I think I’m with Youdon’tsay on this one. When I was 17, I spent the summer fooling around with a woman in her 30s. When I was 24, I was in love with a girl of 16; we’ve stayed in touch, so I’m fairly confident no harm was done (she’s a close friend of my mom).
It’s not easy to know where to draw the line, but IME, part of being young means taking a few emotional risks.
So, yes, Cali, as long as you are physically safe, I think you should follow your heart.
I guess I would wonder why he is looking on a college campus for a girlfriend…doesn’t he have friends nearer to his own age?
I think the age difference isn’t as big a deal,as where you are in your lives. He is ready to launch into some career. You are beginning college. Two very different stages in life.
ETA…@calicash…you are a college freshman and you never mentioned taking time off between HS and college. This means you are 17, 18, or 19. And this guy is 24, 25, or 26 if he is 7 years older than you.
Even at age 26, it would have been hard to complete four years of college and four years of medical school. And be halfway through any kind of residency. Doesn’t take a genius to do that arithmetic.
In the spring, Calicash posted that she was 17 and was having difficulty finding a job. So…really, the oldest she could be now is 18.
Okay lots of stuff! Thanks! @HRSMom I think that I’m going to follow your advice and take things really slowly, I mean I have only been talking to him for a month and if he starts pressuring me into moving a lot faster than I’m comfortable with, then that will be my sign to end it. Just from my time here, it just seems like male college freshmen are just so childish. They’re really smart and can have conversations around academic subjects, but outside of that, they are generally immature. All they care about is sex and drinking in their free time and what by talking to this guy, I’m just able to have actually meaningful conversations and just do regular activities that don’t require binge drinking to enjoy.
One thing I will say is, I 100% see what some of you mean when it comes to dating taking away from the freshman experience. I’ve already been sexiled by my roommate for a weekend and she doesn’t hang out with me or any of her girlfriends anymore to be with this guy she just met. And to make matters worse, we live on the same floor as him! I guess it would make matters worst socially if I leave campus every few nights or weekend to see him. Thank you all for the advice. And like I said, don’t worry about the specifics of the numbers. It’s a tentative 7 years.
@austinmshauri Nooo when I said “consensual” I wasn’t referring to sex. (And even if I was, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for a college student to have a frivolous hook up within a day or two of meeting someone lol) Sorry if I wasn’t clear when saying that. What that means is that as long as I don’t feel pressured into being with him whether it is just hanging out, or talking, or anything, as long as I’m totally comfortable (and of age), he saw nothing wrong.
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CaliCash: Assuming you intend to eventually decide on a permanent partner and settle down, It can make a lot of sense to date many different sorts of men before then. It isn’t necessary, though. But you don’t have to be in any hurry.
I decided to clarify my post supporting dating older men When I thought about it, this was the cultural norm in my social circle in the 70s, first in high school and then at a southern state flagship. At least one of my sorority sisters was having an affair with an elected official she met while a summer intern. Several girls dated the local young bachelor doctors or lawyers when they went home on breaks. Two girls in my pledge class got engaged and dropped out of college after freshman year. One married someone just finished at a service academy and the other married a high school coach who later became really big in local real estate development. A girl at the sorority house next door married her history professor the summer between her sophomore and junior years and that was a revelation to me since that was a previously untapped dating pool. It hadn’t even occurred to me those guys were available.
The goal was to get married and married well, asap. The good candidates were older. It reminds me of an Austen novel. I remember sitting on the sofa in the sorority commons room and a tearful girl saying “I’m a senior and not engaged. I have no idea what to do.” She went to med school and is a doctor. I deliberately married late. I was 23. That left one girl in our group unmarried (in a PhD engineering program). She was dating two men and when I told her I was engaged, she told me she was going to just make up her mind which one because it was time. It was really a different world than the one in which you are living.
good luck to you
My dh is 8 years older but I met him when I was out of college and working. When I was 18, a guy 7 years my senior would not have even been a blip on my radar, but that’s just me. I was just totally into the college scene.
@alh thank you for sharing that part of your life 
I guess I was in school a bit later than @alh, or we ran in different circles, or both. I tried pledging a sorority in 1975, but it didn’t work out from my point of view and theirs, so I dropped. I did date a grad student and got to know most of his classmate. We lived in the same upperclass dorm, so we knew a lot of the same people that lived in our dorm as well. None of the kids I knew got married in or just out of college, but a whole slew of them got married as they finished law school. I married a bit later than some of them (4 years after getting my law degree), but my H is older–he and I were on the same club volleyball team. We only met and started dating when we were both working at our respective careers, after we were both done with all our formal schooling.
Of my sibs, I was the only one who married someone considerably older than I am. All of my other sibs married someone within a year or two of their age. Of my close friends, most are about the same age as their spouses as well.
One of my friends is a RN who married a MD who is about 30 years her senior. It worked well for the first few decades but he “suddenly aged,” as he reached his 70s or so and she became his caregiver in addition to being his wife.
I did not marry someone older, but I had to wait, what seemed like an eternity, for the boys my age to grow up enough to be interesting. CaliCash: They will eventually get beyond the childishness. And it won’t take many years. It only seems like forever when you are 17 or 18 or 20. You will have many choices.
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I agree that it can be isolating if you’re more into dating than “finding your tribe” in the first term/year and then the relationship fizzles.
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This is very true. This is the time when frosh are establishing their “groups” and if you and this guy break up, you may find yourself on the outside.
From another thread:
Be cautious - look out for yourself.
Wow, “The GIft of Fear,” is an awesome book. Just previewed the free parts of it on Amazon. My D is amazing at assessing people and situations. I am glad she is. Her brother is pretty oblivious about people but can size up situations.
Here’s the 1st chapter of that book, “Gift of Fear”:
Looking back through some texts, I realized that I significantly underestimated the amount of time he has left in his residency lol. Sorry bout that.
My husband is 5 years older than me, we met in college, started dating part way through my sophomore year and we married the following summer. We were both going through serious family problems, we were in love, on our own, and pooling our resources helped us to survive a rough time. It has worked out, we’ve been married for 35 years, but I did give up the traditional college experience, ended up spending time with other married nontraditional students because I no longer fit in with my age mates.
I am glad that our daughter has a different experience available ahead of her. She is very mature and if and when she ever dates (hasn’t ever yet) it is likely that she will hook up with someone older than her. She has always enjoyed people older than herself. I hope, however that she holds off on a serious relationship for a while longer, and keeps her focus on being friends with a variety of people, male and female for now, and allowing relationships to unfold and deepen before jumping in. Right now you are young, inexperienced, and very vulnerable to being taken advantage of. Focus on your education first, and all the friend stuff second.
When D was in HS, she told her GFs that they all had their rest of their lives for dating and lovelorn drama, couldn’t they enjoy their good friendships with one another for HS? They all took that to heart and have remained friends for over a decade now. There is something solid about good friendships that will guide you in having good friedships with men as well. I suspect D will end up partnering with someone who has a mature outlook, regardless of his chronological age, as she has always shown insight far beyond her years, even when she was a toddler.
When there is a big imbalance in power in a relationship, the person who is younger and less experienced tends to be very vulnerable and more likely to get badly hurt.
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Looking back through some texts, I realized that I significantly underestimated the amount of time he has left in his residency lol. Sorry bout that.
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that makes sense. If he’s about 7 years older than you, then likely at best he’s at the beginning of his residency.
Either way, residencies are very time demanding…often require 70-80 hour work weeks. Are you able to spend much time together or is the relationship mostly done thru text, snapchat, etc?
My dad was almost 10 years older than my mom, but they met when my mom was 25, so while that was a “big gap,” it wasn’t too crazy because they were both working their careers.
However, even though mom was 25, in hindsight, she would say that my dad still had a bit of an attitude that he was older, knew more about stuff, and felt that he should make many of the decisions. That may have been part of their era, but also because of the big age gap.
Yes, because H is >10 years older, I sometimes get some attitude from him. I will call him out on it sometimes and remind him that I am running my own nonprofit and have held many other positions of high responsibility and am perfectly fine with calling the shots as I see them. We met when I was 27 or so, so we were both well launched in our careers.