Seriously, age-gap relationships were regarded very differently 35 or 40 years ago. Jane Goldman is a good example: when she met Jonathan Ross, she was 16, yes, but she was also working fulltime on the Daily Star's showbiz page. Ross was considered a massive catch in 1986; he seemed to come out of nowhere (I think he might have been a TV researcher beforehand), and suddenly there he was, hosting The Last Resort in his trendy suits and ties. I know younger people will find this hard to believe, but he couldn't have been cooler.
When Jane began dating him, I didn't think, "She's 16 and he's 26 - how revolting", I thought, "Damn, she's lucky." And now they're about to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary.
Jonathan Ross being thought of as cool is truly hard to see
tbf - being together 35 years is an achievement for sure, but I’m not sure it’s always a mark of success?
I know a lot of older women (mums friends) who married young to older men, to degrees of success and that was fine then. But groping girls butts and wolf whistling was fine then, and wouldn’t be tolerated now and is viewed in a very different lens.
among my mums friends I’ve noticed a few
do get very prickly about the age gap and my view is there are underlying insecurities there that they don’t want to think about considering they’ve been married to their husbands for decades.
in a similar vein, my first relationship and first sexual partner was the same age as me and veeerry manipulative and controlling. It took my years to come to terms with that and admit that to myself because I didn’t want to believe it was true. So I get it.
I was a pretty worldly, independent teen at 17/18 and had moved out, eventually going to Uni. I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at dating someone in their 20s. But looking back, I was a LOT a more immature than I seemed surface level. I was a lot less mature than I thought I was.
im in my 30s now and if I had a teenage daughter dating someone in their 20s, I’d find it pretty gross. Of all my friends, many, many dates men much older than them when they were all in their late teens - none - not a single one - turned out to be a decent person. They
all turned out to be deeply insecure men, with tendencies to be manipulative/controlling as a result. And my friends weren’t stupid or naive. They are uni educated, independent women with pretty amazing careers.
I don’t think Paula getting into a relationship with Bob is indicative of him being creepy per se, but I definitely think it’s reflective of the wider misogyny in society at the time. I’m very glad it’s not really seen as acceptable now. Im
very glad that gen z are a lot more vocal and empowered even compared to my generation of millennials.
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In fact, I doubt how well they could hold their own in conversations on issues of the day even came into it.
I think that roughly summarises the appeal of those type of relationships..