Reply #55: I was a teenager in a relationship with an older man, too.

[Lyric]

He was a close friend of the family, worked with my Mom and Stepfather at the same factory. We were friends for two years before it ever turned romantic. I was 16, going-on-17, he was 23, when we got together. 16 was the "age of consent," but ONLY if the other partner was less than 4 years older--he was almost 7 years older. Still, my Mom was *thrilled*, to be honest. She loved this guy like another son, and I could already see the wedding bells ringing in her eyes. He worked hard, was a genuinely nice guy, didn't drink or party, and took care of his sick Mom. He always had protection, and my Mom made sure I had access to other contraceptive options too. I suppose my Mom thought I'd made a fantastic "catch"--in our poor, rural, Southern culture, finding a nice, hard-working guy who doesn't hit, doesn't drink, and is respectful to ladies was considered damn near the pinnacle of what a poor girl could hope to achieve. Life is different in the low-income tax bracket. Kids grow up faster, and with little to no hope for college or greater achievement, making a good marriage is always the ultimate goal--sad but true.

It didn't work out in the end, sadly, and we only dated for about eight months, but we're still friends, and I wasn't the least bit "damaged" by the experience. I'm grateful every day that my Mom had the good sense to judge on our individual situation and maturity levels, and not by some arbitrary magical number that doesn't really mean anything. He wound up marrying an acquaintance of ours from the factory (a bit older than me,) and they now have a little girl and a baby boy, living a perfectly boring life in Virginia. I found my same-sex partner by the time I was nineteen (I'm bi) and we've been happily together ever since.

Unlike the vast majority of the rest of the girls within my culture, I made it out. I'm in college. My kids will live by a different standard than I did, and that's a good thing. But I don't blame the ones who can't do what I've done. They do what they have to do to get by, and their standards and social norms are so different from middle-class America that it's practically another country, all wrapped-up and hidden inside of what we all know as "America." There are other cultures like this, too; my friend Shanequa from Detroit told me pretty much the same story--that where she comes from, it's more about finding a man who's willing to work, doesn't get into trouble, is responsible with his money, and who comes home to you and the kids every night. THAT is the priority. Middle-class anxieties about age differences are something of a laugh to the people that she and I come from; there are a hundred things that are considered FAR more important than that. If you find a guy like that who wants to be with you, you don't let him wander off just because he's a bit older than you. I'm sure it's just shocking and offensive to some folks around here to read that, but that's what the reality IS for these people. There are shades of the third world in the culture of the American poor, in more ways than one.

The law is meant to protect victims, I think, but it doesn't account for individual circumstances and differences in cultural norms. My Mom rightly determined that I wasn't being "victimized," and made the call to permit the relationship. It was a happy experience for me, and I have nothing but good memories. I understand completely why my mother permitted it, in hindsight; she, like most poor people, did not believe that the laws were written for people like us. And for the most part, she was right. The laws were written for people that have the luxury of things like a slower childhood, college, real careers, and so on. The poor are held to these standards by law, at least when they get caught, but that's not something that happens very often. Poor people defend their own, and aren't terribly likely to involve the ever-mistrusted police unless there's actual violence and victimization going on.

If our society wants to change this, then our society needs to do something about poverty. Those arbitrary laws are just like abstinence-only education. They tell you, "Don't do this!" but they provide NOTHING in the way of support and education to alleviate the circumstances that are behind what they're trying to stop. Create a system in which young girls from poor and ethnic families can feel reasonably assured that they have a chance at a college education and a future, and you'll decrease the number of girls getting involved with older guys. Until we address the root of the problem, our "laws" about relationships like these will continue to be ignored.

Note: As I said, *I* made it out. I do not support relationships between young teens and older guys, although I also do not regret the one that I had. My life was different then, and so were my ideas about right and wrong. Please do not paint me as some defender of predators, because I'm not. My post does two things--it defends MY relationship within the context of my cultural norms at the time, and it observes how things are for the girls still growing up within the culture of poverty. I am 100% in agreement that we should do everything that we can to stop relationships like this from happening, but I don't believe that laws alone will accomplish it. We need poverty relief and opportunities for poor teens more than we need these laws, because relieving poverty is FAR more effective at netting actual results. Only when we have the former will the latter be effective in any meaningful way.