• OldChicoAle@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        As a 33 year old, I went on a date with a 22 year old and yeah I just couldn’t. I felt like I was babysitting. I can date a guy 20 years older but no one younger than me

        • Gonzako@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          I know these are just general limits nothing concrete but I just imagined ya rejecting a guy cuz he was born one picosecond after you.

            • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              no, they are arbitrary bullshit you tell yourself to make you feel like you have control or give you ready made excuses to keep making the same mistakes, over and over and over, rather than trying something different that might make you genuinely happy.

              someone’s age, or height, or amount of income/wealth isn’t going to make you happy and fulfilled. but you tell yourself it will because it feels like it’s something you can control. of course, the irony being the other person could just lie about those things…

      • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        age has nothing to do with it.

        someone who was immature and selfish at 30, is going to be worse at 40. people dont grow out of who they are, they just become more of what they are.

    • GiveOver@feddit.uk
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      5 days ago

      Soo you need more energy to party and keep up with them BUT the key is finding a young one that doesn’t know what a healthy relationship looks like. That way you save on having to put effort into the relationship and support them and all that other stuff you need to do with a mature partner

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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        4 days ago

        Eh. I’m pretty introverted and I still went drinking, dancing etc. regularly in my early 20s. I don’t go out at all nowadays due to health issues and generally lower energy levels.

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      i’m 40 and I have lost all interest in dating anyone of any age… because the return on investment of my time/energy just never happens. It just feels like I’m gambling and hoping I’ll get a jackpot, but all I’m doing is throwing away money and time that would be better invested in other things.

      and when I made the choice to stop prioritizing dating/relationships/friends… my life vastly improved and it does feel like I hit the jackpot. and now I just end up meeting people who are still addicting to gambling and looking for me to be their ‘get out of depression/debt/misery’ jackpot.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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    6 days ago

    Considering the kinds of men who tend to seek out much younger women, it’s less “funny” and more “very concerning”.

  • pohart@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    I’m embarrassed about who my wife dated when she was 19. She tells these stories and all I can think is why didn’t you dump me?

    • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      “Dont you get it? I love you because youre not that [context - rich/handsome/strong/popular/whatever] kind of guy”

      Best not to pull at that thread. Only misery and confusion is at the end

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    I dated my wife when she was 19 and so was I. As I was a dick then, this all tracks.

    (I’m also a dick now, but I was a dick then too #mitchHedberg)

  • Old Sage Rick@lemmy.zip
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    5 days ago

    asked my wife about this, she told me to fuck off and that it she still can’t talk to her mother about that.

    Which is weird because I was the person she dated when she was 19

  • cobysev@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Can confirm, I was awkward and embarrassing as a 19-yr old. I’m sorry to all my ex-girlfriends back then.

    Granted, most of them dated me because I had a “bad boy” look and they were disappointed when they found out I was actually a quiet, introverted nerd. I was almost always the dumpee in my relationships.

    • Lemmayng@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I’m sorry those girls couldn’t appreciate your kind, quiet personality beyond your looks. Hope you find someone who feels lucky to have a “bad boy” with a sensitive soul.

      • cobysev@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I eventually found my soulmate later in life, who is also an introverted nerd. She also pursued me for my looks initially, but stayed because we were intellectual twins.

        If there’s any advice I can give for relationships, it’s to look for someone you can be best friends with. If you’re in a relationship just for looks, understand that looks fade.

        I’m in my 40s now and gaining weight due to disabilities that prevent me from exercising. Plus I’m starting to bald and growing thick hair literally everywhere else. I’m no longer the “ruggedly handsome young man” I used to be as a teenager. My wife still loves me and cherishes time with me, because we’re best friends, not shallow lovers.

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      A lot of younger people seem to idealize their partners. At 19 I was set on a pedestal by my then-boyfriend, like I was supposed to be some manic pixie dream girl free of any and all flaws. So when I started showing signs of being an actual human instead of the perfect doll he was imagining, he turned from love to resentment quick enough to make my head spin.

      • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        This is why I think it’s important for people to grow up seeing real girls/women. Could be moms, sisters, girls their age in the community. By real I mean people living real life, no makeup,no running somewhere else to fart, or not talking back for themselves.

        Less and less the boys grow up seeing that, more and more they start to idolize women, and then have high expectations. Because all they have seen is from movies, TVs, internet.

        • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          lots of women would never want to be that way around anyone.

          i have known women who dressed up w/ full make up to go to the drug story while they had the flu, because the could not bare the though of a random drug store cashier not seeing them at their best. and if you pointed out how miserable and stupid it all was, they would call you a asshole who had no pride in your appearance.

          they also refused to admit they farted or pooped or anything human like that. and plenty of men are like that too.

    • StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      At 19, there’s a much higher percentage of people who just don’t know what a real, healthy relationship looks like and can only go by whatever examples they have in their lives and whatever their favored media is selling to them. Aside from the exhaustion, I can’t imagine dating anyone under 25 because I can’t believe that they would be dating me as a person. It seems like standard procedure that everyone has to go around and collect some relationship ‘war stories’ before they’re ready to settle down and date for real.

  • KaChilde@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    My advice to a friend was “If he’s so mature, why aren’t all the mature women lining up to date him?”

    At 19, I don’t think the advice stuck

    • Gonzako@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Yeah, this argument fails to address how men get to experience relationships. One man could be your perfect partner but he simply doesn’t put himself in positions to meet/date new people.

      I know its easy to assume men get propositioned the same way women do but that’s simply not true.

      • KaChilde@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        I’m a man.

        I have had limited relationships in my life.

        I still don’t think that older men acting predatory to young women who don’t have the same life experience as them is cool or valid.

        This has little to do with the scarce dating scene for incels, and more to do with men who focus on young women because women their age know they are skeezy.

        • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          those older men and those younger women both know what they are doing. they really do, but they will pretend they don’t because plausible deniability.

          and they don’t care what anyone else thinks about it. they are just seeking fantasy fulfillment, like the rest of us. their fantasies are just different.

  • ferrule@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    When I was 18 and 19 I only dated middle aged women.

    I can see why it’s creepy the other way around.

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      how does that work. practically. like how were you in a situation where middle aged women wanted to date you as an 18 year old?

      when i was 18 the only middle aged people i knew were parents, or teachers/professors.

      the only middle aged people who approached me, were gay men.

      • ferrule@sh.itjust.works
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        4 days ago

        Mostly I had a type so I was being flirty with coworkers at a couple of jobs I had. One was a bartender at a dive bar I went to that didn’t care to card.

        I was legal and not looking for a lot. They knew what they wanted and we just kind of clicked. Plus it was mostly going over to their place for food and sex it’s not like this was some big love affair.

          • ferrule@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            Where I grew up most teenagers worked a lot. Hotels, restaurants, bars, etc all needed cheap labor so we had a lot of long hours at summer and weekend jobs. Most of us got included into the adult after work activities.

            • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              I grew up in a place like that but none of us were fucking or drinking with the tourists. we just drank and fucked each other like normal kids.

              and nowadays, they import kids from abroad on temp work visas to do those seasonable jobs, board them 6-8 people to a single bedroom. and the tourists are not fucking those people either.

              first time i met people who were dating/fucking way older people was college.

              • ferrule@sh.itjust.works
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                4 days ago

                It sounds the same here. Most of the kids did the same, just drank and fucked eachother. I just was into older women and I happened to have access.

  • SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net
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    5 days ago

    As a woman person I can confirm my worst choices were when I was still young and developing. I wasn’t 19, but 20.

    My choices didn’t get much better, but thats why I eventually stopped dating entirely. I’m a shit judge of mates, and choose the worst for me (yay trauma!!) so I just don’t anymore, it’s so much easier. I’m tired of trying to grow and being brought back down by shitty men. Much rather bring myself down.

    However of all the bad, that age brought me the worst. He turned out to be a convicted felon rapist (not of me. happened after he stalked me for 2 years which was itself after he moved 1300 miles to be close to me when I left him and moved home), which I discovered through court access years later. I dodged that bullet, for sure. I mean it grazed me, but didn’t hit. Sorry to the lady behind me. :(

  • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    Depending on where you’re at this can be more or less common - college being a key exception. My wife and I met first day of college, started dating at 18. Neither of us expected the relationship to last particularly long but we fell in love and it stayed that way for the duration of school. Neither of us wanted to end a relationship that clearly worked well despite having never experienced any other relationship before. The interesting part to me is that there were several other couples on the same floor of our dorm with the exact same situation, and more than a decade on they like us are still together.

    • nickiwest@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Same here, but we met in October instead of our first day. I’ve been happily married for 25 years to the guy I was dating at 19. A lot of other couples from our dorm are also still married.

  • someguy7734206@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    Obviously, the people who dated someone at 19 who they subsequently broke up with is more likely to regret that date. And then there are the people who are still with the person they dated at 19.

    Although I guess it is true for me that my worst dating decision was somewhere around 19: I didn’t make any effort to date anybody, and now that I have no dating experience at age 33, that ship has now sailed without me.

    • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      I’m not qualified to give anyone dating advice, I was single until I was 28 and then fell in love — I still have 0 dating experience.

      The only way I can describe it is by brute force. I put myself in bars, hated it. Clubs, same thing. I didn’t even meet my now girlfriend by anything other than random chance, and I was just about ready to give up had I not literally bumped into her.

      Point being, get into the real world. Take walks, work out, live your life the way you want (just spitballing, this is not a formula). Naturally you will find others who seek to live their life the same way. Whether you make something of it or not is up to you.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    That’s basically the point.

    The men are saying “She’s out of my league”.

    The women, 10+ years later, realize that they could have done a lot better – she was out of his league.