So there's a girl who's under 21 but legal, and a guy 13 years older than she is. How would the age difference affect a long-term relationship? Or would it make it unlikely that it could become long-term?
I know there's lots of couples who are quite far apart in age, I'm just wondering what issues they might have run into. I imagine difficulties relating to each other because the older has some life experience and has seen and done a lot of things, while the younger one is still somewhat naive, hasn't seen the real world. I look back at my own thoughts when I was in late teens and I'm stunned sometimes about how silly my ideas about the world were, and how immature I was even as an adult.
Differences in "culture" also seem like they'd be a stumbling block. Thirteen years is basically a generational difference. Young people today are so vastly different even from how they were 10 or so years ago (although there are of course some things that are the same for kids now as they were 50 years ago). Differences in types of music or other entertainment there is, or even what musicians and actors are known to people of two different ages are significant. I like music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, but even during the 80s when I was a kid some of that stuff was already "classic" and I only know the more popular stuff, and I bet lots of young adults these days have never even heard of many of those older acts. Making references to TV, music, movies from the 80s with someone born in the late 80s ends up with just a blank stare (there were Transformers BEFORE the movie coming out this year?!).
I think I could deal with it all, but I wonder if long term it might start to grind my gears. If the older person is always having to explain him/herself, or is constantly confused by the behavior of the younger person. I suppose it might just be one of those things that a couple doesn't actually have in common, like one who likes sports and the other doesn't, but it seems like it could result in communication problems, different expectations between the two people, frustration.
All that of course is aside from the issue of the younger person possibly not developing emotionally as they might otherwise have, with the influence of the older, "wiser" person, as the young person might not have to learn on his/her own how to handle life.
I know there's lots of couples who are quite far apart in age, I'm just wondering what issues they might have run into. I imagine difficulties relating to each other because the older has some life experience and has seen and done a lot of things, while the younger one is still somewhat naive, hasn't seen the real world. I look back at my own thoughts when I was in late teens and I'm stunned sometimes about how silly my ideas about the world were, and how immature I was even as an adult.
Differences in "culture" also seem like they'd be a stumbling block. Thirteen years is basically a generational difference. Young people today are so vastly different even from how they were 10 or so years ago (although there are of course some things that are the same for kids now as they were 50 years ago). Differences in types of music or other entertainment there is, or even what musicians and actors are known to people of two different ages are significant. I like music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, but even during the 80s when I was a kid some of that stuff was already "classic" and I only know the more popular stuff, and I bet lots of young adults these days have never even heard of many of those older acts. Making references to TV, music, movies from the 80s with someone born in the late 80s ends up with just a blank stare (there were Transformers BEFORE the movie coming out this year?!).
I think I could deal with it all, but I wonder if long term it might start to grind my gears. If the older person is always having to explain him/herself, or is constantly confused by the behavior of the younger person. I suppose it might just be one of those things that a couple doesn't actually have in common, like one who likes sports and the other doesn't, but it seems like it could result in communication problems, different expectations between the two people, frustration.
All that of course is aside from the issue of the younger person possibly not developing emotionally as they might otherwise have, with the influence of the older, "wiser" person, as the young person might not have to learn on his/her own how to handle life.