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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14920
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| Posted: 03 May 2026 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | 1
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During the Me Too movement, there was a very valid reckoning regarding the power imbalances that can occur in age-gap relationships, particularly ones involving relationships that started when the younger partner was in their late teens/early 20s. I remember watching this cultural shift play out in real-time with the show RIVERDALE, where the first season had a storyline involving a student having sex with his teacher, and it was played for sex appeal. Five or six seasons later, referring back to that same storyline, the characters were saying, “Oh, you were a victim! You were groomed!”
There has been a strange confluence between this legitimate reevaluation of these specific types of age-gap relationships, a largely Conservative moral panic regarding pedophilia and human trafficking (while turning a blind eye to people involved with actual human traffickers), and a set of terminally online Gen Zers that likes to infantilize themselves, and it leads to some really weird takes like, “Is a 35 year old dating a 29 year old grooming?”
Edited by Michael Roberts on 03 May 2026 at 1:38pm
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136111
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| Posted: 03 May 2026 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | 2
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My maternal great grandmother was 28 when she married my great grandfather, 64. They went on to have four children who lived to adulthood. This was in the 1890s, when people, it seems, were more relaxed about such things.
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William Roberge
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 11379
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| Posted: 03 May 2026 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | 3
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My father was 21 years older than my mother and I don’t remember a time that I ever thought of it as strange.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136111
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| Posted: 03 May 2026 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | 4
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My father was a year older than my mother, and somehow that locked in my mind that was the ideal gap. Then I married a woman six years older than me!
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Craig Earl
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1690
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| Posted: 03 May 2026 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | 5
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My father was five years older than my mother when they were married.Not a great age gap, but she was 16 and he was 21!
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 291
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| Posted: 03 May 2026 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | 6
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I am really of a mixed mind on this. I mentioned in another topic that there seems to be a weird inverse with younger people who identify as “progressive,” that they seem to have weirdly conservative attitudes about sexuality in terms of acceptable practices, even while advocating for tolerance of people whose genders do not conform to traditional societal norms.
To a point, I really get it. It’s not as if we’ve escaped the unfortunate past where girls as young as 12 were married off to grown men - this shit still happens around the world in 2026. According to UNICEF, approximately 12 million girls are married before the age of 18 every year. Even in the US - between 2000 and 2018, 300,000 minors were legally married. I agree with what science tells us about the human brain - these girls are not capable of making informed consent. It’s not just wrong - it’s morally reprehensible. I don’t care if it’s different cultures, morality is not subjective.
But if two people are adults, with the full array of legal rights afforded to them through adulthood, sincerely, it’s none of my business and I have no negative judgment of people entering into relationships with whatever other consenting adult they can find. What was the thing JB observed recently? When we start using words wrong - like “groomer” - then it makes it harder to use them in a meaningful way when it’s appropriate.
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James Johnson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 2374
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| Posted: 03 May 2026 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | 7
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My first wife was 2 & 1/2 years older than me. We separated then divorced after 8 years of marriage.
My current wife is 10 years younger. We've been happily married 19 years now.
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 291
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| Posted: 03 May 2026 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | 8
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I do want to add that I have zero doubt that quite literally all of us have, in our ancestry, ancestors who were the product of these kind of relationships. We also have ancestors who were certainly the product of, shall we call it, “conquest.” We can’t change the past, nor should we want to - it’s literally how we all got here! - but we know so much more now than we did then.
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Brian Acuff
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 February 2021
Location: United States
Posts: 288
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| Posted: 04 May 2026 at 2:40am | IP Logged | 9
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For me it's not as much as the age gap as it the age of when the couple starts the relationship. I read this article yesterday Arnold Schwaznegger was 64 and his current girlfriend was 37 back in 2012 when they met and they have a 27 year age gap so to me being 37 you have more experience with what kind of person you want to be and be with and the party years are probably behind you as opposed to 20 year old. Now roughly with the same age gap you have DiCaprio (51) and his bevy of girlfriends at the age of 25 or under and even Tobey Maguire (50) dating some influencer who is 20. Point is that the younger partner has very little experience in life and seemingly only there for fun so to speak.
To sum up just listen to "Hey 19" by Steely Dan
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