- Jul 26, 2010
- 2,969
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As always, 'it depends'.
Frankly, it's STILL unusual in our culture for approval of any relationship where there's much age difference. Even high school girls can voice disapproval of a girl dating a boy MUCH older than her. A few years older is 'cool' but much older - no way.
Older women who date younger men are called 'cougars' and young women who date older boys are called 'sl*ts'. Note which member of the relationship gets blamed, LOL. The boy in the first case might be called 'atta boy!' and the boy in the second case rarely is blamed for having 'drives', thought he might be told to look for someone closer to his age. In other words, even today, purty much, it's still a culture in which matches need to be close in age, and usually it's still 'the girl's fault'. LOL.
Even today, there may be a large difference between a 16 year old and a 20 year old, and frankly, I am not in favor of people getting involved in relationships where age differences can result in one of them being very unequal in the relationship.
I am VERY uncomfortable with 14 year olds going with 18 year olds, or 12 year olds going with 16 year olds. I am uncomfortable with relationships that feature a 'power imbalance' right from the start. By 'power imbalance', I mean a situation in which one person is very likely to be taken advantage of. By 'taken advantage of' I mean making decisions that can make them less independent later on. I highly value education, and I think it makes people more self-supporting and more able to respond to losses and the various kinds of bad luck we all run into. Anything that causes anyone to miss education, I think is a bad thing.
For example, a young girl craving attention and acceptance, very naive at dating, very much wanting to prove to her peers that she's cute, desirable, in other words successful, may wind up let's say - doing things with an older boy who she perceives to be so very much cooler and awesome than the boys her age, that she wouldn't be doing were she in a less 'pressured' relationship. I'd prefer young women get involved in a relationship with the least amount of pressure possible - there's already ENOUGH pressure on kids to grow up too fast and to 'prove' themselves to their peers.
But frankly, there is usually very little difference between a 28 year old and a 32 year old. Their experiences are very similar at that point. So 'it depends'.
There are those around us who believe only the 'traditional' male-female relationship with the man somewhat older, is right and good and non-'awkward' - the man somewhat older, and with that, in most things, in charge - makes the decisions, does more or less what he wants, and tells the woman what to do, and she keeps her mouth shut and does it. And to them, if the woman were older, she might get 'uppity' - which, from their point of view, means not doing what they want her to do often enough.
A lot of people have an awful lot of trouble adjusting to any other type of relationship. They always want the relationship to be essentially unequal - the man in the position of having more power in the relationship.
If the relationship fails, it always has to be because it's the woman's fault.
You'll notice that a lot in that group - it's startlingly consistent. If just about anything goes wrong, it's always the woman's fault. 'She was too this, she was too that, she was too little this, she was too little that' - invariably, they do not see their own role in the relationship. Everything good is their doing, everything bad is the other's doing.
If the woman is younger, this sort of power balance is easier to maintain - it's harder for her to claim to have more experience or knowledge simply because she's had fewer years to accumulate it - the man can always point to the fact that he's older, so he knows more, is more mature, and more knowledgeable - because he's older.
Even if all that fails, he can fall back on The Old Reliable Argument - that men are better than women - more logical and rational, and that women are just simply inferior to men in how they think - less logical, less rational, less intelligent, more impulsive, overly sensitive, less able to evaluate situations and make decisions, more likely to manipulate to meet their own 'selfish needs'.
And because they are less rational, of course, if allowed, women are apt to simply boss a man around and manipulate him - not to any other goal other than the pleasure of manipulating him.
This is what these guys will claim. And even a few women will claim this - often on grounds of 'The Bible says so'.
When I was a youngster, it was not at all unusual for a man to be educated with a college degree, and his wife to have little or no education. Husband and wife were VERY OFTEN, VERY unequal in education. It was rather unusual for a man to marry a woman who had the same education as he - precisely because there just weren't that many women getting the same amount of education as man.
Even when I was in my 20's(late 70's and early 80's), it was rare for me to find another woman in the same technical positions I was in. Female engineers were extremely unusual and regarded as someone peculiar and bound to be flawed mentally. Occasionally I'd find a clerical person had worked their way into some of the more routine or repetitive technical positions, but not into 'hard core' positions that required in depth knowledge. This is not at all the case today.
It was not at all unusual for the man to be the only person that ever left the house to go to work. Most women did not work outside the home - they stayed home, and they did not get the same experiences the man did. This is also different today. While there's still an inequality in what positions women get and what they get paid, it's far less than it was when I was young. It's not at all unusual for me to run into a female lawyer, doctor, engineer these days.
When I was young, IF a woman worked at all, she was expected to be one of two things - a registered nurse or a primary or secondary school teacher. And she was expected to quit working fairly early on in the marriage and have children. When her children were teens or young adults, she was expected to work again (sooner if the family needed more income).
Way-back-when, women very often WERE less experienced and less well educated than their boyfriend or husband. They often went from their family home to the husband's home, many without completing high school, with only a little very formal dating-type contact with men. That has also changed.
When I was young, it was not at all unusual for a husband to ridicule and intimidate his wife, to insult her publicly at parties or gatherings, to flirt in front of her, and then look defiantly at her and DARE her to even change her facial expression. Physical abuse, to be quite frank, was not really unusual in those days. Psychological intimidation wasn't unusual either. I would say that about 40% of the families I knew, the wife was getting physically abused, perhaps more. And psychological abuse was even more common.
Yup. 40% and I was not living in a 'bad neighborhood'.
I won't pretend that physical abuse isn't so terribly rare today, or that psychological abuse is rare among couples today. But the male is more often trying to abuse a woman with more education, more experience, more knowlege.
But the single thing that has changed the most, is the % of women that are financially independent today.
This is really where the rubber hits the road.
MONEY. If a woman has little education or experience, she's going to have a hard time leaving a guy, even if he is beating her up or treating her like she's stupid and worthless.
In my young years, I was much more likely to hear, 'I can't leave him because I will be homeless if I do'. Today, I still hear 'I can't leave him', but most women have more options. They can go back to work, they can get on the job training, they just have more options.
In the past, if they left, they often could assume they would never see their children again, that they would be impoverished and their reputation ruined. That still happens, but less.
What else has changed?
DIVORCE. 50% of marriages are ending in divorce, so the statistic goes. Regardless of what the numbers are, divorce was a very rare thing when I was a youngster 50 years ago. VERY rare. I can remember ONE classmate whose parents were divorced. That's very, very different today.
Today, women are more often managers in businesses. They are often formally trained in decision making and logic and evaluation of alternatives. They often spend much of their time writing inventories, invoices, customer communications, budgets, project proposals, employee evaluations - usually all things that have to pass muster with higher level management - who still - even today, are more likely to be male.
In other words, husbands and boyfriends are rarely dealing with a woman today, who is so completely convinced as many were in the past, that she is inferior to him, stupider than him, less experienced than him, less rational or logical than him, less skilled than him, or to be clear - inferior to him in any way.
A few men still cling to this idea of wanting to be the power player in the relationship. They seek out that imbalance - younger, less education, less experience.
In other countries, I still find that there is much broader approval of that power imbalance. In some countries of the world, men ALWAYS seek out women from a slightly lower class than theirs, with less education than them, with less experience in the world, precisely so they can have this power imbalance.
And 'she hasn't a thought in her head', is still, today, in many cultures - high praise for a potential wife.
Frankly, it's STILL unusual in our culture for approval of any relationship where there's much age difference. Even high school girls can voice disapproval of a girl dating a boy MUCH older than her. A few years older is 'cool' but much older - no way.
Older women who date younger men are called 'cougars' and young women who date older boys are called 'sl*ts'. Note which member of the relationship gets blamed, LOL. The boy in the first case might be called 'atta boy!' and the boy in the second case rarely is blamed for having 'drives', thought he might be told to look for someone closer to his age. In other words, even today, purty much, it's still a culture in which matches need to be close in age, and usually it's still 'the girl's fault'. LOL.
Even today, there may be a large difference between a 16 year old and a 20 year old, and frankly, I am not in favor of people getting involved in relationships where age differences can result in one of them being very unequal in the relationship.
I am VERY uncomfortable with 14 year olds going with 18 year olds, or 12 year olds going with 16 year olds. I am uncomfortable with relationships that feature a 'power imbalance' right from the start. By 'power imbalance', I mean a situation in which one person is very likely to be taken advantage of. By 'taken advantage of' I mean making decisions that can make them less independent later on. I highly value education, and I think it makes people more self-supporting and more able to respond to losses and the various kinds of bad luck we all run into. Anything that causes anyone to miss education, I think is a bad thing.
For example, a young girl craving attention and acceptance, very naive at dating, very much wanting to prove to her peers that she's cute, desirable, in other words successful, may wind up let's say - doing things with an older boy who she perceives to be so very much cooler and awesome than the boys her age, that she wouldn't be doing were she in a less 'pressured' relationship. I'd prefer young women get involved in a relationship with the least amount of pressure possible - there's already ENOUGH pressure on kids to grow up too fast and to 'prove' themselves to their peers.
But frankly, there is usually very little difference between a 28 year old and a 32 year old. Their experiences are very similar at that point. So 'it depends'.
There are those around us who believe only the 'traditional' male-female relationship with the man somewhat older, is right and good and non-'awkward' - the man somewhat older, and with that, in most things, in charge - makes the decisions, does more or less what he wants, and tells the woman what to do, and she keeps her mouth shut and does it. And to them, if the woman were older, she might get 'uppity' - which, from their point of view, means not doing what they want her to do often enough.
A lot of people have an awful lot of trouble adjusting to any other type of relationship. They always want the relationship to be essentially unequal - the man in the position of having more power in the relationship.
If the relationship fails, it always has to be because it's the woman's fault.
You'll notice that a lot in that group - it's startlingly consistent. If just about anything goes wrong, it's always the woman's fault. 'She was too this, she was too that, she was too little this, she was too little that' - invariably, they do not see their own role in the relationship. Everything good is their doing, everything bad is the other's doing.
If the woman is younger, this sort of power balance is easier to maintain - it's harder for her to claim to have more experience or knowledge simply because she's had fewer years to accumulate it - the man can always point to the fact that he's older, so he knows more, is more mature, and more knowledgeable - because he's older.
Even if all that fails, he can fall back on The Old Reliable Argument - that men are better than women - more logical and rational, and that women are just simply inferior to men in how they think - less logical, less rational, less intelligent, more impulsive, overly sensitive, less able to evaluate situations and make decisions, more likely to manipulate to meet their own 'selfish needs'.
And because they are less rational, of course, if allowed, women are apt to simply boss a man around and manipulate him - not to any other goal other than the pleasure of manipulating him.
This is what these guys will claim. And even a few women will claim this - often on grounds of 'The Bible says so'.
When I was a youngster, it was not at all unusual for a man to be educated with a college degree, and his wife to have little or no education. Husband and wife were VERY OFTEN, VERY unequal in education. It was rather unusual for a man to marry a woman who had the same education as he - precisely because there just weren't that many women getting the same amount of education as man.
Even when I was in my 20's(late 70's and early 80's), it was rare for me to find another woman in the same technical positions I was in. Female engineers were extremely unusual and regarded as someone peculiar and bound to be flawed mentally. Occasionally I'd find a clerical person had worked their way into some of the more routine or repetitive technical positions, but not into 'hard core' positions that required in depth knowledge. This is not at all the case today.
It was not at all unusual for the man to be the only person that ever left the house to go to work. Most women did not work outside the home - they stayed home, and they did not get the same experiences the man did. This is also different today. While there's still an inequality in what positions women get and what they get paid, it's far less than it was when I was young. It's not at all unusual for me to run into a female lawyer, doctor, engineer these days.
When I was young, IF a woman worked at all, she was expected to be one of two things - a registered nurse or a primary or secondary school teacher. And she was expected to quit working fairly early on in the marriage and have children. When her children were teens or young adults, she was expected to work again (sooner if the family needed more income).
Way-back-when, women very often WERE less experienced and less well educated than their boyfriend or husband. They often went from their family home to the husband's home, many without completing high school, with only a little very formal dating-type contact with men. That has also changed.
When I was young, it was not at all unusual for a husband to ridicule and intimidate his wife, to insult her publicly at parties or gatherings, to flirt in front of her, and then look defiantly at her and DARE her to even change her facial expression. Physical abuse, to be quite frank, was not really unusual in those days. Psychological intimidation wasn't unusual either. I would say that about 40% of the families I knew, the wife was getting physically abused, perhaps more. And psychological abuse was even more common.
Yup. 40% and I was not living in a 'bad neighborhood'.
I won't pretend that physical abuse isn't so terribly rare today, or that psychological abuse is rare among couples today. But the male is more often trying to abuse a woman with more education, more experience, more knowlege.
But the single thing that has changed the most, is the % of women that are financially independent today.
This is really where the rubber hits the road.
MONEY. If a woman has little education or experience, she's going to have a hard time leaving a guy, even if he is beating her up or treating her like she's stupid and worthless.
In my young years, I was much more likely to hear, 'I can't leave him because I will be homeless if I do'. Today, I still hear 'I can't leave him', but most women have more options. They can go back to work, they can get on the job training, they just have more options.
In the past, if they left, they often could assume they would never see their children again, that they would be impoverished and their reputation ruined. That still happens, but less.
What else has changed?
DIVORCE. 50% of marriages are ending in divorce, so the statistic goes. Regardless of what the numbers are, divorce was a very rare thing when I was a youngster 50 years ago. VERY rare. I can remember ONE classmate whose parents were divorced. That's very, very different today.
Today, women are more often managers in businesses. They are often formally trained in decision making and logic and evaluation of alternatives. They often spend much of their time writing inventories, invoices, customer communications, budgets, project proposals, employee evaluations - usually all things that have to pass muster with higher level management - who still - even today, are more likely to be male.
In other words, husbands and boyfriends are rarely dealing with a woman today, who is so completely convinced as many were in the past, that she is inferior to him, stupider than him, less experienced than him, less rational or logical than him, less skilled than him, or to be clear - inferior to him in any way.
A few men still cling to this idea of wanting to be the power player in the relationship. They seek out that imbalance - younger, less education, less experience.
In other countries, I still find that there is much broader approval of that power imbalance. In some countries of the world, men ALWAYS seek out women from a slightly lower class than theirs, with less education than them, with less experience in the world, precisely so they can have this power imbalance.
And 'she hasn't a thought in her head', is still, today, in many cultures - high praise for a potential wife.
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