From: repnomar@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler)
Subject: Re: Older men and younger women (advice needed)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 92 06:52:38 GMT

In article <1992Apr8.180855.10154@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> tlode@isis.cs.du.edu (trygve lode) writes:
>In article <rtkc8INNgao@agate.berkeley.edu> epg@nature.berkeley.edu writes:
>>
>>How much stigma is really attatched to dating someone older/younger?  Is
>>dating a younger woman something that men want to do in fantasy, but not
>>reality?   I don't want to have this happen every time I start a
>>relationship with someone older than me, so if you have any
>>advice/wisdom to share, I'd like to read it.
>
>How much stigma is there?  I've been involved with women who were a
>decade older than I am and a decade younger and in neither case did
>I get the impression that the rest of the world was trying to impose
>any judgments on me for it.  Age is only as important as you make it
>and if you expect to have problems because of it or you expect to 
>hear the rest of the world making negative judgments, then you
>probably will.  

I don't think that's completely true.  Some types of relationships (e.g. gay
or lesbian relationships, interracial relationships, relationships in which
there's a big age difference) are not socially approved, and you can get real
flak about this - sometimes from total strangers.  I know interracial couples
who have had people come up to them on the subway and lecture them about how 
they shouldn't be together; I knew a 24-year-old woman who was going out with 
a man twice her age, and they often got stared at and had total strangers make
rude comments.  And of course gay and lesbian couples get harassed all the 
time.  How you deal with harassment is up to you, but the fact that it happens 
is not just a matter of attitude.

I think an older man may be worried about the "dirty-old-man" stereotype if
he is involved with a younger woman, especially one who looks much younger
than he.  It's hard for a lot of people to believe that a relationship in
which there's a big age difference can be really equal; and I think that 
sometimes it's true that older men are attracted to younger women because 
they think they can dominate them, or because a younger woman is a status
symbol.  Unfortunately, that makes it difficult for couples in which that's
*not* the case to have their relationship accepted and acknowledged.  Also, 
I think that Freud has a lot to answer for in making us suspicious of inter-
generational relationships.  It used to be quite common for older men to marry 
young women; my grandmother was thirty years younger than my grandfather.  Of 
course, often (though not in my grandparents' case) such marriages were ar-
ranged, and were economic contracts rather than love matches.  

With both interracial and intergenerational relationships, I think that there
is legitimate concern about possible cultural differences, or differences in
expectations about what should happen in the long term, but these aren't nec-
essarily insurmountable problems.

/Janet

-- 
send mail to repnomar@leland.stanford.edu
Purdy...lowered his voice.  "Now.  We never had this conversation."   B.J. was 
alarmed to hear it.  Who _had_ had this conversation and what had he been 
doing while they had it?
Xref: sparky soc.singles:11070 soc.couples:2073 soc.men:8345 soc.women:8883