Have you ever slept with someone whom you watched grow up? Would you?

Yeah, I agree with you on that last sentence. There’s something surprisingly “ugly” feeling about the scenario. Not particularly wrong or bad. Just ugly.

Just a gut feeling.

no, and no, it is a rather awkward subject and you win kudos for asking. I am rather proud to say I have never made love to any young child, even after they had grown, at any specific instance.

So yeah, it is not something that comes to mind much…

do you mean that you grew up WITH them, while watching them grow up – low age gap?(childhood friend perhaps?)

OR

just simply watching them grow up – large age gap?

+5 for @kevbo… I lurve awkward Fluther questions.

No, I never have, and I don’t think I could. It seems kind of… gross. Like the way I feel after a boyfriend’s mom shows me his “Age 5 on the potty” photos.

@dr34m3r, large age gap, but feel free to improvise.

no, that would be weird

i’m too young to answer this question

I used to be a camp counselor and more than a few little boys proposed to me. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I saw these kids when they were in their twenties and I in my thirties and something were to spark. Honestly, I feel as if I want to crawl out of my own skin when I think of this. These kids will always be kids in my mind and even when they are grown, I will not be able to think of them sexually.

I’m somewhat like @dr34m3r, I haven’t watched enough people grow up for this to be pertinent to me personally. However, I can both understand the logical argument for it, and the emotional taboo against it.

Logically, if you had never known that individual as a child, it would simply be an issue of dealing with the effects of an age gap between partners. What, morally, makes this taboo, simply because you knew the individual longer? Let me clarify.

You have person A and B. A and B are identical twins separated at birth. You knew Twin A since she was 5 and you were 15. When you are 32, you meet 22 year old Twin B, completely unaware of the twins relation. You fall in love, get married, and have kids. You later find out these two are twins. What makes being with twin B morally straight, but being with Twin A not? Is simply knowing one person longer than the other a legitimate reason to categorically rule them out as a potential partner?

However, you also have the emotional side. While this individual may no longer be a child, when you first met, the relationship created was of the sort found between adult and child. Changing this relationship, and learned attitude, toward this person is what strikes someone as taboo. Our society ingrains it so strongly to discourage people from taking advantage of children. And the feeling that one is using a child will be a difficult taboo to get over.

However, does this societal taboo have a place after the individual is legally, mentally, emotionally, and maturity-wise, an adult? In all honestly, probably not.

Will most be able to accept this and start relationships with adults they once knew as children? Again, probably not.

-Dan

No I haven’t, and I have no plans to, but then again some of my 8 year old son’s female friends look like they could end up pretty hot.

Seriously though, no…you’re familiar with someone as a child, I can’t imagine how one would shake that image/memory. I can see two scenarios in which it might not be a problem. One would be let’s say if I’d ever asked out the girl in my school on whom I had a crush from about 3rd grade until I graduated college, she seemed like a peer, no matter what age I was, I imagine if I’d ever dated her I wouldn’t think about her as a 10 year old, because I was a 10 year old at the same time. The other way I can see is if you met someone as a child while you were an adult, but didn’t spend a lot of time around them, and then years later you meet that person as an adult again, you don’t have that connection between this person now and the image of this person then…it’s more trivial.

Despite my beginning joke, I can’t imagine being able to shake the feeling, and part of it is, kids look up to their elders, they view them in a certain way, the same way adults view kids in a certain way, and it simply feel exploitative to make a relationship based on one type of connection into a completely different type of relationship based on something else altogether. No matter how attractive a woman any girl I know now might grow up to be, any relationship we might have as she gets older would be rooted in whatever relationship we have now, which is not a peer peer, but a superior/subordinate. In short, I’d have a hard time not feeling like a rapist.

I think I’m too young. There have been people I’ve babysat, but they are still minors.

My husband thinks my sons friends will love me, but that’s just us joking. I can’t imagine ever doing such a thing, the thought of it is sort of creepy. Wouldn’t they always seem like a child to me? I feel like no matter what, my son will always need guidance and my support, and I imagine if he’s had friends from early childhood on, that those boys will feel like my own in a sense.

Nope, I wouldn’t be able to do it either. It’s interesting though, because my husband is nine years older than I am. We met as adults, so it’s not an issue at all, but when you think of him being 19 and me being 10… ewwww.

Woody Allen took it a step further, and married his pseudo-step-daughter, 34 years his junior.

I’ve been with someone who is young enough to be my son (hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it ;) I did not know him when he was a child/minor, so that wasn’t an issue – I didn’t meet him until he was 21. While I had reservations about the age difference, he was fantastic and you only live once, right? It’s not something I regret.

On topic…

I have a friend who had a sexual relationship with someone she used to babysit. The age difference between her and the person she used to babysit is smaller than the age difference between me and my young lover, but it’s somehow different. To me, that is crossing some sort of (imaginary) line. She used to change his diapers and now she’s having sex with him? Maybe it’s just me, but there is something creepy about that.

@augustlan, my gf has the same reaction whenever something nostalgic comes up in conversation, and I remind her that I was 10 when she was 25 or 15 when she was 30.

@LunaChick, can you find out more about her experience and get back to us? That’s exactly what I mean, and I’m curious.

@casheroo et al, for me, I don’t think so much of them as children as I think about my feelings about them vis a vis the times we’ve shared. Maybe I don’t want to sully those memories and those feelings, or maybe they are too strong to add something else to the mix.

@kevbo – Their sexual relationship lasted, on and off, for about a year. I can remember when she told me about it. I had a hard time keeping my thoughts to myself which is to say I didn’t. I asked her if she thought it was weird, creepy, etc… and she said no. She was looking at him as the young man he grew into, not as the child he was.

I then asked her if she was going to tell his mother (who now lives in another state) about the relationship. She said no, because she didn’t want to ruin their friendship. So, in some way, even though she said she wasn’t creeped out by it, she still knew a line was crossed, which is why she didn’t want his mother to know.

@LunaChick: It sounds like your friend knew what he was working with downstairs and just couldn’t resist.

@AlienBomber – Wow. Just wow.

Great Question. I actually have done that several times. It was always weird. I don’t recommend it at all.

@LunaChick: Think about it like this: Your man had has a 6” submarine and this toddler has a 6” sub too.. 18 years goes by and you run into him while you and your man are not getting along. Its been a while and you decide to have a drink or two then you remember “hey this kid probably has grown up downstairs!” One thing leads to another and WOW OH WOW my has he grown UP! HEHEHEHEHE

No,never.I never liked a big age difference in the men I have dated.

What @Dan_DeColumna says about the emotional aspect of this relationship is what makes it weird. If you watch someone grow up, especially if you were close to them, they probably trusted you and looked up to you as a child. It’s really squicky to have sex with someone when those were the foundations of your relationship, even though people change over time.

I’m too young to date someone like this, but one of my friends’ dads started subtly hitting on me around the time I turned sixteen and it really freaked me out. We had known each other for maybe four or five years at this point. He’d do stuff like offer rides home or pat me on the back or the arm for just a little longer than normal and say creepy stuff about the young woman I had grown into. It was weird and off-putting because I just thought of him as someone’s dad and an old guy, and I didn’t want to imagine someone like that thinking of me in a sexual way.

@Haleth Ugh. That just reminded me… the father of one of my friends (whom I’d known for years, and was around all the time) woke me up in the middle of the night by stroking my thigh. When I startled awake and sat up in the bed, he pushed me back down (gently), by way of my boobs. I was like, 16. Fucker.

I know I shouldn’t feel this way, because it is an honest mistake, but I feel a little chauvinistic right now. I TOTALLY thought you were a male, @augustlan. My bad.

@augustlan Gross! I’m really sorry that happened to you.

@Haleth Psh. I’ve been through much worse than that, and I’m still standing! Thanks, though.

@Dan_DeColumna You’re not the first, no worries. ;)

Absoloutely not and I wouldn’t, plus I only go for older men, so I won’t have watched them grow up.

@Dibley: But they may have watched YOU grow up which still makes this whole conversation hypothetically pertinent to you.

They wouldn’t of watched me grow up. I don’t sleep with men I am friends with.

I didn’t know that, thus the hypothetical.

@Dan_DeColumna Plus I live in a different town now.

I cant imagine a scenario where I could…. I struggle with age gaps anyway. More than about 5yrs either side of my age & I start to feel uncomfortable. I get the thought that when I was 20, she was only, say 14 for example. Thats kinda the death rattle for me.

One of my friends in college had a child and when the daughter was young I saw her two times and went to the park. Lost contact for 10 years and then her mother, the wife and I connected again and then the teen daughter came over for dinner and to hang out with our daughter and I went whoa… your Ummmm- all grown up! and she said the times we went to the park stick in her mind and she had hoped to connect again but really enjoyed hanging.

He mother comes over all the time and she hangs out with our daughter and she’s real nice- Don’t know but the daughter Ummm _underage so hands-off…

Yes, many of the girls from my neighborhood are hookers.

I think most of you are over-reacting a tad. I am 46 and in a great relationship with a guy who is 28. Its not only a huge age gap, but I knew him as a boy too, and even further he’s a distant cousin of my ex-husband. Everyone probably thinks that’s all just too very weird, but I say two consenting adults can do what they want with who, and if they are both happy and comfortable, then theres no way its wrong :-)

@blueguitargirlkath ; I agree! Several of our best friends have ten or more years between them and they are rock solid! One couple we know have 14 year spread- she’s 42 and he’s 28 and they uncannily look like brother/ sister so the speculation went rampant for some time just to mess with them. They just let people talk and if they feel like messing with them they call each other sis and bro!

Age difference isn’t the issue. I know a couple with a 22 year age difference. I had an aunt who married someone 33 years older than her (he of course died many years ago and she’s still alive, but they had a kid and were fine). My parents are 6 years apart. But none of the older partners watched the younger partners grow up. I think what bothers people is if you think about people who you knew when they were kids (but when you were already grown up), how do you “unsee” them as kids once they grow up…it’s part of who they are to your perspective, and so it seems a bit weird, just because here is this person that at one time in your life probably saw you as some sort of authority figure….to transition to a peer relationship is difficult because of your history. Think about it from the other side as well. Imagine one of your grade school teachers of the opposite sex, one which was 20 years older than you…you go back to your hometown and run into him/her, I’d suggest if your first thought was, damn, I want to nail that person, and you didn’t feel at all weird about it, that might be a bit “different” than how most people would react. Doesn’t make it wrong, but it makes sense that people would find it weird.