ages past

I remain deeply bemused by the way the discourse around healthy relationships has warped over time. It is, of course, a good thing that people have grown to recognise that an older person grooming a younger (less experienced, more naive, more shape-able) person is generally a bad thing, and often predatory in the context of romantic relationships.

But I've genuinely seen people arguing that any age gap in relationships other than a few years is inherently predatory, that the older person is always taking advantage of the younger person, that they're "creepy pedos". Even when the youngest person in the couple is in their thirties or forties. Leaving aside the inherent lack of understanding of what a pedophile actually is, it seems so closed-minded to assume that people can never have anything genuine and valuable to offer each other unless they're at exactly the same stage of their life.

And of course progressive discourse and purity culture and the internet commentariat being what they are, I've seen multiple people arguing - apparently entirely sincerely - about why older and younger people would even be friends? Why would a sixty year old want to hang out with a forty year old? What could they possibly have in common; how could they possibly find each other interesting?

(Thankfully, I was reading the worst offenders from my phone, and the obstacle of trying to thumb-type a polemic saved me from falling into the But Someone Is Wrong On The Internet spiral.)

I don't think I'll ever get over being surprised about the inability of a great number of people to imagine that other peoples' lives do not look exactly like their own.