To find this creepy as hell?

[ValerieVomit]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12760159/I-told-hed-fall-love-age-Frances-Lady-Brigitte-Macron-reveals-marrying-Emmanuel-avoid-wrecking-childrens-lives.html

Were she a man, she would be vilified as similar to Gary Glitter.

Agree with this, and YANBU @ValerieVomit

Someone else who springs to mind here, although they did seem to have a genuine love, is Celine Dion and her (now deceased) husband Rene. They met when she was 12 and he was 38.

He re-mortgaged his house to fund and promote her first album. He was very close to her, and was her manager, (from when she was 12.) They became an 'official' couple, and declared their love for one another, when she was 19 and he was 45. I mean she was an adult then, but it's still a bit 😱

Any grown adult - especially 35+ who is dating someone young enough to be their child, (and who they have known since they were school age,) gives me the creeps a bit to be honest.

It's quite strange when people gloss over the fact that she was his teacher and he was just fifteen when she started grooming him. It's in no way comparable to a 25yr old starting to date a 55yr old.

I can’t even imagine what’s going through your head to write that in regards to this situauton.

I've often thought that Brigitte was Macron's "beard". He married her for optics and she was old enough not to bear children for him. Voila!

I will burn in Hell for saying the above, but I've often thought it.

This was suggested when he first appeared on the political scene.
Then he was president and lots of magazines ran gushing articles about their 'love story'.

Sorry, but no. He was in her daughter class but she said she only saw him every Friday in a theatre club she was running. Apparently she was seduced by his 'exceptional intelligence' and never saw him as a child.
They also claim he asked his parents to transfer him to a new school when he realised he was falling for her... yeah, right.

Absolutely, and I think it’s very telling that this thread has only got a little over 50 replies. Where is the outrage and disgust about how this started? I am very open minded but to read the interview was deeply uncomfortable, particularly “For me, such a young boy was crippling”. So she was aware she went over a boundary but later pursued it anyway? “I told myself that he would fall in love with someone his age. It didn’t happen”. So she believed that he thought she was in love with him, a 15 year old! It’s crazy.

As for the marriage now? No, I don’t buy it, for the reason mentioned by a few others.

The moral issue is without question absolutely abhorrent.

The age gap and the optics do look strange. It’s a big age gap.

I have wondered though about the fidelity of their relationship eg we don’t really know if she is his only partner.

From what I've read (and I accept it may have lost something in translation) she seemed far more concerned about the potential impact of the situation on her own children than on Francois.

The age gap itself, although big, isn't really the issue. The issue is that he was 15 when they met and she was his teacher. She could and should have completely distanced herself from the outset, shut it down before it even started and the fact she didn't says much. FM's alleged "brilliance" is a total smokescreen.

I think its fairly obvious OP that few people are going to think BM acted appropriately and that the thread is going to turn into a discussion of how bad her behaviour was. Which it was. However to address your question about double standards and 'if she were a man...' I think you're right the situation does highlight double standards, but not in the way you clearly hope for.
The list of male celebrities who 30+ years ago embarked on relationships with teen girls is long, yet barely newsworthy at all, or when it does make public knowledge typically met with no more than an eye roll and a mutter about how it was different then.
As indeed it was, in an era that saw The Sun featuring a 15 year old every day of the week on page 3 until eventually she was topless on her 16th birthday in school uniform; and 13 year old Mandy Smith achieved celebrity status as a 'wild child' through her relationship with Bill Wyman. Anyone living in that time is likely to recall that attitudes towards old men and teen girls were very liberal indeed by todays more enlightened standards. Yet I struggle to remember a similar situation with the sexes reversed. The BM example being wheeled out repeatedly due to lack of other examples.
If your aim is to show that older women benefit from double standards then to give your argument any integrity, you need to compare like with like. BMs counterpart is not Gary Glitter, it's one of the long list of older men who dated and married teen girls in the same era the Macron relationship began.
Thirty years of marriage later you are digging up articles to shame BM. Yet consider The Stones, Bowie, Elvis, and the way in which their behaviour with teen girls remains largely peripheral to what the public identifies with them, and the double standards are very apparant.

What does it tell you?

Macron became president in 2017. Their relationship origin was widely discussed then, so it's hardly surprising that a thread created more than 6 years after these facts became known elicits fewer replies.

Here's a thread titled 'To think Brigitte Macron is a pedophile' from 2017 with 347 replies.

Same here. Once you leave the relationship, you realise that it was weird from start to finish. And undoubtedly abusive in lots of ways. My suspicion is that he wanted/needed a kind of mother figure for whatever reason, but maybe I'm wrong.

She groomed him and according to all accounts remains minutely controlling.

There was a French movie about a female teacher falling in love with her student out a year or so before the E&B love affair started.

The teacher was attractive and youthful and the movie was very shocking at the time and spoken about in the media, there was a discussion (favourable at the time) about the authenticity of intergenerational love affairs. I think Brigitte was copying the storyline of the movie.

Personally, I think it's abuse.

Macron has just appointed the youngest ever French President, a 34 year old, gay man. It appears to me, Macron is grooming this young man as his political side kick, teaching him how to survive and thrive in politics, and creating a much needed ally. Macron seems to be repeating a pattern.

Well said.

Would you care to explain why 'gay' has any relevance here? Also, politicians do 'groom' younger ones, in a non sexual way. They want their parties/ideologies to continue, so they groom/indoctrinate/teach.

You said in your post that if she were a man “she’d be vilified the same as Gary Glitter”. You made the comparison in your post. You can’t just walk it back now because you realise how daft you were to say it.

Absolutely nobody worth breath would think that. They are two completely separate things. One is creepy and inappropriate, the other is illegal, absolutely disgusting and left a wake of abused and broken children in its wake.

saying “some people would say” and then saying it, while pretending you yourself are not saying it, is right out of Trump’s childish playbook.

Those that question their love or his sexuality I think are missing the whole point of a political marriage. A president or leader of a powerful nation will always have a partner who has a common ambition. Either the partner has equal ambition and wants to be a power couple or is happy to play the role of arm candy and reap the benefits of success. I think marriages like that are not about love but a different type of commitment.

Not sure what your point is, as their relationship started when he was a child.
Are you saying she had so much faith in his talent that she groomed him as a teenager in anticipation of his future presidency?

Of course it’s wrong

he was a child she was in a position of power

its common for pupils to have crushes of their teachers and in other professions especially when you are in a role of supporting someone as the attention given is on a personal level but you ignore it

if he was 25 that would be different but he was a child it’s not about the age difference it’s about what age he was when this started