It is a big deal because of maturity, a 15 year old girl freshman is not as mature as a 20 year old senior. They are thinking about different things, and the senior's advantage over the situation is enormous. Senior girls are much more mature and better suited to date senior boys, if the boys can handle them, if not they will look for younger girls. Its shameful.
Also an 18 year old girl dating a 32 year old man is also shameful, she is at the age of consent but she is not at the age of maturity. The 30 year old has had alot more relationships and sex and experience and hardly has anything to relate to the 18 year old girl.
The older you get the less this matters, a 30 year old woman and a 50 year old man is fine, but run that back to when the girl was 10 and the man was 30 and you have a serious problem.
I understand the whole issue of maturity and it's certainly relevant, but honestly each relationship has to be taken on a case-by-case basis, and I certainly wouldn't call it "shameful" to date someone who's older/younger than you. Well, no, I take that back -- it's shameful, but only because people give too much of a **** about what everyone else does and shame exists pretty much everywhere if you let it.
I completely understand what you're saying and don't deny the truth of it, I just think the absolutist, "this never works" mentality is a bad one to have. If people can make it work, then they can make it work. If someone dates someone much older than they are and it doesn't work, then it won't work and the relationship will likely crash and burn without everyone needing to tell them it's wrong in the first place.
Wait, wat, you and I have been over this before.
Once you're into your 20's, dating someone 3 years up isn't so bad. When you're 15 dating a senior, there's kind of a ****ing problem due to how much changing there is to be had, much more so than with people past that stage in life. It's just simple facts, man.
I think you misunderstood exactly what I was trying to say. I'm pretty much going against the entire "Holy crap, she's 10 years older than him, that's disgusting" sort of mentality here. I'm really talking about when people are older, not talking about middle school/high school age -- as I've told you in the past, I tend to find middle school/high school relationships to be too full of stupidity and drama for my tastes anyway.
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Regardless of all arguments though, I'm still a little curious as to why people are so anxious to prevent others from making what they're so sure is a mistake. If it's a mistake then let them make it for themselves. Telling them that it's just inherently wrong isn't really going to help anything.
