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Here's a thought about age gaps as "predatory". One, nothing magical happens between you being 17;11 and 18;0. Maturing is a process and 18 is just the age we decided *most* people are *mostly* adults.
Two, age gaps CAN be predatory. If they're wielded as a means to power. https://twitter.com/k_dewolfwrites/status/1304818970642591744
Two, age gaps CAN be predatory. If they're wielded as a means to power. https://twitter.com/k_dewolfwrites/status/1304818970642591744
The older person in the relationship is *usually* more experienced, and this experience can be used to overpower and control. It can also, however, be used to love and support. It depends on how it's wielded. You can't just look at a relationship from a distance and decide.
For one thing, because *if someone is predated upon* *and they don't realize* *and you tell them* that messes with their trust in their own judgement and agency. *If* you're right, from your distance, you gotta help them figure it out by pointing to their own experience.
Not by telling them you know better than they do. Because you don't. It's in the nature of the subject that something will feel wrong, it just may not get a proper place and voice and thus be ignored. If you want to help people, connect them to that experience, don't lecture.
And here's the flipside. Being younger, more vital, having more prospects for the future, etc., is also an advantage that may well be wielded as a means to power. A younger partner might, for example, abuse their older partner by telling them they're old and "washed-up".
So age isn't *just* a number, it's a meaningful number, but it derives the direction of its meaning from the context it lives in. It creates a dynamic, but what dynamic? That's an essential part of the story.
