I disagree, but your post is thoughtful. I’ll just point out:
Only fools at the bottom fail to see the social classes and caste systems in all societies.
In my country, people of all classes fail to see the social classes.
Comment on [deleted]
j4k3@lemmy.world 1 week ago
TBH, it works for some people. I have a cousin that was happy for 30 years when he married a similar age gap in the other direction.
It really depends on the person. My boss from the bike shops was 20 years older than me and his wife was my age yet they made a great couple too. They were both pro amateur level cyclists and finding a good match like that is not common.
I was physically disabled at 29, and if I was somehow able to recover, I would likely be more interested in someone 10+ years younger because that is how long my life has been in limbo. I didn’t get a lot of the life experiences.
In the world of today, expecting the old normals is pretty much nonsense. Where I live, there is no chance someone in their twenties lives on their own and has any kind of financial stability unless their parents are creating it. Those types of people look to marry and date within their social class. Only fools at the bottom fail to see the social classes and caste systems in all societies. Your ex is likely right in my opinion. Most of our religious and cultural norms are little more than a tool to suppress the peasantry. Resisting the unfamiliar is common tribalism behavior but it has little to no value in the present world. The man’s age is irrelevant against the measure of the man. I’m against taking agency away from your daughter. Meet the man with a open mind and then make your case with your daughter if you need to, but don’t be dogmatic.
Sergio@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
thepreciousboar@lemm.ee 1 week ago
You are not wrong, but age gap should be considered relative to the people age. 20 yeats difference between 20 and 40? I guess, still not the best thimg ever… Between 17 and 38? It’s very very different, people mature A LOT between 17 and 20. Then of course it depends on the person, maybe this 17 years old is mature for her age, but maybe she is just being taken advantage of.
Also, the wording of the mother really implies it’s an assimetric relationship, not really one between consenting adults, of course we don’t know, but still…
j4k3@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Not saying it is like normal or anything. Am saying society in general in the west has far too authoritarian mindsets that are just dumb. If you go telling this girl she doesn’t matter, at that age, you’re shooting yourself in both feet and likely the head as far as she is concerned. She will not stop because anyone said so. She might listen to some amount of reasoning, but dogmatism has absolutely no chance of reaching a better place. It has a very good chance of getting MUCH worse.
SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
How does that have anything to do with a creepy 38 year old dating a 17 year old?
j4k3@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It has to to with the reality of love and relationships from this young lady’s perspective. It has to do with me refusing to reduce any person to a two dimensional assumption about them based on a single outlier metric. It is a respect for the autonomy of all humans. It is also a rejection of the backwardness and conflicting nonsense present in cultural norms. Like how the age of majority in much of the world is under 25 when science has proven that cognitive adulthood does not happen until this age. Majority is kept at 18 for moldable child soldiers that are just strong enough to fight but easily manipulated into fighting for criminal reasons like corporate interests. These types of ethics have no moral ground at all but are the foundation of Western morality. Nature has the ultimate say in physiological consent. Like it or not, that is irrelevant to the truth of science and observation. Read carefully and note that I have never once stated anything I believe here about what the age of majority or consent should be so far. What I really believe is that assumptions and stereotypes always hurt some minority of people. The more simple the stereotype is, the larger the hurt minority will be in every instance. Therefore I try to be very careful about judging others in ways that use simple stereotypes and restrict them in ways that might hurt them. So it is not my place to say. She is a kid and will likely make really dumb decisions, but so do most of us when under 25, and I wholely reject basing my ethics on child soldiers. In practice, everyone appreciates their own right to self determination. It is an unalienable human right. You have a right to be stupid, and a right to make mistakes, just like everyone has a right to try and warn someone of the dangers of the path they are taking and thinks like the limited perspective and depth of understanding inherent to youth. She will be a different person in 10 years time, but it is not up to me to assume I can speak for her now or for that person in her future. She is a product of her environment and I am not. I respect her as a fellow human and do not enslave her to my tribal ethics and assumptions.
thepreciousboar@lemm.ee 1 week ago
That is true, for an adult issue, a serious and adult conversation must happen with this girl, even if it could be okay, the situation itself should be evaluated because it can get very gnarly. We don’t know much about OPs way to handle it, but it’s also possible this specific situation is fine.
Either way, I agree that just telling your daughter to stop doing something she clearly feels like doing, even if she has a distorted view of that something, is not going to help anyone.