To not look at this couple in the same way anymore?

[AvrilAprill]

At the end of last year I made friends with a mum who’d just moved to the area. We got on great, as did our partners.

However, I’ve now found out that they first got together when she was 16 and he was 20/21. It genuinely makes me feel uncomfortable knowing that, and my husband says I’m being weird

There is no "power imbalance" between a 16 year old and a 20 year old. They can well be at the same level of maturity. Neither are children, neither are older adults.
I think the response to this is very strange.

I'm imagining someone like @AvrilAprill doing the maths on DH and me. He is 53, I am 48. Shocking!!! FWIW, we were 23 and 27 when we got together.

Yet no-one, knowing our respective ages, has ever asked what age we were when we got together.

Honestly I wouldn’t care about this. My DD was 18yo and dated a 25yo guy. Didn’t last a year as she binned him off as he was so immature. He worked, supported himself, lived out of home, was independent, yet honestly I’d rate his general maturity level as that of a 14yo boy. So in your example the 16yo would have outstripped him in maturity. Meh.

Even worse for us, @MrHarleyQuin - we have a ten year age gap, 24-34 and have been together for nearly 40 years.
So much nonsense on here.

It wasn’t seen as weird in the 1990s for sure. I remember my 16 year old friend having a much older boyfriend, we all would have liked one!
I don’t think I’d end a friendship over it.

besides she's met this couple as parents of a primary aged children, the age they met is none of her concern, it's just weird

Exactly.. it's a bizarre thing to be fixated about now that all parties are parents of school aged children

But OP doesn't need to worry. When these new friends find it how judgy she is, the friendship will soon be over and she won't have to worry about it any more.

Seriously, that response to a pp "I don't care how happy you are" is up there with the nastiest things I've read here.

Wow.

Just wow.

Sabadoo, I’m very pleased to hear that you’re happy now x

There are reasons why it could be odd but as long as they seem happy and well suited now does it matter. My biggest concern is alway that they are looking for someone who they can more easily control with that kind of age gap if that isn’t there and they have been together a long time does it matter

Agreed completely, I'd add that the OP's response was also extremely childish as well

Quite. It's so bitter and twisted.

It would be considered an inappropriate relationship now-a-days and a potential safeguarding issue. She is still a child. He is an adult. It doesn’t matter if she’s “mature for her age” and he’s “a sweet and nice guy” and they’ve been together ever since - this would be a red flag. Most 20 year olds don’t want to date or even hang out with a 16 year old imo. The developmental gap is pretty large. One is a child and one is an adult.

A lot of people think it’s creepy. OP my YA son knows someone of 22 who was dating a 16 year old. They definitely look down on him and think he’s creepy. ETA other kids consider that age gap creepy nowadays

I think it is a generational thing.

Mandy Smith’s MOTHER took her round to that old nonces house when she was THIRTEEN years old. Now she’d be arrested for pimping out her kid for clout.

I think you would've combusted living in my youth OP. Some of my schoolmates used to date older guys, especially ones with cars and I was jealous! Most girls prefer maturity and both him and her are over the age of consent. I would keep my friendship with them unless they find out something about you which gives them the ick 😀

I'd argue that babying young people to the extent we do now, insisting that sixteen year olds are children, isn't the enlightened approach some think.
Many of them seem so anxious and unhappy.

It would be considered an inappropriate relationship now-a-days and a potential safeguarding issue.

A safeguarding issue? No it wouldn't. A 16 year old is of age to have consensual sex.

What a bizarre non issue.

I wonder how many of the mothers of daughters on here saying it's fine would be delighted that their 16 year old child was with a 21 year old man?

I agree with you OP but I work in safeguarding children so perhaps I always see the worst.

And yes, teenagers really are being infantilised these days. It does them no favours.

Strange reactions. I was 19, he was 26. Been together 24 years, now 43 and 51. I never thought much of it?

I never understand what young women find sexy or attractive about immature older men.

At least they were both of consensual age. When I was in 6th form, one of our teachers 'fancied' a girl in year 8. They married and had children. Her parents supported the relationship. They're separated now after 20+ years, but I still find it absolutely awful 😞.

I wouldn't be delighted. But nor would I assume the worst.

What I wouldn't do is judge adults of an age to be parents of school aged children, for the (legal) age they got together.

I think 16 year olds today are very young and child-like, I was 17 when I started dating my DH who was 21, I was driving, had a job, paid for and owned my own car and would house sit for people in our village (so responsible for homes/pets of complete strangers).
We have been married over 20 years- quite happily too!

I don’t know any 17 years old like that now, they all seem like preteens and so it would seem strange nowadays.

Improved safeguarding and better sexual boundaries isn’t infantilising teenagers.

The reasons why children in the UK are so unhappy compared to others has been written about. Adult men who want to have sex with teenagers are judged. If those men are in their 20s, their peers do judge them.

I completely disagree with you on this. If anything girls in particular are being forced to grow up more quickly and the rise of easily accessible hardcore porn and expectations of anal sex/strangling etc has put a sexual pressure on them unlike anything my generation ever experienced. It is a very difficult time to be a teenage girl right now.