Age difference in relationship

I dunno, I am still holding my breath for my niece, who is sixteen in October and beautiful and in many ways a mess. She is savvy, can talk the talk back to us, and is attracted to baddies. I am afar and can only have momentary influence if at all. Sigh.

Well, I could analyze this all some more but it is really her business. One of these visits I'll nudge her to post.
She presently thinks only nerds do computers, so don't hold your breaths.

I truly feel for your situation (((hug)))

I'm a pretty open minded person, and there's nothing wrong with dating people with a big gap in age...

But from a twenty-something guy's point of view: I don't see much I could have in common with a 15 year old girl. I'm sorry, but a 28 year old guy who dates a 15 year old is either: just looking to bang a young girl, or isn't doing too well with his love life, and is desperate. Maybe your relationship was an exception, Montana, and he's obviously a good guy since you're friends with him. But I can't picture being freinds with a guy, or one of my friends wanting to go out with a pre-sixteen year old. And that's nothing to do with the law, it's the simple fact you're dating a kid. You're at two completely different stages in life...there's almost a zero chance that a relationship like that would ever work for the long haul.

I hear what you're saying Slappy, but I'm the one who pushed it. He didn't make any moves on me and never had any plans on doing so. We got to know eachother for a few years before our relationship even started, so feelings grew in that time. I know that if I had never been in that relationship that I would be right beside you thinking the same thing, but there are exceptions and he was nothing but a gentleman. He really is a great guy and I have nothing but respect for him.

Anon: Thanks for your kind words. They are a comfort and much appreciated.

age differentce
Ok well i need advice, i am 15 and have a best-friend who is 19. He just turned 19 like 1 week ago, and im 16 in 4 months. He has been my best-friend for three years now and i trust him with my life. for about 5 months now i have totally been into him tho. I have never in my life said this before but i have never felt like this for anyone. We have never actually told eachother but im head over heels for him, and he is for me too. At parties everyone thinks we're a couple because we're always together, like i am with him every single day, if i have a problem he solves it he is the best guy i have ever met. We are totally flurty and do actually act like a couple a lot always touchy. My parents know his age (because i was his prom date) so they know he is graduated and they still love him to peices. I talked to them about it and they are fine with us dating. Now it is just talking to him about it that will be my problem. My close friend talked to him about it and told me everything that was said. She said he told her he really likes me but is scared of getting in trouble over the age difference. I would like to know what the actual law is right now. I am from canada i dont know if that makes a difference or not. can somone PLEASE help me out im dying here

First off, rosieposie, welcome.

Second, the age difference is a problem if you become sexually intimate. The relationship hasn't even started yet, and you're super-concerned about that?

Take your time and see how it goes. I don't know the law in Canada but I will tell you that a dinner and a movie won't get you into trouble, it's sexual contact that will. Take it slowly, you're not running a race here or anything.

age difference.
My problem though is that if i want anything to become of this relationship im going to need to talk to "bob" about it and he is the one concerned about getting into trouble with the age difference. And i need to find out an actuall age law, the real one, i have heard a lot of rumers but i need to real one. At the moment no we are not sexually active, but if we do have a relationship we will probably be. BUT at the moment nothing will ever happen because i dont know the law! That dinner and a movie idea, well we are best-friends remember we do that stuff everyday anyways

To begin with, if you know that Bob is concerned about the age difference, you need to respect that. Talking to him directly about this would be a good indication of your own maturity, and your ability to deal with this sort of thing as an adult.

You can get the laws for most jurisdictions through various search engines. As Jespah has already said, it's sexual contact that could get him into serious trouble - in Canada, as in the U.S.

Legislation of Interpol member states on sexual offences against children

Canada - Canadá
Ottawa

Rosie- looks like Bob is very right to be concerned.

Rosie:

I posted earlier to Dupre that my girlfriend and I started having sex at age 15. What I didn't say was that we had been going together for over a year, almost a year and a half before we did actual penetration. There are lots of ways to "fool around" without taking serious risks. I'm not talking about contraception either ... I'm talking about being satisfied with limited activity before you actual step over the line.

Be careful, above all, be smart. Don't end up a statistic ...

Lots of sage advice going on here Rosie, I'd read, and reread this complete topic several times if I were you!

Good Luck ... Be Smart!!

Anon

Rosie
I'm with the others in saying "be careful". I know how you feel, but I was lucky in the sense that nothing bad happened to me. One huge thing you have going for you is that your parents are ok with this. Usually in cases like this, the parents are the ones who get the law involved. Good luck with everything ;-)

Hopefully, Rosie will share the information Bob needs with him. He's the one who risks jail time. If any of Rosie's friends know about this, and other parents find out, he could be in serious trouble. If the police find out, they are supposed to lay charges regardless of what Rosie and her parents feel about this. It's a serious offense.

Beth is right Rosie :-(

Age of consent
Here is a summary I wrote about why I think age of consent should be lower. It contains lots of complicated original opinions. Such is the reason, I think, the age of consent is too high. It's real easy to grasp the main argument against low age of consent (girls are unusually susceptible to the addiction of sexual abuse), whereas the arguments for low age of consent I believe are inherently complex. I can't really see any strong group with a selfish interest in restricting girls' sexual freedom, so hopefully this idea of mine will be more popular than my more puritanical ideas have been.

Age of Consent

It is my contention that, compared with women, girls are especially pleased by moral goodness in males. I herein shall give an outline of this theory, which also is outlined in my book, EDIT (Moderator): Link removed. Do not advertise here.

It is not reasonable on the face of it to suppose that a group of people would evolve to mate as early as in the group's self-interest. Indeed, it is clear that, all else equal, evolution occurs at a rate inversely proportional to the time period between generations. However, if something evolves somewhat previously to what it otherwise would, the advantage of that is mainly to distant descendants, who get to use their useful trait in a slightly less evolved world easier to compete in. These distant descendants are but little related to the individuals which caused by earlier mating the trait to occur earlier than it would have; so self-interest won't suffice to ensure people want to mate sufficiently early. But unless the trait will always be particularly useful to the group, there is no reason to suppose that in distant generations the trait will be inside the group any more than outside the group. Indeed, there is always going to be a certain amount of (desirable) intermating between those inside the group and those outside the group, so the useful trait will before long likely be common outside the group to about the same extent it is common inside the group. Thus, for instance, if a person behaves so as to advance morality, caring unselfishly for moral persons, though she effectively is a member of her particular moral group, and a large portion of her future genetic material (that encouraging her morality) will always be more in the moral group than otherwise, there is no reason to suppose that whatever talent traits arise better in her on account of her tendency to mate early will in the long run especially be in the moral group. Thus, there is no particular reason to suppose that altruism selection or some kind of group selection would in fact select for mating early. Caring unselfishly for beauty is a short-term advantage to an individual, because it tends to make one have children via talented individuals who because they tend to share your unselfishness and love you, will likely love you unselfishly; but there is no analogous short-term gain as regards caring unselfishly for mating early. If mating early be good, it would appear that otherwise good people who are indifferent to mating early would prosper better than good people who love mating early, which gives no explanation for how, even in good people, mating early could arise.

Yet, it is quite in the interest of good people as a whole to mate early. Why? Because moral virtue and skills related to morality would be expected to always be more common in good people than in bad people, and so would evolve much faster and better than otherwise if good people mated early, much to the advantage of moral goodness and moral people. In fact, I posit that there is a phenomenon that (desirably) encourages moral females (or more particularly, those females who tend to love moral males) to mate early, a phenomenon I call nymphetal philokalia.

Before I explain my hypothesis, let me counter an argument frequently given, namely that good females, alone caring about mating only those worthy of love, in fact should mate later than bad females, because bad females on account of their indifference to moral worth don't need to be patiently careful in judging the moral worth of those they mate with. In fact, there are at least two equally weighty reasons why immoral females would tend to wait longer. First, moral worth in fact is easier and quicker to judge than an ability to prosper in the world, and bad females like good females are concerned with the latter. Second, bad females are much more concerned than good females in mating for wealth, and so one would expect that bad females would spend more time judging the present or future wealth likely to be gotten from their prospective mate and that they would more tend to wait to make sure someone providing more wealth won't come by later.

Moral goodness is easier to judge in an individual than an ability to prosper; it follows that there is an age (early adolescence, probably) at which a typical good girl could judge quite accurately the morality of a male she is considering as a mate, but not judge particularly well his ability to prosper. Now, only immoral people are likely to be deceptive in mating. (Moral people consider it immoral to deceive those they love, and since they tend to mate those they love, they don't have much use for deception, and so it hasn't evolved well. Also, they don't want to give good people a bad name by being too deceptive). Thus, a young female knows that if she feels like she wants to mate a good person, she isn't feeling that way because he deceived her (she to a larger extent than an older female might desire to mate on account of an error on her part, but a just as likely error is that he is much better than he would have to be for her to want to mate with him). It follows that it is actually not unreasonable to suppose even from normal considerations that, compared with women, girls might tend to mate good males more than bad males. However, it must be admitted that bad males to a certain extent do profit by (1) making themselves seem more moral than they are, (2) making girls think themselves desirous of something it is not in their nature to desire (3) making girls think selfishness is more profitable than it is. It is also relevant that to the extent girls are deceived into mating, the ability to deceive is a somewhat useful trait selfish girls in particular wouldn't mind in their offspring. A good guess is that if only normal considerations were involved, selfish males effective at deceiving would on average be more pleasing (fake pleasure, but pleasure nonetheless) to girls than good males would, whereas selfish males not good at deceiving would on average be less pleasing to girls than good males would. But, of course, my hypothesis is that something else is involved, in fact making good males more pleasing than bad males of any flavor, and making girls extremely displeased by a possibility of deception in prospective mates.

If a good male is desired by a young female well enough to mate with him while she is still young, she must desire him especially strongly, because her uncertainty as to his worth (especially her uncertainty as to his ability) is likely to be so great that she must know that by waiting her judgment of him may change markedly (in either direction). Notice that for a good male who is pleasing especially to young females, it is equally likely that he is more worthy of mating than he appears to girls than it is that he is less worthy than he appear to girls. But if a bad male is especially desired by young females, likely the cause of that is that he is unusually able to deceive young females and that he has little appeal to older, less deceivable females. So in fact, it is extremely likely that he is less worthy of mating than he appears to girls. He is more deceptive than the girl is likely to think. If his non-deceptive abilities were special, he would also have special appeal to older females, but he does not. And his powers of deception are not really that useful in the adult world, inasmuch as they are not likely to be of much use on the adults whom alone it is useful to manipulate in making money.

Sperm selection is what causes nymphetal philokalia. Presuming, as seems likely, young females select for different sperm than older females, then a good young female having sex with a good male is, from the preceding paragraph, likely to select for those extremely special traits of good males loved (sexually) by young females. On the other hand, the body of a young female mating with a bad male would likely select for sperm with much genetic material from those pathetic male ancestors who tended to resort to trickery to get young females because they had no ability to appeal to older females. A young female having sex with a good male is likely to have children with abilities inherited from the father that on average are more awesome than his abilities, while a young female having sex with a bad male is likely to have children with abilities inherited from the father that on average are more lame than his abilities. Since sexual pleasure in females is mostly caused by the fitness of the genetic material with which she mates, girls are especially pleased by moral goodness in males, the phenomenon I call nymphetal philokalia.

The interested reader may want to explore other similar questions. For instance, another theory of mine is that it is slightly more moral (but not particularly more pleasant) for older females to mate with young males than older males. Suffice it to say that this and many other related questions are explored in my online book, Exact Morality for Today. One thing I will mention is that society should be set up so young females can more easily mate with older males as opposed to young males (well, actually only if no marriage is involved). Indeed, girls thinking about sex are properly very emotional because a more rational outlook takes a very long time to come to meaningful conclusions about life, and so to the extent a girl arrives quickly at her values and self-understanding otherwise than just by taking what others say at face value, she really has to be emotional. And ideally a girl really ought to have some understanding of her own values and self-awareness before choosing a guy for sex (otherwise her ability to engage in meaningful sexual selection won't be selected for by her decision). Now, what particularly screws up the emotions and thus deceives young females is sexual abuse (sodomy), which young males are pretty much just as effective at as older males. Indeed, young males are just as strong (and able to rape or forcibly sodomize) as older males (in fact, stronger, usually), and their semen is doubtless just as addictive as that of older males. So the kind of bad males who tend to dominate young girls pretty much peak in the abilities they use when they are young, while the kind of good males who appeal to young girls peak when they are older. Therefore, so far as the attentions of young females are concerned, good older males can compete with bad older males much more easily than good younger males can compete with bad younger males. Since it is in the interest of goodness for young females (like any sort of females) to mate especially with good males, it follows that it is more in the interest of goodness for young females to more easily be able to mate with older males than young males, especially as regards relationships especially rewarding to the male.

At any rate, the age of consent to have sex should be lowered considerably.

Stephen A. Meigs

oh yes, the famous semen addiction argument. i think i've seen this somewhere around here before.

i think the theory's as crazy here as the last time i saw it. reads like a paedophiliacs dream plan.

beyond that, scroll.

Scroll?
Essentially just saying that something sounds crazy does not constitute intelligent or interesting criticism, IMO. Neither does appending labels (paedophiliac) constitute intelligent argument. If I had hid my opinions about young females, it might be convenient and of interest to people to indicate using a label that in fact I believe that the age of consent should be lowered (because I believe there are times when young females should idealistically in fact have sex), but, gee wiz (scratching my head), that is the whole point of my preceding post, and if you mean something else, well, you should be more precise (and shouldn't make unfounded accusations against me lest they be slanderous).

Of course, a person's excess puritanism in any particular area is often related to holding excessively sleazy or indifferent opinions as regards sodomy. People know intuitively that there is something to be paranoid about. If they aren't paranoid about sodomy, well, they are likely to be wrongly paranoid about something else. Each of these mistakes can be tragic.

Basically what you are saying here is that if you could get people to mate at younger ages it would eventually eliminate the stigma in future generations. I disagree. It isn't something inherited in the genes, it is a learned behavior and more often then not, people do just the opposite of the generation before them as a form of rebellion.

Your repetitive use of the terms "good girl," "bad girl, "morality," and "immorality" is misguided at the very least and, in my mind, has nothing at all to do with a person's age or their biological sexuality and is something that is germane to the individuals involved and not something so easily generalized in good/bad moral/immoral terms. In fact, doing so quite frankly, disgusts me. If you wish your theory to have any credibility at all, I suggest you remove such terms from your article.

As for the rest of your article and views....I'm in total agreement with eBeth except that I'd also add that disguising it in preachy gobbly gook doesn't offer much camouflage and suggest that the moderators keep a close eye on this one.