Stephen Fry's engagement: what's wrong with age-gap relationships?

[Cuddly]

Either way Stephen Fry has entertained me for countless hours and I wish him the best! And I think it's amazing to have celebs in agegapped relationships, as they help me, by strenth in numbers. These relationships exist and work just fine.

[Hardheaded1]

Fuck . . . the . . . haters.

In the countless centuries when older/younger was indeed a form of inherent exploitation in heterosexual marriages, it was not decried. Now that we live in an era of relative prosperity, opportunity, and liberty, we have the luxury to look for and find bogeymen where there are none.

The younger partner in question is not poor, not uneducated, not a member of some Utopian enclave where he was brainwashed as a child to groom him for such a marriage. He is educated, cosmopolitan, successful, and free.

I've come by my views on intergenerational relationships the honest way, by living it. Like many posting here, I used to be primarily, although not exclusively, attracted to men older than me. When I was 45, I moved to Alaska and met a man more than 20 years my junior who pursued a sexual relationship with me. Never in my wildest dreams would I have pursued him nor had I ever done so. The relationship was brief and flawed, but the connection was real, and we are yet caring friends today. I texted him congratulations just last week when I learned from him that he was in San Francisco on vacation with his long time partner, having just wed him there. His partner is about 10 years my senior.

Today, I am intensely attracted to many types and ages of men. Oddly (to me), I have some kind of appeal to men in their 20's, although all of those seem to be hundreds or thousands of miles away. LOL. I'm also incredibly attracted to men my age and older, and currently have a devastating crush on a coworker who is straight, married, with children, and knows I am gay. But, it's a platonic friendship, and I would not have it other. That doesn't stop my feelings, which are not to be confused with my thoughts.

In the end, I am thankful to be able to be attracted to a man who is 22, and a man who is 52, or even 62. Guess what? I worked with an older engineer two years ago who was 72, and I was seriously interested in dating him until I learned he was married.

Let love be.

Oh, and fuck the haters.

[Darius]

Not everyone who wonders if the age difference will be an issue is a hater. I don't see how age won't cause some issues but they don't have to be deal breakers.

[Miles]

There's folks on here I know in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s I would date the shit out of if I could.

[MakeDigitalLove]

Not everyone who wonders if the age difference will be an issue is a hater. I don't see how age won't cause some issues but they don't have to be deal breakers.

Age can pose issues, but so can many other things. It is just a matter of both parties working through those issues if and when they appear.

[Hardheaded1]

Not everyone who wonders if the age difference will be an issue is a hater. I don't see how age won't cause some issues but they don't have to be deal breakers.

A more honest read of the "scandal" would place the sentiment closer to hate than concern.

The tabloid and gossipy cluck-clucking of tongues is little more than someone watching a fat man eat an eclair. There isn't any sincere concern for a man dying younger from coronary disease due to his food preference -- there's condescension that he doesn't know any better or doesn't have self-respect as they define it.

Disapproval is what is being expressed, not parental concern for a fully competent 27-yr.-old to make his own love and life choice.

The furor is plainly an assertion of a rather new ageist morality code, one wholly alien to landowners and the wealthy since time began, as heterosexual men have long married women 20-40 years their junior, when they could. And guess what, women jumped at it.

I rather think the "new morality" is a product of the hypersexualization of the 20th century, among a population that weighs almost everything as ultimately about sex. Successful partnerships are likely often in spite of differences about sex, although I wouldn't speculate that it is the case cited here.