The general rule is you can go down to half your age plus seven years.
Where'd you dig that out of, a back issue of Cosmopolitan, right next to the "partner compatibility" quiz? Two grown, consenting adults don't need your approval to hook up, no matter the age difference. Calling it "creepy" is simply arrogant and self-righteous, with a sprinkling of tone-deaf on top.
There's plenty to not like about the other Scott Adams. His choice of partner is not one of them.
Could you please not perpetuate flamewars on HN so we don't have to rate-limit you again? This one was particularly tedious and regrettable, and the swipe in the comment I'm replying to here was particularly provocative.
> Results show that females preferred partners of their own age, regardless of their own age and regardless of the level of relationship involvement. In contrast, males, regardless of their own age, desired mates for short-term mating and for sexual fantasies who were in their reproductive years. However, for long-term mates, males preferred mates who, although younger than them, were sometimes above the age of maximum fertility.
I'm not sure your study is validating that range. I feel like it's doing the opposite. I also remember statistics from dating websites where women always preferred someone their age, while men always preferred someone between 20-25, no matter their age.
It says that guys get off to the idea of young women, but for long term commitments want someone closer to their age as well, even if that person is outside of fertility. That backs up what I'm saying.
There's something odd about an abstract that says "...females preferred..." instead of "...the majority of females preferred...".
By that same standard, humans are heterosexual, monogamous, and date within their own skin color. And apparently, anyone who deviates from that is "creepy".
I don't think it validates what you're saying. You're saying it's creepy, while the study says it's natural if the goal is not a long term commitments. Or is your view that anything that's not a long term commitment is creepy?
B) If you read the study and not just the abstract, it puts the general lowest age for 60yo men at around 45 for purely sexual fantasy partners. A 25yo is wayyyyy outside that bounds.
> it puts the general lowest age for 60yo men at around 45 for purely sexual fantasy partners
I find it really really high and hard to believe. I'm not sure about the methodology employed, but if people can just lie, I wouldn't trust the results of that study.
That's what I'm struggling to understand. Who is being creepy? Who has behaved in a creepy way? Adams or his wife? What does creepy even mean in the context of two adults forming a relationship? Why is it anyone else's business?
(To be clear, I'm no fan of Adams. I dislike his politics and never enjoyed his work particularly. But I find this focus on his marriage weird and, I suppose, creepy in itself).
He’s an extremely wealthy divorcé in his mid 60s. She’s a 33 year old model… which is well past the top end of that career, with two children, who is now the VP of Adams’ WhenHub. I think it’s clear everyone in that relationship knows what they are doing. Doesn’t make it any less the fact that he’s old enough to be her father.
Is this a American cultural quirk I'm not understanding? Who cares that he's old enough to be her father? Why is it interesting or relevant? He married an attractive younger woman. She married a rich older man. It happens every day all over the world. Its not the first marriage for either of them and they both already have children. It says very little about either person involved except that one likes attractive women and the other likes rich men with a sense of humor (if we assume the most cynical motivations).
> Is this a American cultural quirk I'm not understanding?
As an American I would say: yes, it is.
I suspect it has something to do with the rising neoteny of more recent generations coupled with America's persistent puritanical views on sex, but there has been an increasingly bizarre fixation on the age gap of couples. All teenagers have recently be re-defined as children, so much that it's common on places like reddit to view even attraction to say a 17 year old viewed as a form of pedophilia.
For nearly all of human history men over 30 forming relationships with women in their late teens has been normal. This was even not too rare 30 or so years ago in the US. But there has been a rising moral panic about age and sex that leads to comments like the above.
It doesn’t trouble me personally, I stated the facts of the matter and that my interpretation of it is that everyone is getting what they want. Others here have stated it weirds them out and that’s fine too. It’s well known in our society that this kind of age gap can be problematic for some. We have little “rules” about it (https://xkcd.com/314/), which are just societal norms. Scott Adam falls out of this norm and it makes people uncomfortable, as norm-breaking tends to do. One question people might ask is, why don’t you date someone your own age? There are a lot of reasons one could answer, but when one says something like “I don’t talk about where we met. People make judgments”, and they are already breaking norms, then I think it’s fine some people have reservations. Not that those reservations mean anything to anyone, but it’s not an unreasonable feeling to have when confronted with such an unconventional relationship.
