Curious: age differences and how people change as they age.

What is the kink scene? Is this like bdsm or something ?

Exactly that. The "scene" is the general name given to the community.

wow this is quite the post!

im glad it worked out for you and as you're probably aware i have no problem with age gaps, i probably would have aged 18 but more because i felt immature and my parents were very controlling.

as for having a baby at 21, good for you, however society IS different now and lots of people have other goals they wanna fulfill before becoming a parent, which also isn't weird, eg i want ALL the degrees in the world, until that happens i will not have a baby, this is not weird either.

its great we have the ability to make a choice thats right for us you wanted a baby and marriage young, i want the career first, marriage perhaps after that and perhaps a baby after that.

as for leaving children, i agree everyone's a little protective these days, its a tad weird. however i guess again that depends on the area in which you live, i lived in the middle of the countryside so it was safe, if i had been brought up in london, i think my mum would have parented differently.

"yes. its a community of people who like alternative lifestyles"

Ahh cool. So do you get introduced to it by a mutual friend or is something you can just get into ?

Sorry I would reply to both but it's difficult on my mobile.

You said you thought it was morally wrong. What are your reasons for this exactly? Not having a go, just wondering why you think it's not okay.

Are age differences important to you? Depends
If so what's the limit/rules? Not weirdly older/younger
Why are they important? Different life stages
How old are you? ( if you don't mind saying) 20
And is there a point where the age no longer matters? Maybe

i dont think i'd be attracted , i have no idea really i wouldnt rule them out tho!

lol I wasn't really ranting at you, it's just there have been a lot of threads on similar subjects lately which have irked me.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think people should necessarily marry and have kids "young" (or even at all!) if they would rather do other things, I think everybody is individual.

What I do think is odd though is how people seem to treat late teens and 20s as an extension of childhood. Thus, by definition, they seem to scream "ZOMG THEY'RE ONLY A CHILD" when a 16 or 17 year old decides to have a relationship with someone a few years older than them.

morally was probably the wrong word to use. Due to other life events i felt an older man would only be out to use me. And it was disgusting and gross for them to want a younger woman.

I was wrong, i was young,i was naive

I see. What happened unless you'd rather not go into it? I can see how something bad happening would put you off

When I was 16 I dated a few guys, not for very long. The youngest was 17 and the eldest was 24. At the time I don't think I would have gone much past 24 to be honest - maybe a year or two but I think I would have probably thought that we wouldn't have had a great deal in common if it was pushed much past that.

When I was 17 I met my husband. He was 24 when we met. We had a lot in common - okay I was in sixth form college, and he wasn't, but he knew a lot of students, and we had (and still have) similar interests and so on, so it was fine.

I'm 30 now and he's 37. We are very similar, and really, who would bat an eyelid at two people in their 30s being together? But some people thought it was odd when I was 17 and he was 24. To this day I'm not sure why. I wasn't particularly immature at 17 - I mean hell, I became a mother at 21, so I'm no stranger to being responsible from what today's society deems a "young" age.

I'm not even sure why people think late teens is young anyway. Like I said, it's today's society. Push the years back several decades, and people found it quite normal to get married at 18 and start a family soon after. It wasn't considered strange at all. Nowadays though you get people living with their parents all through their 20s, and even 30s in some cases, as though they were still teenagers.

You see it even with kids these days - tell someone you leave your 9 year old child at home for an hour unsupervised whilst you go shopping, and they look at you as though you're leaving a 2 month old baby. NEGLECT! OMG!
It's absolutely ridiculous.
Again, wind the clock back a generation-and-a-half, and a child of 9 was letting themselves in after school with their own key whilst their parents worked, and cooking their own damned dinner!
My own parents left school at 15 and went to work. Why? Because that's what was normal.

I hear it too often - "I'd never leave my "child" alone overnight until they're 18". "I'd never let my 7 year old play outside the house unsupervised." etc. etc. It's the helicopter parenting that seems so prevalent these days, and in turn that's filtering down into the younger generations, who now feel themselves that they're still children when they're in their 20s.

It's completely bonkers.

I treat my children the way my generation was treated. At 8 my mother would go to work part-time and leave me at home for up to 3 hours unsupervised. At 11 I was allowed to take the bus with friends and go to town (20 minutes bus ride away).
Ya know what? So were TONS of other people in my year at school.
At 13 I was babysitting other peoples kids, in their own home, and yes I was totally in charge all by myself. At 16 I was dating a 24 year old. At 17 I was engaged. At 21 I was married and had a baby.
And guess what? That's not weird.
What's weird is the way people mollycoddle and helicopter parent all the damned time these days. What's weird is how people think a 16 year old and a 23/24 year old have nothing in common, because a 16 year old is "soooooo young", they're "still a child". Good God. Maybe that's true because people TREAT them that way!

/epic rant

"yes. its a community of people who like alternative lifestyles"

Ahh cool. So do you get introduced to it by a mutual friend or is something you can just get into ?

Sorry I would reply to both but it's difficult on my mobile.

I do take into account age differences, and probably early 30s would be the oldest I'd go - I also wouldn't date anyone younger than me. (I don't think) Although I suppose if I met someone I clicked with I might overlook it..it just depends. I'm 22 and currently dating a guy who's 29.

Conversely to OP, I did just get into it myself through research and seeing what's out there on my part It happens either way, and I know plenty of people on both sides.

Out of interest, why do you (and I think most girls) prefer not to date people who are younger than them? Is it mainly just because it's a bit of a culturally "weird" thing to do and raises eyebrows? Or is there some other reason for it?

I think it may be something to do with 'mental age'. On average, women mature faster than men (physically and mentally- think of average female age for puberty, ie. 12-16, and male, ie. 14-19) and therefore girls may feel more on a similar 'mental wavelength' with a slightly older guy. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions to this, and the older you get the less this matters, but it might explain the prevalence of teenage girls dating slightly older guys; actually fairly equal mental maturity...