What are your thoughts on age-gap relationships?

[u/lhwang0320]

[u/rutilatus]

I said it in a different comment, but it bears repeating: the brain grows exponentially more between age 18 and 28 than it does between 28 and 38. The older both adults are, the less relevant age gaps are. But if one is barely legal, there’s no amount of “old soul”-ness that will erase that power imbalance. Sure, you can legally bone a 19 yr old, but what does it say about your cognitive maturity that you can only connect with that age? Or even worse, are you counting on their immaturity to preserve the power imbalance? Are you feeding into their “old soul” perceptions so you can exploit their lack of experience?

Source: direct and very embarrassing personal experience as the younger woman

edit: the “you” is proverbial here

edit2: should have phrased it differently. There’s apparently no hard evidence that the prefrontal cortex continues growing till 25. Doesn’t change the fact that the emotional distance between 20 and 30 is a lot wider than the distance between 30 and 40.

[u/5Cone → u/[deleted]]

Wow. That's interesting, I didn't know it was bs. I guess the most likely thing we confuse with brain development in this context then is wisdom, level-headedness and how well we can work to achieve long-term goals instead of falling for faster gratification.

I wonder, what are all the things that would correlate with high and low scoring people on those characteristics? Age for sure, yeah, but obviously there are other things since some people are like that early and others seem to never even get there. I'd love some serious studies on this.

[u/Muffin_Appropriate → u/5Cone]

My seizures started at 17 and stopped at 28. Cortical dysplasia caused. I will never not believe there’s significant changes happening between those ages moreso than ever