I teach my daughters to stay away from older men EVEN when they enter adulthood.
Men in their 40s want women in their 20s for selfish, superficial reasons. They like the young, inexperienced malleable mind that hasnt been jaded by exactly those men in their 40s that targeted women in their 20s.
You guys helped make us what we are today - I'm just sayin.
My mother had this much older sugar daddy. He had money. He started hanging around her family when I was 14. We called him Mr. Slick. When I was 14 mom was 32......but the women of my family always look young. It's actually a sort of cumbersome curse.
So Mr. Slick kinda swooned over us. It was a family of goofy women. My grandma and her sister(my great aunt) who provided me with stability and care and my mother who was in and out and had her issues. Her and I were always more like sisters with me taking the roll of the mother hen big sister.
So this guy would take me out with him and my mom frequently. Started taking a sort of fatherly roll. I didn't know at the time he was paying for my ballet training and giving my grandmother money to take care of me and extra for herself. My grandma was a proud woman but accepted this believing the man wanted to take a father roll in my life and she SO BADLY wanted me to have that. He did teach me a lot of stuff.
Well when I turned 18 and I graduated HS, he wanted to take me out just me and him to dinner to celebrate my graduation. He always went to upscale restaurants and wanted me to dress up. So I did.
So he gave me alcohol and started propositioning me. Not for sex. But just for being some sort of eye candy but he did tell me he wanted my "ass". He offered to provide me with my own unfettered access to a bank account, a car, and to pay for me to get a degree in business(it had to be a business degree).
It was so awkward. I kept bringing up my mom....he told me he would "handle" that. It was awful. I did my best to get through the dinner and get home.
I was honestly devastated. And I learned real quick at that men are not friends. I had a very negative view of men for a long time because of him AND my mothers disgusting husband.
So when I read or hear men talk about "market value" or being able to "get" younger women.....it really just makes me sad for my daughters and I hope they never are made to feel as devalued and worthless as I was made to feel when the older men I looked up to and trusted changed when I became "legal".
It's almost a relief to get older and it's easier to weed out the people who really care about you as a human being and those who not looking at you as some form of goods they want to use to serve themselves. I get really put off and creeped out by people preoccupied with something like youth. I think its gross for women, as well.
To me it's a sure sign of a person who wants someone easier to manipulate and control. And make themselves look like hot shit.
I know there age gap relationships that happen organically and genuinely. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people fixated on age. It's a dehumanizing mindset. I also think its selfish because people in their 20s are gonna want to build a life with someone and have a family. Something that people in their 40s are typically passed. By the 40s most people have kids already and been divorced at least once.