Sex and the community
Older men bring a lot of benefits that their younger counterparts lack: money, careers, sexual experience and interesting stories. Most importantly, they frequently feel so blessed to be in your presence that you can do whatever you want without consequences.
If your 30-year-old situationship is ignoring you, you can blow up his phone, show up at his apartment screaming or block him. What is he gonna do? Tell his cronies that his 10-years-younger-than-him girlfriend is being annoying?
Age gap relationships are a fine line to walk. They’re based on context of the relationship, the individual personalities of the participants and overall power dynamics at play.
Woodstock’s Pizza, Tuesday night
Pollyanna and I met for a much-needed pitcher and BBQ chicken pizza after an exhausting day of tanning. She told me about a recent rendezvous that she had had, involving her roommate, Sam, and two men they had met at a band show.
“They were freshmen! They lied and said they were second years, but they were freshmen!” She was distraught by the thought of this two-year age gap, seemingly, more than the lying.
“No wonder they were trying to sleep over so adamantly. If they went home, they would have had to walk all the way home to the dorms.” She shook her head and gulped her (legal) beer.
I reflected on my own experiences in Europe with Callum (33), Pierre (35) and Alejandro (34) — not to mention the late-20s finance bros I’ve gone out with. If Pollyanna was so perturbed by these band show characters being two years younger than her, why didn’t these 30-somethings feel weird about talking to, dating or sleeping with a then-20 year-old?
Somewhere in Paris, November
I was smoking a post-coital cigarette out the window of Pierre’s perfect Parisian apartment. He was a 35-year-old asshole who had traded his career in corporate public relations (PR) for the life of a C-list lifestyle influencer. I was gazing over his stack of PR packages in the corner when I felt emboldened to ask:
“Don’t you feel weird seeing me? You know, since you’re so much older?” There was a moment of silence. He looked contemplative, almost like he had a soul for a moment.
“You are quite young. I guess the difference between you and me is the same as you and a five-year-old boy,” he chuckled. “Imagine being into a five-year-old!” He sounded nonchalant, as if he hadn’t just said the weirdest thing I’d ever heard — and completely proved my point.
“Yeah … does that not make you feel weird?”
He rolled his eyes and made that flatulent sound with his mouth that French people always make when they’re perturbed.
“It’s different. I’m a man.”
Phelps Hall, Wednesday afternoon
During a particularly dull lecture on a particularly hot day, Sarah and I melted into our high school-style desks in the back of class. I examined the sea of laptop screens in front of me: edikted.com, half-finished New York Times crosswords, Pinterest boards, GOLD progress checks to ensure graduation — not a notes document in sight. I, of course, was writing this.
Sarah whipped around to me with a particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed look on her face.
“I’m so excited for Old Man to come this weekend!” she whisper-yelled. ‘Old Man’ is this 39-year-old that she met at SB Biergarten at one of our rowdy nights out. He lives in Los Angeles, where she occasionally spends her weekends in his perfect house with his perfect dog. With Memorial Day weekend on the horizon, he would pay her a visit in Santa Barbara. It’s important to note that Old Man thinks she’s 24, as she has constructed an elaborate lie about her age.
“I’m scared Eric is gonna try to plan something, though,” she continued. Eric, who she found on Hinge, is a 33-year-old real estate mogul with whom she hangs out a few times per week … and from whom receives $300 every time they see each other.
How could one ever balance such a dilemma?
“Ya know, the thing about older men,” she analyzed, “is that everyone thinks that you have to have daddy issues to like them. But my dad is perfect and we’re so close. I have whatever the opposite of daddy issues is.”
“Maybe good dads raise the bar too high for guys our age to clear,” I told her.
Interactive Learning Pavilion, Wednesday morning
“Most men have one job forever and hop around different women,” my professor (and friend) told me during office hours. “I’m the opposite. I’ve had 100 jobs and only ever been serious with one woman.”
I found that sweet.
“How did you meet your wife?” I asked.
“We met when I was 21 and she was 30. She wanted to get married, and two years later, I proposed. We’ve been happily married ever since.”
“If my 23-year-old friend was ever thinking about proposing to their 32-year-old partner,” I thought to myself, “I would kill them.”
Isla Vista balcony, April
I was sitting in the sun and enjoying the most sensible of Friday lunches: an Arbor muffin and a homemade Bloody Mary while reading the Bible (“Sex and the City”).
My ex, Jack, appeared at my door and joined me on my balcony. Exes can serve many purposes in one’s life: sex without raising your body count, a shoulder to cry on about your family problems and a ride home in emergency scenarios, to name a few. In my case, I harvest their recent dating stories for column inspiration.
“This girl came up to me at Third Window and asked for my number. She was pretty, but she looked really young,” he started. I lit a cigarette. We went out for a year. He’s 23.
“We started talking, but I had to ask how old she was. She was 18!” he seemed as disturbed as Pollyanna had been about her freshman interaction.
“The worst part?” Jack continued. “When I told her she was too young for me, she said, ‘There’s nothing like a young girl to make you feel young again!’ I felt so gross and old.”
I believed that he felt weird about it, but I was skeptical. I thought about all the guys who swore they were too old for me, but eventually caved. Was he actually turned off by her age? Or was he holding himself back? Do men secretly want 18-year-olds but resist because of societal judgement?
Washington, D.C., Saturday night
I returned to my hotel room (alone) from the weirdest first date of my entire life. I was in D.C. for my sister’s wedding, and when she retreated from the city to her suburban home the next evening, I needed to find something to do.
I, unfortunately, encountered a man in the depths of a mid-life crisis. He had lost almost everything in his life in the last few months and now spends his time doing drugs and younger women.
The man desperately begged me to kiss him and do coke with him, neither of which tempted me. I asked his opinions on age gaps. He told me that he liked younger women because they were more accepting of his situation — older women looking for something serious didn’t take interest in his deadbeat lifestyle.
After a week of thinking and inquiring about age gaps, he was the perfect ending — and cautionary tale — to the topic. Falling in love with someone younger than you off-chance is one thing, but seeking someone many years younger than you is another. Pierre, Mr. mid-life crisis and their millennial peers all had a screw loose, whether it be their lives spiraling out of control or just general assholism.
Age gaps are fun, but beware: Don’t waste your youth on people who are only with you because of it.
Diana Paradise got a taste for men who are older, it’s always been so it’s no surprise.
