I’ve come a cross a few times on here where Americans are shocked when someone is eighteen and dating someone in their early twenties. Let’s say twenty-three.
Some people are saying how inappropriate it is and saying the twenty-three year old should be looking for someone their own age?
I see it more commonly when comments are about TV or movie characters.
Here in the UK this is normal and people wouldn’t even bat an eyelid at it. Because your simply classed as an adult here. I can only guess that in the US its twenty-one.
Have I just come across some very conservative people or is it really a thing that’s looked down upon?
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It’s a bit of a stretch. An 18 year old is basically a high schooler and 23 can be two years out of college and in the workforce or several years in the workforce out of high school.
It’s a little more scandalous when the ages are young like that. No one would bat an eye about 40 and 45.
The thing about that age gap is that there’s typically a big difference in life stages and in maturity. An 18 year old may still be in high school, while the 23 year old may well have graduated college and embarked on a career. I think it’s more that than simply the difference in years on this earth.
It’s not unheard of, but definitely a little weird.
23 is the age of a college graduate, 18 is the age of someone in (or just leaving) high school. It isn’t automatically creepy, but it’s getting close.
I mean, think of it this way. The 23 year old has been an adult for 5 years, the 18 year old just became one.
Or
The 23 year old was out of high school before the 18 year old ever started high school. To put it another way, the 23 year old probably has an apartment, a real job, bills, their own vehicle, they probably go to bars, etc. The 18 year old almost certainly lives at home, has a “starter” job, no bills, etc.
I would say the older the two get, the less creepy and weird it is. Also, a super immature 23 year old might get along well with a somewhat mature 18 year old, but that’s not really a positive checkmark for the 23 year old.
I would have ***for sure*** given my friends ***SERIOUS*** shit for dating an 18 year old when we were 23, that’s for sure. They would have heard no end of it from all of us.
Not really. It’ll be even less strange as they get older, if they stay together.
The rule of thumb as to whether it’s weird is take the older age, divide by 2, and add 7. So 23/2 = 11.5 + 7 = 18.5. You’re good!
A little? Not sure stigma is the right word. 23 year old and 18 are typically at markedly different maturity levels and different life stages.
18 is fresh out of high school with usually relatively little real world experience yet. 23 is often just starting or a couple years into a career and probably has a couple years experience living on their own.
All that to say it CAN raise an eyebrow, but it depends really on their relative maturity levels as to how big an concern it would be.
Later in life 5 years makes less difference as a 31 and 36 year old are typically at similar maturity levels and life stages.
there’s a huge divide in how it feels to be in high school & how it feels to be in college (university) or the equivalent age. so while that wouldn’t be illegal (18 year olds are legally adults, and in many states, the age of consent is even lower), it can feel really weird for a relationship like that to occur given the context of how American life is set up.
an 18-year-old & a 23-year-old were probably never in high school together. they probably aren’t in college together either (at least not in the same classes or social circles). they’re probably not in bars together. so where did they meet? why is someone encountering high school aged kids when they’re pursuing romance? it evokes the idea of a college graduate with a full time job at a high school dance or a high school pep rally searching for a naiive girl to date. even if the person has graduated, it still feels a bit off.
It’s about the power imbalance and how different of a place they are in their lives.
18 and 23 is only a 5 year difference. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but at those specific ages it very much is.
An 18 year old, is either still in high school or just graduated. Someone who is 23 is 2 years out of college and into the real world. They are at extremely different places in life with extremely different levels of mental and social maturity. Honestly, they are at different levels of physical maturity as well. People’s bodies often aren’t done growing until 22ish and the brain doesn’t mature until the early to mid 20s either.
Now, if we were talking about 30 & 35. Whatever, doesn’t matter. Because they are both in the same phase of life.
The government wouldn’t have cared
But my mama would have dragged me home by my ponytail as soon as she found out
I mean, how long have they been dating? If they just started dating, it’s a little weird but not necessarily inappropriate. If they’ve been together for 3 years I’d definitely be concerned for the younger partner and creeped out by the older.
It’s a stretch but not unacceptable. I don’t think that it is a conservative thing to not be okay with it either. There are some people who freak out about a two or three year age difference and not realize that they’re the odd ones out.
At that age, 5 years is a pretty big gap, but it’s not unheard of. When my parents got married, my mom was 19, my dad was 25… but that was well over 50 years ago.
Yes, those ages are pretty far apart in maturity
The five year gap between an 18 year old and a 23 year old is way, way wider than the five year gap between a 30 and 35 year old, or even a 23 and 28 year old.
It’s not automatically “wrong” or anything and it’s obviously not illegal, but it will raise some eyebrows as it is pretty unusual and many people will assume the older one is taking advantage of the younger ones naivety (which is pretty often the case when you see someone in their 20s dating someone who is practically still in high school).
I dated and later married a girl who was 23 when I met her, I was 19. People did joke about it for the first year or so but didn’t really care. My entire circle of friends was mostly in their mid 20s at that age though, I just always hung out with the older crowd.
It’s not an age thing, more of a life-stage thing.
Geez, some of the comments here make it seems like a 23 year old is some kind of pedophile for dating an 18 year old. My spouse and I have a similar age gap and we started dating around similar ages. We met through mutual friends. We’ve been together for over a decade, and they were and still are much more mature than I am.
yes that’s fucking weird. 18 year olds are in highschool and 23 year olds can be teachers lmao
I dated an 18 year old girl when I was 25. I thought she was older when I met her in a store and got her number. When I found out her age, I was bummed because I thought it was too big of a gap. But I said eh, I’ll go on one date and see how it goes.
We got along so unbelievably great that we dated for 7 years and then kinda went down different life paths. But she’s still one of my closest best friends and I can’t believe I almost chose not to get to know her.
I wouldn’t think anything of it but I’m 40, 23 year olds and 18 year olds basically both seem like children to me at this point.
Not too much stigma for a 4-5 year age gap. An 18 year old dating someone with a larger age gap than that could seem much more problematic because the older person would seem like they were having power over the younger.
I think most often people who are in their mid 20’s or older just aren’t really hanging out with 18 year olds anymore or dating from that pool of people. Mostly 18 year olds are fresh out of high school and are not very experienced being independent adults yet.
Generally yes. There are two different scenarios though.
Partner one just turned 18 and is still in high school. Partner two is about to turn 24. That would be very unacceptable.
Alternatively. Partner 1 is 18, but is about to turn 19, Partner 2 just turned 23. This would probably not be as bad.
One of these is a post college adult dating a high school kid and the other one could be a senior in college while the other is a freshman. I knew people that skipped a grade early in life, so they started college at 17, and turned 18 the spring of their freshman year. So this 18 year old could be a college sophomore still.
I would say the huge stigma would be if one of the partners was still in high school.
Some of most important questions here are when and how did they meet?
60 years ago when my parents married, nobody would have blinked twice at this.
When i was 18, I was a freshman in college. I had a couple 23-24 year old friends- people who went into the service for 4 years and entered college after. We were at similar points in life. I would not have had an issue dating them. When i was 23, I was a year past graduating with a degree in education. I had the summer off from teaching, and took a job at a local resort. I worked with lots of freshly graduated 18 year olds and a few that were finishing their first year of college. There were worlds of difference even among the 18 year olds. I did not socialize with any of them off the job; it felt weird.
It really depends on what life experiences the individuals have. 18 year old college freshman and 23 year old fellow student vs HS senior and their 23 year old manager at the DQ? You decide.
A little. My assumption would be the 18 y/o is using the older party for access to booze, and the older party is using rhe younger party because the older party never got over their high school phase
I may be out of date as a Gen Xer, but in my area it was extremely common to have an age gap when dating and nobody had an issue with it as long as it wasn’t too much of a gap at too early an age.
23 to 18 I think would have been acceptable. A bit of a stretch maybe, but not an eyebrow raiser.
My senior year, I turned 18. I had a gf who was 19 for awhile and thought I was so cool because she’d pick me up at school (sometimes before school let out). Then, as I graduated, I had a different gf and she was 16. That lasted a summer. When I was 23 I think my gf was 19 or 20.
It’s been a few decades, but when I was 23 I had an 18 year old coworker at a place I worked at come on to me pretty strongly and asked me out. I’m a guy and she was cute and coming onto me, so I said yes.
We went out a few times, but honestly had very little to talk about. She wanted an older, mature boyfriend. We ended up as friends and still are.
18 to 23 is a big maturity gap.
Life stage matters. In our system, that could be (at its extreme) a university graduate dating someone with a year left in high school. As a result, these two ages are just about the worst 5-year gap between two legal adults that I can think of.
That being said, individual factors also matter. Overall, the “half plus 7” rule should always be followed. 18 and 23 is right on the razor’s edge of that rule, so that’s another point against it.
Unless you’re a mind reader, there’s no way you actually know someone’s nationality unless they state that. I see these kind of complaints about Americans on r/relationship_advice, and its almost always claimed by people rather than stated by the original poster.
I don’t see what’s so confusing. An 18 year old isn’t even in university, a 23 year old typically has graduated or has spent time in the work force. There’s a level of life experience that is different, the mental maturity is different. The level of independence from one’s family is often different. 18 year olds, despite being “adults” are often still financiaally dependent on their families in one form or another.
It is different stages in life. 18 and 23 is different than 40 and 45.
This doesn’t mean everyone in these relationships is in a bad relationship, but it does mean people should be aware of what could go wrong and be an advocate for themselves tomake sure any relationship, age gap or not, is healthy.
With the way our society works here, yes. They would be in completely different life stages. At one point, I was 20 and dating an 18 year old, and even that gap was icky whenever it came up. We met in high school, and while we were there, it was fine. Then I went to college, and it mostly didn’t matter because that part of life didn’t come up, but going back for her senior prom was deeply uncomfortable for me. It made me feel like a creep.
On the other hand, if you were living in a developing nation where you didn’t have mandatory schooling up to the age of 18 so both were functionally normal adults and had been for a year or two, I would think nothing of it.
This was totally normal in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, but I see more and more people on Twitter and Reddit pearl clutching over it.
At 18 I was an adult. I was paying my own bills, working and going to school, and responsible for my own emotional and physical health. I chose not to have sex until I was 21, so dating was a low stakes situation to me: it was just bowling and arcades and movies.
I have noticed (as a Gen Xer) that a lot of learned my age infantilize their older kids and then are shocked when their 18 year olds have the emotional maturity of middle schoolers.
I don’t think it’s taboo but people might look at you funny. I think it depends on when they started dating and what stage of life they’re both in as well. I knew someone who was 18-19 and had a 25 year old boyfriend but they were both in college/university (he started at an older age) so it wasn’t viewed as being too creepy. But at the same time I knew a girl who was 17, in 12th grade, with a 22 year old boyfriend and they had been dating since she was 14, that was considered more creepy.
I am 23 and I personally would never date an 18 y/o lol
It really depends. It would be weird for an 18 year old high school senior to be dating a 23 year old college graduate.
It wouldn’t be that weird for an 18 year old freshman in college to be dating a 23 year old sophomore who did 4 years in the military before going to university, or an 18 year old waitress to be dating a 23 year old bar tender.
Unless there was additional context that raised red flags, the age gap alone isn’t enough to concern me
I had the same age difference with my now husband. I was 19 and he was 24.
I don’t think there is much of a stigma once are are 18.
Nope. My wife is 6 years younger than me.
I mean my wife and I had that age gap, it wasn’t a big deal for us.
It’s not shocking, it’s just a bit on the skeevy side.
Speaking from my own experience, at 23 I was in the military after college. There was not one single thing that I would have found interesting about a teenager who was just then polishing off high school. Literally not one single thing.