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