Are You Ethical? Or Just Agist?

When I was 20-something, I developed a crush on a man named Darrell. He was full of magic and innocence. He was also 35. I adored him, and he adored me, but puritanical ideals got in the way. He felt that getting involved with me would be exploitative, so we never moved beyond one casual fling. Some kinds of shame can’t be quashed, so he married An Older Woman™ in the end. His refusal to treat me as an autonomous human was maddening back then, but I’ve learned to appreciate his ethic.

I don’t agree with it, but I’m grateful for it anyway.

Decades later, I met a man (let’s call him R) who had all that Darrell magic. He, too, was 15 years older, and he, too, was full of magic. Unlike Darrell, though, he was a part of the kink scene and had shed his puritanical qualms about age. He was as comfortable with a 30-something as he was a woman who was well into her 40s, so he eased me back into the dating pool after an abusive relationship.

R and D were both good men. Ash was not. I’d started dating him when I was 15 and he was 21. That’s a meagre age gap of six years, but as a teen, it felt more like a hundred. We were together for several years. I was too young to have formed an identity, so I created myself according to Ash’s values and priorities. I only got to find myself after he was gone, so he became one of just two men I regret.

I’ve never been one for the soft lines of youth. Give me crows’ feet. Give me a smattering of snow in a beard. Give me a man who’s aged beyond the constraints of conformity. When I was 21, I dated men in their mid-thirties, and when I was 30, I added another decade to my preferences. It was never a conscious choice. I’ve always been attracted to older men because years have a way of forcing people to evolve.

It’s easy to put age gap relationships into a box with labels: Six-year gaps are fine. 15-year gaps are not. <insert your own preconceived notions here> but it’s not that simple.

Yesterday, a reader told me he was offended by age gaps of eight years. Eight is not the number I think of when I imagine age gap relationships. If you’re 40-something dating a 50-something, is that gap even significant enough to qualify as such? I’m not so sure, but I sure as hell am if the youngster in question is 16. Another reader drew my attention to a Fetlife group called “Age Gap 60+.” He rightly did the math and pointed out that you’d have to be 80 to date a 20-year-old, so age gaps of six decades would almost always be with women who are too young to consent.

The numbers take on a special sheen when you look at them through that lens, because some age gaps are really just statutory rape.

Even if you’re well out of your teens, though, age isn’t always just a number. Sometimes gaps are exploitative. Sometimes they aren’t. The only way to determine those ethics is to look at the two individuals involved, which is why we all get to choose our partners for our own damned selves. We do not ask Karen’s opinion first because Karen doesn’t know either of us. Isn’t autonomy grand?

I’ve been exploited by younger men and I’ve been exploited by older men. I’ve been cherished by younger and older men, too, and when I was involved with someone 10 years my junior, I would have been offended if someone had called me exploitative. They wouldn’t only be insulting me, but my partner as well.

Yucking this particular yum goes beyond mere kink shaming. It assumes that young means stupid and old means manipulative, so are you really ethical? Or are you just agist? There is no single answer to that question, but it’s one each of us should consider for ourselves.