his sister and her friends.

A friend of mine's son was dating a 14 year old when he was 21. I said I thought it a bit off, but she thought it was fine. To me a boy in his 20s is almost certainly thinking about physical relations and a 14 year old shouldn't be and is too immature to be involved with someone much more adult.

My DD met her husband through work - in the RAF!!!

The below [condensed] article has been making the rounds for years because of exactly the issues PPs are raising. It was written in 2008 for women and girls under the age of 24. Millenials had the advantage of reading this and similar articles and being warned. THIS is why they - especially girls/young women - are deeply suspicious of age-gap relationships. And they are right.

"There doesn’t seem to be a week that passes at Scarleteen where we’re not helping a user who is in some kind of crisis – and often a whopper – with an older male partner : pressured sex or sexual abuse , a pregnancy scare (usually due to the guy having any and every reason why other guys can use condoms, but he’s the great exception to every rule), a newly-acquired STI (again with the condom refusals, sometimes paired with lies about testing and sexual history), an abusive relationship (and often combined with a pregnancy scare, pregnancy or STI), isolation from friends, family or other adults (often because said boyfriend is doing the isolating), or trouble doing things that enable life goals like getting through college or finishing an important project because Mr. Wonderful sabotages those efforts.

By no means do I feel it is impossible for any man to be a good guy in relationships with an age gap. ... I’m also all too aware – as is every reproductive health and teen advocacy group worldwide – that the rule, rather than the exception, is that your older boyfriend is more likely to be bad news than good. And the younger you are, the more statistically likely it is that your older partner is going to spell major league disaster for you...

that guy.
...I feel like he chose you because he thinks you can be convinced he’s as good as you’re going to get: when the truth is that you are the one who is as good as HE is going to get. I feel like dating someone as smart, gorgeous, fabulous and awesome as you are is something he does in part to make himself feel more important than he actually is. I feel like he thinks it’s okay to use you to make others think better of him than he actually deserves. I feel like he chose you because he thinks “getting” you is an achievement all about him, not a partnership about both of you.

I feel like he chose you because he thinks that he can be held to lower standards by you than someone closer to his age would hold him to...

One reason I get so deeply angry is that I am tired of watching your “mature” boyfriend turn you into a statistic, like one of these:

• ...A recent study found that 6.7 percent of women aged 15-17 have partners six or more years older. The pregnancy rate for this group is 3.7 times as high as the rate for those whose partners are no more than two years older ...When the age separation of the male is at least six years older, the 15 to 17 year old female is almost three times as likely to be one of those who later became counted as a teen pregnancy ...Teens who date older partners have a lower likelihood of consistent contraceptive use. For each year a partner is older than the respondent, the likelihood of always using contraception decreases by 11 percent...

• Younger and foreign-born teens, with lower parent education ...had greater odds of having a first sexual experience with an older partner than with a similar-aged partner...

• Ten percent of females and 2% of males has had early sex with an older partner. These females were [twice as] likely to acquire an STD as young adults than were those whose riskiest relationship was before age 16 with a similar-aged partner...

• Compared with teenagers whose first partner had been roughly their age, the 35% of adolescents with an older partner had been younger at first intercourse (13.8 years vs. 14.6) and less likely to use a condom at first intercourse (63% vs. 82%)...

• Women with older partners were more likely to have reported that they had been forced to have sex at some time in their lives and that they had first intercourse in more casual relationships rather than long-term relationships...Young women who had ever been forced to have sex were twice as likely as those who had not to have a partner who was 3-5 years older..."

https://www.scarleteen.com/read/abuse/why-i-deeply-dislike-your-older-boyfriend