To think he’s too old for her

[BeGreySnake]

I have 3 children, eldest is 17 and in 6th form. She is 18 in April.
She is quite a quiet and studious girl, good group of friends, she is learning to drive and works part time. I know she has had boys who she’s liked but there’s been no boyfriends that I have known of.
About a month ago she went out to a pub and saw friends from the year above, who work together and who were out with their colleagues. One of these colleagues started chatting to my daughter and they hit it off. He is 27.
They have been somewhat inseparable ever since. I haven’t met him, but I have invited him over so hopefully I will get to soon. He has his own place so they tend to go there if they’re not out.
Its hard as she is smitten and I can’t say he has done anything wrong as such, but I just struggle with why an adult would want to date a school girl (albeit one who will be an adult in a few months). I have had the usual chats about being careful/contraception etc.

Plenty of people left school at 16 and went into jobs where they could gradually climb the ladder. Others stayed for A levels and a few went to university. There were more and better opportunities without going to uni, and not everyone wanted to go.

YANBU but this is MN where everyone will say "you can't do anything about it". I remember a thread there a 53 year old woman was dating a 27 year old man. A man younger than her son. Her son was having none of it but she was absolutely loving it.

I do wonder about people who can't find people their own age . And especially about a man who can't find an adult woman to have a relationship with

Private school? High income area?

That would make a difference because 17 year olds would be meeting colleagues, customers etc in older age bands. Also parents were less involved in their decision making, and at 17 and 18 young people probably felt more grown up than now. But 10 years was still a big age gap and as far as I remember my friends were more interested in the 20-23 group and would have thought 27 a bit old , though not perverts.

To be fair a pub that lets in groups of 17/18 year old girls is also likely to have a table with guys in their late teens/early twenties ogling a table of underage teenage girls...
Maybe underage teenage girls shouldn't be in pubs?

Yeah, I left school in the mid 90s and MAYBE a quarter of the year went onto HE. Actually probably a lot less than that. And it was a good school, the best in the area except for a Catholic school.

Just to offer another perspective here, this was me at 17. He was 27 too. My mum accepted it, and it fizzled out naturally. I think the worst thing my mum could’ve done would have been to try and stop the relationship, making me want to rebel more. Keep communication open with your daughter, and she’ll probably move on. I’m now happily married to someone my age, and have a great relationship with my mum.

That’s a fabulous strategy! 👏🏻

This.
I would be appalled but I can imagine you need to tread with care.
I am very very suspicious of guys who like younger women.
I was a good looking young woman and I was hit on a lot.
There is something deeply creepy about guys who want a relationship with a woman 10+ years younger.
The dynamic is off, the difference in life experience is enormous.
I know loads of people on MN will say it worked out gloriously for them, the 15-30 year age difference, but I will forever think it is creepy.
I'd do a Clares law on him, but thats me.

Peers in the sense that they're all in the same place where nobody has theoretically more power than another person. Apart from the landlord/landlady/manager.

They must be looking 18 by dint of getting served alcohol by the staff and therefore giving all the impression that they're 18.

I can't get outraged by a 27-year-old guy looking at a girl who looks 18 but is actually 17 to be honest.

Oh no, that’s going a bit far.
At my Comprehensive’s Upper School, taking our A Levels in 1974, we were a mixed lot. There were students in that broad group who had been taught by my own mum at a rough and ready primary school in the town’s most disadvantaged quarter; a school which was nothing like those most of the others had sprung from. Great teachers, but social deprivation was a heavy factor there and in the other couple of primary schools whose pupils were at the Upper School.

A good few others certainly came from very comfortable backgrounds in comparison, but I’d say the majority of us were from the social strata between these two. Middle and working class, of varying degrees of income and social background; some professional, some factory workers, and anything between.

We were also pretty numerous: the school had a terrific academic record, sending an unusually high percentage of pupils on past A Levels.
I mention this to underscore the fact that we were really not a small, privileged group.
Education had been progressive yet still academically serious for a good few years by then, so maybe this was a policy bearing fruit. (Didn’t last, as we know)
Perhaps what you say is applicable to the previous decade though.

(In labelling these social groups, it is probably also worth noting that the better off pupils in the A Level classes had parents who’d clearly preferred the State system over posh private education, of which there was an abundance in our area.
Definitely an aspect of the privilege you are alluding to which never applied to us!)

Do you think there's something 'deeply creepy' about my lovely widowed relative who at 65 recently met and is now dating a 55-year-old middle-aged widow who has two adult children and 3 grandchildren and due to retire? 😂

There's ten years between them, after all.

Some of these replies are just absurd.

H is near 9 yrs older than me.
Started to get my pension 3yr ago. His mental health has been getting progressively worse starting over 20yrs ago, now Mental Health have realised he’s been developing Dementia . Ok this is an extreme example, but I never anticipated spending the last 40 yrs of my life looking after someone I barely know, I fear he could outlive me? 1 of our offspring refuses to see him anymore 🤷‍♀️.

And doing a levels in 1975?

Is that lovely 55 year old widow also at school studying for a levels? Also practically no life experience and living with her mum?

My FIL was a similar age when he started dating my MIL. DH does think it's weird in retrospect. They were married until his death but she did have to nurse him from her 50s due to the age gap and his ill health.
There isn't a lot you can do to stop it though is there?

💀

That's the thing. Most women around 30 and older won't take the same kind of shit that teenage girls take.. Teenage girls are far more gullible and easily lead, and will easily fall the for 'charms' and bullshit of an older man. These men go for girls 12-15 years younger (and even more) because they can't handle women their own age or older.

As I say women who are a bit older won't take their crap, and these men don't like it. They like a gullible young girl who they can puff out their big manly chest at and act all important and knowledgable and 'manly.' LOL.

She hasn't introduced him to you yet because she suspects you will disapprove and try to interfere. This is born out by you posting on here before you have even met him.
Is this really how you want your relationship to be?
Her hiding things and you making assumptions?
You risk pushing her away if you start dictating to her that she is doing something wrong.
The crucial thing here is not the age gap. -It's above average, but not unheard of.
You need to see them together before casting aspersions. Are they good with each other?
Does he treat her well?
Is he interfering with her studies and future plans?
Do they see this as a long term relationship or a bit of fun?
People seem to want to portray her as a little innocent that is being exploited.
This may or may not be the case. You can't possibly tell without seeing them together.
She might be exploiting him as a quick pre uni fling with an attractive older man!
You need to be receptive to what she says about the relationship, provide opinions and advice only if they are asked for and allow her to reach her own conclusions. She won't thank you for referring to her as a child all the time.

She can't get married until 18 now.

Come on, it doesn’t compare. An age gap of 10 years in middle age or older is completely different to a 10 year gap at 17! Completely different life experiences between 17 and 27 and the older partner would usually be doing it for control purposes. Im early 40s and wouldn’t choose to date someone in their 50s but each to their own

My daughter is 21. Because I am a good mum, I would be appalled if she was sleeping with a 90y old. Even 30 would be pushing it.

I left in 1997. Grammar school. I’d say… 80%

Yep.

I'm getting fed up now of these 'my auntie Pat is 64 and has recently started dating a 73 year old man, do you think HE is a perv' type comments.

You cannot compare that to a teenage girl still at school dating a man of nearly 30. I am not even responding to those comments now.

These creepy 30+ men take advantage of vulnerable and naive young teen girls who see them as 'exciting' because they're over a decade older, and it makes me nauseous.

My gut says differently. My gut says only a 27 year old with a serious deficiency of some kind seduces a school child. Why not someone his own age? Someone who has lived life? Someone with life experience closer to his own? Why a child even if she has the body of an almost-woman?