...but posted in YW/OM because that's the type of AGR I'm presently in. :)
Ageless Love regulars know that Lovey is 19 years my senior, and that I have also been in AGRs with men 10+ years my junior. Anyone who's in an AGR has encountered the biases about AGRs, whether the elder partner is male or female. Those of us who are female and who've been in relationships with men 10+ years younger have also been faced with the popular misconception that OW/YM AGRs are something new.
Until Lovey got sick and we stopped going out (because he rarely has energy to; chemo does that to a person), there were women who had issue with us being together because I'm younger than they are. Not because I'm younger than he is, but because I'm younger than they are and apparently I'd violated the Rules of the Sisterhood by going out with someone in "their" age bracket. There are people who *think* they're being funny when they tease Lovey about me being 19 years younger than him, who don't realize what an epic fail they're achieving. And then there are people who *are* being funny, and expect me to give back as good as I get. But that's about the worst of what I deal with as a 40-something year old "younger" woman. What I dealt with as a 30-something year old "older" woman was...skeevier.
Lovey and every single one of his peer-aged male friends (65, give or take 5 years or so), without exception, know of OW/YM AGRs going back 50 years (about the time in their lives when they were old enough to pay attention to such things as "she is older than he is"). We're not talking 2-5 years older; we're talking 20-30 years older and sometimes more. The way they talk about it now, they weren't shocked then and sure as heck aren't shocked now.
Several people where I work are in AGRs, as are several of my friends. Most are YW/OM, but some are YM/OW. At work a group of us were talking about the topic of age-gap relationships in general the other day, and one of the women mentioned that even though she knows it isn't right, how uncomfortable she became when she was in a local restaurant and saw an age-gap couple in which "she looked old enough to be his grandmother."
It quickly became apparent--even among a group of people who are *in* age-gap relationships--that with OW/YM couples, it's the visible difference in age that seems to "bother" people. Relationships where she appears to be "a little" older than he is were "okay", but not when "she's obviously old enough to be his mother." This made me think about how--even though YW/OM couples face biases, too--it seems that people in general seem to be much more accepting of age-gap couples in which the male partner appears to be significantly older than the female, than when the age difference is the other way 'round. I was kind of shocked by this, so I intentionally took the discussion where it'd make them uncomfortable. I talked about "breeding pairs." :D
I think what people are truly uncomfortable with is not that the woman is "obviously" older than the man; it's that such couples represent women's freedom of choice and confront our paternalistic society with the fact that women don't "need" traditional relationships (i.e. peer aged marriage with children) like we used to. I think something that is their private choice is seen as an overt challenge to so-called traditional gender roles, and I believe that's what makes people uncomfortable.
What causes me to think this are such things as when people see an age-gap couple in which the man is older than the woman, they can still pretend that the age-gap couple is potentially a "breeding pair", or he's her provider and she's his caretaker/sex toy. Although it's not entirely conventional, it's acceptable because traditional male/female roles are upheld.
However, when faced with a couple wherein the woman is "obviously" older than the man and "obviously" past child-bearing age, all the women's issues that society struggles to deal with come to the forefront. (For what it's worth, I think this is also what lies at the root of a majority of the so-called issues people have with same-sex partnerships.)
Rightly or wrongly, it is presumed that having and rearing children together aren't part of that couple's future; therefore, they're not a "breeding pair." We already know that people in general are uncomfortable with it when children are not part of any given couple's future; we see it in what people go through when experiencing infertility or remaining childless by choice.
So, if children aren't part of the picture, what's left? People in general lack the emotional intelligence and maturity to be comfortable with the notion--much less the reality--of an independent woman who can take care of herself through full time employment outside the home and mechanisms like public and private retirement, who doesn't need a man or offspring in order to ensure her basic needs are met. So, they get mean-spirited and dirty-minded: he must be with her for the sex, or her money.
The idea that such couples are together because they want to be, for no other reason than whatever attracted them to each other and drew them together in the first place: common interest, intellectual compatibility, etc., is just...too idealistic to handle. People in general can't accept that it's not like it was 50+ years ago (and still is, in undeveloped countries), when people were together mostly because he had a penis and she had a vagina and they shared a common need to have children together in order to ensure they'd be taken care of in their old age.
Bottom line? There's still a whole lot of 1950's "the way we never were" BS out there, and it's still "their" problem.
Your thoughts?
MM