New guy I’m seeing had a fling with someone much younger

[Sroia]

I’m 28. I’ve been seeing a guy who is 32. We’re both professionals in London.

We only very recently made it official. I was getting quite excited - bf is very handsome, kind and charismatic. We have shared interests and he’s an amazing cook.

But I found out over the BH weekend (through a gf of bf’s friend) that bf had a fling with a girl who was 20 around Xmas time. It’s really made me feel weird about bf. I would feel motherly towards a 20 yo guy, not want to get with one.

I guess it just indicates he was comfortable with that power imbalance. It seems a bit gross. I have a brother who is 31 and I know he would never date anyone as young as 20.

I'm not overthinking this one, am I?

No, there's something wrong with anyone who describes a 20 year old woman as a 'very young girl', no matter who she has a fling with.

It's not only patronising, it's actually weird.

So every body has to date someone, their own age ?
That's extremely narrow minded and how much Lee way would you allow them?

She’s been described as a ‘foetus’ and various other delights including that any adult man who is attracted to her must be next door to a paedo. Horrible, demeaning attitudes displayed towards a woman on a site where posters usually go tonto about anyone over the age of 18 being referred to as a ‘girl’.

I don’t think you understand the meaning of perversion.

Yes the foetus thing was beyond weird.

I really think the OP should dump him before he ends up dumping her anyway.

She obviously can't get over this previous very short relationship and so she's bolstering the way she feels, by adding ridiculous hyperbole.

Daft and unnecessary.

you will always wonder how many other girls he's been with
@TheRubyPoet other girls? He hasn’t been with any girls, has he? He had a fling with a younger woman.

I think you should do him a favour and dump him @Sroia. It won’t take him long to find someone a bit less judgemental.

U don’t know that he knew her age when they met. Meeting in the workplace can be tricky to determine age. Then they may have developed a relationship before he found out, it clearly didn’t work as she was never a girlfriend.

The friends gf could be exaggerating the age difference. Maybe she doesn’t like u or the attention u are getting. Maybe she fancies you bf.

This is a conversation to have with him, that would be the mature thing to do. Listen to what he says and then think it over if it still makes you uncomfortable then it’s not meant to be.

Nope I’m in my 40s. Maybe learn how to write your posts properly as it’s hard to take them seriously.

The irony ...
When you have to resort to being insulting ,then you have lost any chance of being taken seriously yourself
And you have still not explained how it's perverted ,assuming you know what perverted means?

Just let young adults be adults. Stop infantalising them.

You started with the insults first so I just matched you. Anyway.. can’t be bothered arguing with perv apologists. 😂

There is nothing remotely strange or perverted about a man in his early 30s being attracted to a woman in her early 20s. She is an adult. He met her at work. A 20-year-old woman doesn’t look or behave like a child.

We have interns temping at my organisation all the time and they’re usually aged between 19 and 22. They’re treated as, and behave like, any of the other junior level staff, whose ages range from 21 to 40ish, and everyone socialises with each other.

A ‘perversion’ is something that’s outside the realms of an adult being attracted to another adult. Bestiality would be a ‘perversion’. Most fetishes are technically ‘perversions’. An adult man fancying an adult woman is not, by any definition, perverted or abnormal. You can disapprove of it, if you wish, but that doesn’t mean it’s strange, perverted or wrong.

There's so much insecurity on this website that it just leads to low level snipping or open abuse when it comes to women feeling insecure about other women.

So this un-named, unknown 19 year old has been referred to with some of the most derisory names on here, just because she dares to commit the mistake of being herself (namely, young).

These are the same people who boast competitively with each other on here about not wanting sex from their husbands anymore, "I'd rather have a good book and a glass of wine"..... yet get upset, hurt and confused when their partner leaves them for someone 25 years younger (again, both were threads on AIBU this month).

So yeah, I'm not surprised this poor unknown woman is being called derisory names. The insecurity on here is visible from space.

@Disturbia81 Oh, dear a very very narrow minded and pittyful post, I met my husband when i was 19 and there is a 12-year age gap with us, Im now 56 and never been happier.

We have had a wonderful marriage and he has given me the most amazing life so far, I really pitty posts like these.

FYI I was the only person he ever dated that was younger than him, we met and clicked thats all there was too it.

I’d end the relationship OP.

'I guess it just indicates he was comfortable with that power imbalance. It seems a bit gross.' What makes you think there was an automatic power imbalance? Especially if it was a fling. I think this reads as you being insecure about her being a younger model.

I get so sick of people assuming this with age gaps. My DH is 17 years older. There has never been a problem.

How old were you when you met and got together?

I think in the last few years people have taken the idea that there can be power imbalances in relationships due to age and ran with it to the point they think there is always a power imbalance due to that, and that's not always the case.

The same goes for all potential power imbalances. It being possible and worthy of consideration is a good thing, assuming it always applies is not.

And for all those "He was doing X when she was doing Y", that's just trying to make it sound worse
She was an adult. At 20 she is well an adult. She was not at high school even if she was when he was graduating uni.

I also think people are forgetting it was just a fling it never became a relationship,who knows why that was maybe they both realised they were incompatible .

I don’t think you ABU in the slightest to feel the way you do, I would feel the same. I guess it depend on whether you feel you can move forward knowing it

He says it was a fling. What would she say? She may have thought it was a serious relationship.
its like when married men tell their mistresses that their wife doesn’t understand them and they never gave sex. We have no idea if this 20 year old also thought it was a fling.

Your just making that up in your head ,we can only go off what the Op tells us it's all hypothetical anyway.

The lack of awareness about power dynamics inherent in age gaps is staggering.
90% of age gaps are older man/younger woman so all this 'age is just a number' 'my father was 15 years older than my mother and they were happy' ignores the fact that statistically men do not date significantly older women but women are expected to think that older men offer advantages.
They don't. Women end up being young nurses and widows when they end up with older men.
Women who had flings in their teens and early 20s with older men typically regret it when they're older, realising they were duped by serial sleazeballs.

It's something we need to talk about.