no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I met him when I was 19 and I married that guy so ymmv

he obv liked you for reasons other than your age/cuteness tho!!

true. tbf we didn't meet irl for like 5 years so

I'm dating a late-thirties music dude who pretends to be a mid-thirties music dude and I'm p. sure he'd rather be dating a 20 y-o than me right now. Feel like tattooing a health warning on him somewhere.

how would girls learn one of life's valuable lessons without these dudes

The world needs mosquitoes just to teach us there are biting insects in the world? idk...

I dated (and slept with!) a 42 year old Beefheart fan dude when I was 21, and completely clueless. Ick, me.

And he was a work colleague whats worse.

But I dont think its always crepey, as Ive dated p young guys right into my late 30s.

I had a 20 year old coworker who had one of her professors interested in her. She thought he was 26 or 28 but we looked him up online and he was 35. I suppose there's more than age differences to make that creepy.

I know another early twentysomething who gets 35 year olds hitting on her but she wants men to buy her stuff, so I don't know.

i mean i dated a 21 year old when i was 30 and i was definitely being creepy

Ughhh my sister is 21 and dating that guy rn. When she found out I disapproved she had him *block me* on FB preemptively! He's about 40 afaict.

Oh and I did it too, and had the luck of choosing a crackhead 35-year-old. :P

I know this is the grills thread and all and maybe I am the only one who is uncomfortable with the older-dude slamming. . . but I am. I have dated That Dude (two of them, actually), and they were just fine. Just feels to me like we're throwing stereotypes at dudes who we would kick the shit out of for throwing stereotypes at us? I dunno it appears I am officially perimenopausal and I'm to hot and I can't sleep for shit so maybe best to brush off whatever I am saying here.

I have no problems with older dudes

Do you have problems with older dudes dating younger women? Honestly not trying to be contrary; just trying to understand the anger.

Nope. I do have problems with men dating far too young for them, though.

dating women far too young for them, though, I mean.

quincie, read my post on the other thread. I explain it in detail there.

"That Dude (two of them, actually), and they were just fine" - then you didn't date That Dude, That Dude is not just fine! He's condescending and treats you as less than a person. We aren't just talking about older dudes in general. It's a specific phenomenon

i've never really experienced this - i think all the guys i've dated have been between 2-6 yrs older than me. i did however have a one-time thing with a 40+yr old well-known (not famous or anything, just big in the scene) music dude , when i was about 22, who i later found out had a total rep for it in my small city. he was fun and interesting but TERRIBLE in bed, in a really selfish, i'm-cool-and-the-girls-love-me-so-i-don't-need-to-do-anything kind of way.

Yeah now THAT is more of a ThatDude :)

i dated a lot of 30 y/os in my late teens/early 20s and some were ok, but 2 in particular were terrible and kinda fucked up my life. i was a smart 20 year old, but not socially, and had a lot of hangups about talking and expressing myself verbally. this led to a lot of tacit acceptance of terrible behavior. and v questionable sex.

key thing I forget is ilxing sometimes needs a measured moment to take in posts, and not respond right away with my personal angle. seeing now that i'm lightyears away from what this is about

i am v interested in this discussion & I am glad homo raised it, sorry for taking so long to ~get it~ :)

as you were

<3

i also had terrible boyfriends who were closer to my age, but they never came at the relationship from the same angle as the terrible 30-somethings did. wanting to teach you things about life and art, and becoming resentful of you when you didn't fawn over their teachings or give a shit because you're being 20

and also not giving a shit because you have no respect for them because you know they are an asshole, because they are condescending to you

and now thinking about my high school friend who dated 30 year old dudes a lot & no shit even her own mom acted like my friend was so much more ~grown up~ than all of us

it seemed strange then...now? i gotta wonder about those guys.

late teens/20's. guh. bad choice city, even if you think you *know* what you're doing. esp girls i think?

yeah, and a few people totally have their shit together at 18 and know exactly what they're doing, but for a lot of people of both genders it's a really unstable time in life, for women esp. because you're suddenly dealing with an even stronger torrent of attention from men than before, some of whom have weird predatory/misogynistic notions about you

I don't have a specific 30s Music Dudes angle but I am feeling pretty hopeless about the whole daeting concept rn being single in my mid-30s for the first time in nearly a decade (and being twice the weight I was last time I was single).

Just a combination of <dudes prefer younger women> + <knowing lots of single 30+ women and NO single 30+ men> (even the ultra-geeky dudes I knew who were permanently single all through their twenties suddenly got married when they hit 30-32) = "so basically, single guys my age are gold dust and can have their pick of anyone my age or younger and will probably opt for younger, and being in the bottom percentile for my age looks-wise* I guess that leaves me with... either nothing, or someone a LOT older, which may leave me suspicious as to why me and why not someone their own age, plus I already feel like I've missed out on many life experiences necessary to relate to people even my own age"

* and on most other metrics, for any "you are saying guys are shallow and that makes you the real sexist, do you see" onlookers (this = my ex, even if not any ILXors)

btw not looking yet because I need to get my head straight about a lot of things first so I acknowledge this post is probably just a big slab of crazy

haha i think i made a similar post upthread a few years ago when i was freaking out about becoming a potential cougar so ...

I come across a fair few single men closer to my age but theyre often um... single for a reason is the polite way to put it. ANd then theres the divorced dad set, which at my age Im gonna see a lot of, but I just DONT want to get into that, so it cuts my options into pieces. But I dont despair! Still meeting some nice guys at least around my age bracket, I'm happy to drop to 30 yo's without any judgement at all. Maybe it helps I look/act young for my age and dont want kids?

I dated a guy in his late 30s when I was in my mid-20s and he was not That Guy, either. The age gap was part of why we would never progress beyond a certain point (also he was married (oh, but separated and getting divorced ANY DAY) lol sigh so he was a different kind of That Guy but not the That Guy we're talking about) but not bc he was a condescending jerk trying to teach me about ~life~. He was really cute in a black jeans and leather jacket kind of way and drove a badass muscle car and i never got super involved bc I saw all of the insurmountable issues from the jump, so dating him was actually pretty fun and he's an ex whom I sincerely wish well. That's mostly just to point out again that there's age gaps and there's That Guy.

Also I have mentioned this elsewhere I think but I'm 7 yrs older than Jeff. We started dating when he was 21 and I was 28 (and met online when he was 19 or 20). So not like cougar style and as age gaps are wont to do, it matters less as we get older but if you'd asked me before we met if I would date someone that much younger I would have said probably not.

Also my mom is 7 yrs older than my stepdad, coincidentally.

yeah, everyone otm -- this is not about age, it's age plus -- it's way more specific than anyone (esp on that other thread wtf) ever initially suspected

but yeah, this guy is everywhere and i definitely dated one. 34/23. he played the guitar and had a master's degree in music (a master's!) and thought it was really cute that i liked to read (lol). he was tall/cute and looked like john doe (<3) and iirc was pretty frisky/fun and liked to do fun creative shit like "let's take pictures of strangers at walmart at 1am with this disposable camera i have sitting around and also i need to buy a car battery because my van is dead. again." there's a lot more to the story, but i think those details make it clear. he also did not keep a very clean house, in particular the bed. rarely came over to my place. never let me hang out with his friends. never called me back. but he introduced me to his PARENTS?!

weird guy. we don't talk anymore. he moved away and my relationship with our one mutual friend (who i met through him, oddly) is way more important to me than talking to him is. and i hear now he has a kid. :-/

anyone except Homo II, of course, who knew exactly what she was saying :)

(that was to clarify this t's way more specific than anyone (esp on that other thread wtf) ever initially suspected)

That Guy is very familiar to me, because I had a lot of interaction with That Guy when I was in my late teens slash early 20's. It's pretty confusing, because I look back on one in particular with fondness and affection sometimes, but then anger at others because he was predatory and basically pursued me so he could "teach me about stuff" (music, books, films, and sex)

And he did teach me a lot, I guess. But even after we broke up he'd lament about how I was the best girlfriend he'd ever had (a 17 year old was the best girlfriend you ever had - wow). I just had to wonder what it was at work that made me so desirable to him--even then, I wondered, and I sort of landed to the same conclusions I do now.

yeah, even the very terrible ones left artifacts in my life that i don't hate. the bad definitely outweighs the good though, for me. the main gist of my thoughts on the matter, when i look back, revolve around wishing i could go back in time and empower myself to take less shit and speak up about the shitty things that i knew he was doing to my self esteem. oh well, reasons.

xp - yeah, i've had that moment! it's kind of awful but also illuminating. i realized i was a different kind of prize to someone and it was a hella long time ago, but i don't really think being "over it" is entirely possible. i can't even look at my diary from that period.

honestly i wish i would run into this guy (not That Guy) and ask him point blank to his face if he did what i think he did.

it really is true that when your 18-20 your dating options look grim. boys that age look like complete idiots to you, and then its really crushing when you reach out of that age group and are met with idiots also.

xp - once when i was sightly drunk i passed one of these dudes in the street, walking with a woman, and said loudly to the person i was with, "that guy dated me when i was 19 and treated me like shit" - i don't regret it

ok, *you're. no coffee yet.

boys that age wouldn't give me the time of day either

omg roxy you are my hero

this movie wasnt great but it is about That Guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwnD-1A80Ts

the trailer makes it look quaint but it does make That Guy look pretty shady.

shopgirl also deals with this but i think it makes That Guy look....decent? i don't really remember. when i read it wanted to kill him tho.

god i love jean smart

i wanted to weep when i found out what shopgirl was about
approval rating for steve martin (which was quite high) plummeted in seconds

Wow, I totally forgot the time I had a 30 year old (in a band!!) interested in me when I was 19.

He was also my step-step-brother's second cousin.