To think 26 year old dating 19 year old is weird?

[ChicJoker]

I’ll leave sexes anonymous. I know both parties well, they have been dating for around 2 months. One is my sibling. I feel really really irked by it. It’s weird right?

I was 19 when I met DH who was 26. I was working full time and renting a flat with a friend so was a fully fledged grown up, there was no power imbalance. We’ve been together for 25 years, very happily.

I'm not sure many people would want to be "cougars" - it sounds more like a male fantasy.

the term is very real, psychology today article i guess its a flip from the traditional relationship model https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/articles/201011/field-guide-the-cougar

Despite the title "Psychology Today", that is hardly a serious scientific article.

But it’s not any kind of psychological term. It was invented by a journalist.

I agree it’s largely a male fantasy. Why would I want to date someone years younger than me? Youth and immaturity are a total turn off.

I've no doubt it's a real term, and an occasional reality. It's just not common, or we'd see it happening more often.

But if you have your eye on a younger man, don't let me stop you!

its the judgemental part of society thats the issue

but not all younger ones are immature, that was partly my point,

I was 19 when I met my husband, he was 27. We’ve been together 42 years. Neither of us felt the age gap at all, although I’d never been out with someone so old!

I met my husband when I was 17 and he was 25. He was just about to get divorced and he had a 4 year old daughter.
We have just celebrated 30 years together and have 2 amazing adult sons now.

No I don’t at all. They are both young adults . A 17 year old yes I would find that weird but 19 is fine for a 26 year old.

I wouldn't judge anyone for having a toyboy. I just don't think most people want one.

No, the brain isn’t fully developed until early 30s. 26 year olds are still maturing. Many 19 years olds will be a uni and also living alone of with a couple of housemates. They’re not exactly school kids!

School uniform at 18?! Is that a private school thing? Seems weird having grown men still wearing school uniform. Cut off was 16 at my school.

Just because some posters are saying that they did this, that doesn’t make it okay. A positive outcome for you doesn’t mean that you weren’t groomed, or that it wasn’t inappropriate even if you choose not to believe that was the case.

What's inappropriate is you describing an adult relationship as "grooming". It completely undermines the seriousness of it.
It's also a pretty disgusting insinuation to tell posters that their beloved spouses of decades, are paedophiles.

It’s not an adult relationship though when one person is 26 and another 16. One of those participants is a child.

Yes but most posters are talking about being 19 or whatever.
Also it uses to be less frowned on when people actually started work at 16.

It's not even remotely weird

This was precisely my point. In the past, teenagers had had a lot more exposure to adults. For starters, many of us were going down the pub age 15, if nothing else, and therefore mixing a lot more with adults. Thus we were a lot more streetwise. It wasn’t weird to associate with people outside our age group as it is more so now.

This is both positive and negative. Positive, because young people are more protected, negative, because they are a lot less savvy. Especially those, like my almost 18 yo dd, who has never had a job. By her age, I’d got into all sorts of scrapes and was doing much riskier things, stuff that she has thankfully not yet experienced.

If a grown man got with dd, I’d know there was an issue. Luckily she thinks that’s weird.

Not in the slightest.

It's normal and it's not a private school. All the state schools in my area have uniform in the sixth form (16-18). I went to the sixth form at my comprehensive school to do my A levels after GCSEs and wore a uniform (shirt, tie, skirt etc). My older boy went to a different school for his A levels after finishing GCSE but there he also had to wear school uniform (shirt, tie, trousers). My step daughter went to a sixth form college after her GCSEs and at those you can wear your own clothes.