To ask if I'm right, and this is weird.

[Ohalrightthen]

Having a retrospective row - One of my best mates, then a 28yr old bloke, was a year or two ago sorta kinda dating a 19yr old girl. I am massively skeeved out by the fact that he thinks this was OK - she still lived at home with her parents and had to answer to them for her whereabouts, still had a curfew etc, had never had a job or gone to uni, seemed incredibly naive and had zero life experience. She was practically a child, and he was a well-established adult. He refused to accept that there was a power imbalance, or that it was in any way weird. She eventually broke up with him when her dad found out.

My friend says I'm a hypocrite, because i met DH when i was 20 and he was 25, but I'd been living away from home for 2 years by then and was completely financially and practically independent, so I'd argue it was a completely different situation.

Was i being overly judgy? He's historically had very little success with women his own age, and it just felt to me like he was taking advantage of this young woman having zero life experience, a pretty shitty home life and poor boundaries.

So many creepy people seeing this as creepy.

1. She was an adult. A 19 year old adult stop infantilising an adult woman.

1. He was in his 20s. Not his 30s or 40s or 50s. He didnt have power over her he wasnt her teacher, her boss or her dads best mate. No power imbalance at all.

1. The only creepy relationship is with her parents.

1. Your a hippocrit. You think 19 and 20 is different simply because she lives at home? Guess what many people live at home long into their 20s nowadays. Should no one date them because clearly they must have the brains of children?

I get what you're saying op and I bet that half the posters on here would raise their eyebrows if it were their own 19 year old daughter. Fwiw when I was 19 I 'dated' much older men (in their 30sand 40s) and the power imbalance was very skewed, in hindsight. But I was very screwed up and at the time thought I was being wild and rebellious. Actually I was just being self destructive so I understand your concerns.

That said, pp do have a point about it really being moot now as it never went anywhere and is therefore not really a problem any more!

As long as the 19 year old woman in question didn't feel weird about it, and nothing untoward happened between them, then I don't really see a problem here. Maybe if she had been 17 and still at school, but 19 is not that weird. As pp have said what is weird is her controlling parents - and also you still bringing this up with your friend 2 years later is very odd, why do you care so much?

@Cantdoitallperfectly

The red flags for me are more about her controlling parents. Surely at 19 you don’t need a curfew and should be able to live relatively independently whilst still living with parents? Unless there is more to her story.

Exactly this.

Hopefully someone treating her as an adult, as she absolutely was, will have highlighted to her how weird her parents were.

Very judgmental = and if it was a short relationship a couple of years ago, why are you still worrying about it. Are/were you jealous?

Judgemental.

At 16 I was dating someone of 24. My decision and was mine and him 3 years. Not having life experience does not mean you can’t make your own decisions.

And just because her parents were determined to treat her like a child doesn't mean she wasn't mature.

He’s one of your best mates but you were ‘skeeved out’ (I’m not sure what that means but I don’t think it means delighted) by his relationship with a young female adult because he has poor boundaries and small collection of red flags?

Strange friends.

Look at it another way. Why can’t a 19 year old adult woman sort of kinda fuck who she likes?

@Cantdoitallperfectly

The red flags for me are more about her controlling parents. Surely at 19 you don’t need a curfew and should be able to live relatively independently whilst still living with parents? Unless there is more to her story.

Yes that was my thought too.

It sounds like you either don't like him, or perhaps you were jealous. Either way, rather than keep thinking about something that has finished now, the more important question is whether you want to maintain a friendship with him I guess?

@Lemmeout

Look at it another way. Why can’t a 19 year old adult woman sort of kinda fuck who she likes?

Because what would a life be without other women telling women what and who to do😂

Also you talk of life experience... This was her life experience.

@Lemmeout

Look at it another way. Why can’t a 19 year old adult woman sort of kinda fuck who she likes?

Quite! And it went on for a few months so she was obviously happy about it.

She probably thought he had weird friends.

I lived with a boyfriend for a few years who was 9 years older than me - from 20-24.

Neither of us thought much of it, I'm not sure anyone around us did either.

Relationships between adults are not weird, creepy or grim, solely based on the age of the people in them.

I see nothing wrong with this (other than the 19 yr old having what appears to be very controlling parents). We all have to gain experience somehow, she's old enough at 19 to make up her own mind and is legally entitled to do so.

Sounds like you fancy your friend.

A 9 year age gap is nothing. It depends on the dynamics of the relationship which, frankly, you know nothing about apart from a superficial idea.

@SummerBlondey

Sounds like you fancy your friend.

I agree.

What an odd thread. When I was 17 I was dating a bloke this age. I lived at home. I was not some child being taken advantage of.

How well did you even know this woman? Stop being so judgey. It’s none of your business. She’s 19. Not a child.

Are you jealous op? I can’t think of another reason why you’re so judgey about this and the way you talk about this woman and put her down?

My only reaction is wtf has it got to do with you. YABVU

Two adults had a relationship. Two other adults have a relationship. Totally normal. Find something more useful to think about.

My good friend started dating her now husband when she was 17 and he 25. Another friend dated my now BIL for 4 y from 16-20 (he was 9 years older).
No power imbalances or exploitative behaviour in these relationships.

@thecatfromjapan

These threads come up on MN a lot.

My take is this: most 19 year olds don't go out with people hitting their thirties; most people hitting their thirties don't go out with 19 year olds.

Why? Because, yes: there's a massive life-experience gap.

Those years between 17 - 30 are real growing years, when all sorts of very significant experiences happen, all about independence, autonomy, life-choices, character growth.

Yes, some relationships will occur, an even smaller number of these will be successful - but it's an outlier experience for a reason.

I'd say it's more common than you think, as of my dozen closest friends, I'd say half dated a man in late twenties-early thirties between the ages of 18-21.

And I'd also say that those relationships were no more or less sound than those people's relationships on average - i.e. friends who made shit decisions had shit relationships with older men as much as they did with younger men, friends who had steady relationships with younger men had equally steady relationships with older men.

One woman I wanted to place under bloody lock and key because she didn't make a single good relationship choice from the moment her parents divorced. Literally never single for more than 48h, and the relationship she had with the oldest guy she dated was a blessed relief from the jerks she dated in our school.