Letters to the Editor
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I think some advice should go to LW too
You seem TOO involved in the personal details of this. And judgemental of the girl...
I think you like your friend and want to be his girlfriend and are trying to walk the delicate tightrope between supportive friend and girlfriend. You want to pull that mythical act of merging from supportive friend right into replacement mate. Has it ever really been pulled off? It didn't even work on Seinfeld.
So, (1): stop judgeing this girl through your jealous glasses. (2) stop trying to decided what to do to get this guy and back way off.
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I feel sorry for the girlfriend...
and glad that she is reclaiming her youth.
She has obviously been trading sex for attention or a roof over her head since she was 14 or 15.
It is sad that this is "the way it is" for so many young women.
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Enough with the age based bigotry
I've been dating my girlfriend since she was 18 and I was 38. It's now ten years later and we're still together, and we still have plenty to talk about. I'm not sure why conversation would depend on being the same age.
There's a prejudice inherent in this that you probably wouldn't see if they had other differences. After all, what do a white man and a black woman have to talk about? What do a Jew and a Baptist have to talk about?
Yes, maturity is a serious issue, one that we resolved by not living together and giving her the room to learn to take care of herself. But there's nothing inherently wrong in any relationship between adults who care for each other, regardless of any differences. The bigotry of those who think otherwise is no more acceptable than those who disapprove of mixed race relationships.
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Not that it would help him get over her, but...
...we are not meant to. This board serves a more exalted purpose: to amuse us by letting us take shots at the strange and the pathetic. And I am particularly inclined to it today, as a huge centipede has just run across my wall--yuck!
So here goes: no 19-year-old is mature. Period. The fact that she had a kid at 16 only goes to prove that (i.e., she was not mature and careful enough to take care of her own contraception). I know, I know, everyone knows at least one mature 19-year-old, but let's face it: most of us are idiots at that age. Any mature 19-year-old you might know is a statistical aberration and proves absolutely nothing.
Therefore, with that thesis in mind, any 37-year-old who is seduced by the charms of even the most beautiful 19-year-old enough to let her come live with him is a pathetic loser. I.e. someone who sacrifices likeness of minds and intelligent conversation for a svelte 19-year-old body. Or else, someone who is intimidated by women who are more mature and needs a 19-year-old idiot single mom to preen before, so that he may appear manly to himself. Or else, he may be genuinely in tune with her, in which case, woe is him.
In any case, I have little sympathy for him. A 37-year-old man who initiates a relationship with an idiotic child half his age is, sadly, only a step away from a child molester.
And advice on how to help him get over it? Therapy. Major and extensive therapy.
So there.
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Cary - you need a letters purge or something
Cary:
I don't know if its your burgeoning success, or just the unfailing ability of misogynist trolls to infiltrate all the nooks and crannies in cyberspace, but what happened to your letters section?
All I've seen recently is a bunch of jerk men waxing themselves about biological determinism. Pathetic - get your old crew of varied letter writers back, that's what makes your column great!
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Respect for sadness
The writer Mary Gordon was interviewed for yesterday's New York Times Magazine. When asked to comment on the current literary scene, she said:
"I think coldness is chic among writers, and particularly ironic coldness. What is absolutely not allowable is sadness. People will do anything rather than to acknowledge that they are sad."
If the LW can be with the friend and allow him to be sad about his loss -- without judging, or wallowing, or forcing him through it -- the friend will heal authentically in his own good time, and the LW will have provided something infinitely more valuable than a cleaned-out closet OR a bottle of Jack. Start where you are.
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He should have knocked her up
The purpose of a 40 YO man dating 20 YO women is to use their youthful reproductive system to put his genes into another generation. All this bullshit about having someone to talk to intelligently is secondary to procreation. 40 YO women are over the hill reproductively. They might be fun to hang out with, but they are useless for the main reason we have two sexes. We men can father children until we are quite old. Why shouldn't we?
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Any mature 19-year-old you might know is a statistical aberration and proves absolutely nothing.
Plus, that mature 19-year old is STILL immature compared to how mature he'll be at 29. ANYONE at 19, no matter how mature relative to the rest of society, is not finished growing emotionally. She is immature compared to her uptimate adult state. The brain doesn't finish growing, making final neural connections til 25. Those last neural synapses to fill in are in the critical thinking part of the brain. Someone under 25 simply does not have the physical brain connections to make critical decisions, much less the experience or emotional maturity.
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Lawerette has got it right
any 37-year-old who is seduced by the charms of even the most beautiful 19-year-old enough to let her come live with him is a pathetic loser. I.e. someone who sacrifices likeness of minds and intelligent conversation for a svelte 19-year-old body.
***Or else, someone who is intimidated by women who are more mature and needs a 19-year-old idiot single mom to preen before, so that he may appear manly to himself***
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What do you know about it?
I'm not commenting on LW's friend's situation.
But, as a 26-year-old who's been in a beauiful relationship for 3 years with someone now 42, I can definitively say that age difference isn't always a problem.
I am not a user, I wasn't just looking for a roof over my head, and I will never stray. I think of home and family first--always. It's the kind of person I am. We talk nonstop everyday as though we were still getting ot know each other. We discuss politics, the arts, what happened at work, and what the dog has shredded that day. Every other couple we know says they envy our connection.
So--my point is, there are many factors involved in the building of a relationship, and it is very possible that enough of them can outweigh a major age difference. If you haven't lived that, then stop talking about it.