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> I am disturbed and concerned by the general trend that the world seems to think all heterosexual relationships are inherently abusive or something. We hear a great deal about the bad, the things gone wrong, the dark side and sometimes it seems like there are no good examples out there, no discourse on "This is what a good relationship look like."

Well said. There seems to be some larger theme going on, not just about relationships but also about society in general - we do spend a huge amount of energy shining light on the darkness, and that is certainly valuable, but very little time imagining how things -should- be - a much harder task.

I'm also disturbed by the idea that all of society, all accomplishment, achievement, and maybe even all relationships are the result of power dynamics. It's a simple and juicy, easy to digest, view of the world. The real "Charles" sounds like a thoughtful and troubled person. Society at large is similar - as the author writes "alone with [the] memories of what really happened".

Is it possible the "steps towards something positive" is more conversations about sadness - or least, about ambiguity? "We are all unreliable narrators". Excellent essay.

> maybe even all relationships are the result of power dynamics.

Male here.

I think OP is referring to "romantic" relationships; I don't think it's true that they necessarily result from power dynamics. But I do think that all relationships, including friendships, work relations, and family relationships, have power dynamics swirling around them. I dispute that relationships are generally, or always, "the result" of power dynamics. I have a tendency to pedantry, so I may be in full agreement with OP.

That relationships involve power dynamics is unavoidable, I think. One of the ways we learn about the person we are relating with, is to push here, poke there, and observe the response. At the same time, we learn more about ourselves.

But attempts at domination are pathological, especially in romantic situations, and I think unusual.

I haven't read the short story, just the linked Slate article, and this one from the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/09/the-cat-person...

There is super odd jump from "we find this big age gap relationship to be red flag" to "all heterosexual relationships".

The girls did not even implied abusiveness in the story. Nor that they would be fine if it was lesbian relationship.

> I'm also disturbed by the idea that all of society, all accomplishment, achievement, and maybe even all relationships are the result of power dynamics.

You can thank the dominance of Foucault in the academy for that.

> I'm also disturbed by the idea that all of society, all accomplishment, achievement, and maybe even all relationships are the result of power dynamics

While I think I agree with the thrust of your post, this "idea" sounds right to me. It has a similar feel to statements like "all humans are biased" or "you are a product of your culture"—a commonality which underlies life. Acknowledging these forces makes it easier to discover the ideal relationship/life/etc.

> I made plans to rent an apartment with some girls from my econ class the following year, but they told me they’d changed their minds when they found out about my older boyfriend.

It's definitely no problem to me that people do not want to flat-share with a couple where one partner is 33 y/o and the other in, or shortly after, their "senior year of high school", which if a web search is to be believed usually means 17 year old turning 18. I'm not talking about the law re:that relationship which depending on the jurisdiction might be 100% legal, but these housemates are absolutely in their right to not want to have anything to do with that. Personally, if i was a 18-19 year old looking for a flat to share, I probably also would like to avoid regularly meeting the type of 30-year old that dates a teen, despite the fact that in the author's specific case it was apparently fine and also still fine on retrospect.

Because old people are generally gross?

As 42 year old your comment sounds to me like the one that people not wanting to rent a flat with someone that has a black partner is perfectly fine because they might not want to meet that kind of people.

Some older men are interested in younger women. And some younger women are interested in older man. Assuming that this automatically means they have character flaws worthy of ostracism is very prejudicial.

> Because old people are generally gross?

No, because a relationship between a teenager and someone in their 30s is seen as 'more likely than not to be exploitative'.

I've only known two people who fit that bill, and as a third-party observer, both of them seemed incredibly sleazy and manipulative. I'm sure that there are exceptions, but most people would correctly see that kind of age gap as a huge red flag.

I'd like to see some research to back that claim that over 50% relationships with significant age gap are exploitative.

Unless by more likely that not you mean a bit more likely than average relationship between a doctor and a waitress.

EDIT:

I'm sorry. While rephrasing the claim I changed its meaning. Please disregard my comment.

I think it’s simpler than that: wide age gaps in relationships are rare and thus call attention to themselves. That a culturally significant body of fiction exists to cast negative attention on them (Lolita, American Beauty e.g.) just amplifies the American sense that “this is unusual”. Prejudicial perhaps. But most people choosing where to live and with whom will optimise for familiarity and security. No one is saying we should ban age gaps. Only that they present perceived additional risk once imported from “society in general” to “my living space”.

The usual guidance to “mind your own business” doesn’t really work here because who I live with and where is entirely my business.

Yeah but you could apply the same exclusions to black people and be rightfully named racist for that.

I don’t disagree. However, the principal objection to racism is not discrimination, but rather that on the basis of immutable characteristics. No one chooses their biological skin colour. So we reject discrimination on that basis.

Age gaps are not an immutable characteristic. Nor are they culturally common in the USA. So they are fair game for discrimination just like any other exercise of free association.

I'm not quite convinced. Acting out on your non-heterosexual orientation or dressing up as opposite biological sex is also not immutable. You may act straight, and dress accordingly to your biological sex. Dressing as opposite sex is even similarly as rare as gender gaps.

And yet discrimination against people that display those voluntary behaviors would also be strongly frowned upon.

I don't think it's due to some innate nature of gender gaps. It's pure prejudice. "We don't like people like that because we believe people like that are less moral than us."

Maybe the time will come where ageism will raise to the same status as transphobia, but currently as you notice it's far from it.

because a relationship between a teenager and someone in their 30s is seen as 'more likely than not to be exploitative'.

I'd like to see some research to back that claim that over 50% relationships with significant age gap are exploitative.

These two statements are not identical.

So what exactly more likely than not means? I'm not native English speaker.

Or are you referring to the difference "significant age gap" vs "30 year old and teenager"?

If so I conceed. Those kinds of relationships are so incredibly rare among all relationships that I have no idea about the statistics there.

That's not the important difference in those statements. The difference is "someone in their 30s dating a teenager" versus "a big age gap generally."

> I'd like to see some research to back that claim that over 50% relationships with significant age gap are exploitative.

I'm not claiming that, I'm claiming that it's a common belief about them.

Why is it exploitative for a 33yo male to date an 18yo female? Are they not both adults? And who is doing the exploiting?

What about a 70yo male and a 33yo female? Still exploitative?

A 15 year age gap between a 30 year old and a 45 year old is much less than a 15 year gap between an 18 year old and a 33 year old, especially in the western college educated demographic.

flat-share with a couple

That's not what was going on. She was making separate living arrangements from him and had already moved out of her parental home and was living in a dorm and going to college.

Their choice could have helped push her into living with him as the easy answer in the face of prejudice making other choices harder for her. This could have helped make her into a victim instead of someone who once dated an older man and broke up with him and apparently had a better-than-average early relationship according to the description she has given.

> I wish we could take steps towards something more positive.

What I see around me is a lot of social stratification by age.

Get to know some people older and younger than you, and by "get to know" I mean spend a lot of time together. The "youngsters" get to see that it's not all roses and happily ever after, the "oldsters" get to see optimism and alternative points of view.

At a get-together one of the older couples announced they were celebrating their 44th anniversary; one described it as, "24 wonderful years, and 20... of the other kind." The other nodded in agreement. Staying together (A) takes work and (B) is totally worth it (both points from our "mere" 37 years of marriage).

" am disturbed and concerned by the general trend that the world seems to think all heterosexual relationships are inherently abusive or something. We hear a great deal about the bad, the things gone wrong, the dark side and sometimes it seems like there are no good examples out there, no discourse on "This is what a good relationship look like."

Exactly .... Since a majority of the relationships are heterosexual, relatively most problematic relationships are also heterosexual, that would kind of feed into the "all heterosexual relationships are inherently abusive" mindset

I think that this effect is localized in what can be described as "deep blue feminist college educated media women" bubble. That just happens to be uniquely vocal because of the media positions they hold.

In the real world it is more nuanced (and nobody really cares)

On the contrary, vilifying men who don't meet one's arbitrary social standards is a deeply conservative idea as well. The fact "deep blue feminist college-educated media" folks share such notions doesn't mean the other side is any better - if anything, the whole idea of men's rights as something that's inherently worthwhile is still remarkably niche.

A lot of people who “support men's rights” are really just supporting the (sometimes former) status quo (which isn't great for men, either!), and trying to push back against the idea that women should have rights. They should be distinguished from the people actually trying to solve men's issues – but then again, it's not hard to tell the difference.

Agreed, but one can say the exact same thing about support for women's rights. Arguably, the attitude discussed in this subthread could be seen as a case in point.

Now that you mention it, a disturbing amount of activism in general falls into this trap.

Could it not be the fact that you said he was blond, but the way you said it? If it were described as a positive attribute, all those reactions make a little more sense.

Suprised me a bit that hair color of an ex would even come up in conversation.

> Although I absolutely support things like #MeToo -- support the idea that women should not be silenced about the bad things that have actually happened to them -- I am disturbed and concerned by the general trend that the world seems to think all heterosexual relationships are inherently abusive or something. We hear a great deal about the bad, the things gone wrong, the dark side and sometimes it seems like there are no good examples out there, no discourse on "This is what a good relationship look like."

Thanks for writing this. We need more women saying this.

There's a disturbing conversation I've seen numerous times (mostly on Reddit) that progresses something like this:

1. Someone (usually a woman) says, "It's a problem when men do <X harmful behavior>".

2. Someone (usually a man) says, "Not all men do <X harmful behavior>".

3. Someone (usually the original person) says some combination of "That's a derailing argument", "That's such a minor issue compared to the issues women deal with", and/or "We need to deal with the women's issue first".

What people need to realize here, is that this is validating the incel narrative that women just hate men. That is literally saying to men, "Eh, whether or not all men are rapists/abusers/etc. isn't important enough to talk about." There's nuance here, I understand it's not those peoples intention to accuse all men of these things. But by refusing to correct themselves when they make this overly-broad generalization, people who do this are making an accusation against all men, intentional or not. If people are going to put a "All men do X" narrative into the world, some men are going to react with "All women do X". That doesn't mean it's okay for those men to do that--it's men's responsibility to gain a nuanced understanding of the world as well. But we should also recognize that this IS going to be the natural result of making statements about an entire gender.

I'm in my 30s and I'm in some communities that put me in contact with men of a wide variety of ages, including men in their early 20s. It's absolutely heartbreaking to me to see how men who have come into age in recent years feel about themselves and about women. We can't continue to tell young men that they're inherently sexist. We can't continue to be surprised when telling young men that they're inherently sexist results in them giving up on treating women well. No one benefits from this.

And to be clear here, it's not just women (and not all women!) propagating these harmful narratives. This is something all of us can work on. I hope for my part that I've helped the men in my life to come to a healthy view of both themselves and women.

#meetoo was mostly about workplace harassement and then abuse. If you dont want it mix with genaral relationship issues, dont bring that up in that context.

Like, dont bring up #meetoo if you want diascuss non abusive relationship. Dont bring non abusive relationships when someone talks about own abuse.

> harassement and then abuse. If you dont want it mix with genaral relationship issues, dont bring that up in that context.

This entire thread is about a lady who did just that. (After all, at the very least, the short story's anti-hero is being verbally abusive in his last-mentioned text message to the protagonist.)

How is fiction written as fiction #meetoo or actual relationship? It is neither.

And if you mean the other article, that is about good relationship.

The problem I'm discussing here is that a lot of people who are trying to talk about abusive relationships are doing exactly what you're recommending against: bringing up non-abusive relationships. They're just doing it in a subtle (and probably not intentional) way when they make overly-general statements about all men.

And to be clear: I think it's vitally important that women need to be able to speak freely and openly about abuse they've received from men. All I would like is for that to happen without accusing all men of being abusive.

One thing that disturbs me about the sort of conversation you're referencing, as well as the target essay and its referent story, is how much of everything is framed around whether or not a male is good or bad. It's not even so much the assumption that "males are bad" as much as it is that the discourse is structured in such a way that the alternative position is something like "not all males are bad," or "maybe males aren't bad."

I feel often like the public discourse about relationships has really shifted, from one focused on two people and their interactions, to one where it's increasingly about evaluating the male and even more so, the degree of problems they are causing or not. There's little recognition of the role that the woman (or non-male) in the relationship might play in causing relationship difficulties, or for the possibility that a pair of individuals might just be a bad match for each other. It's as if the female is this neutral party, removed from involvement, passively receiving whatever treatment, good or bad, that they receive. I'm not saying that "women sometimes deserve" anything; I'm not saying anything about anyone deserving or not deserving anything. What I'm saying is that increasingly it seems the relationship is evaluated as if its quality is equated with what the male does, and even some judgment about the male as good or bad globally, decontextualized, as a person.

I say all of this not in a form of whataboutism, or to deny the problems that women have faced, and face, in relationships and society. I guess I'm just concerned about the way these public discussions seem to be occurring, and their consequences for cultural norms and assumptions, and for individual experiences in relationships. If the goodness or badness of a relationship is so dependent on whether or not the male is "good" or "bad", where does it take things? Does that implicitly accede power to the male? What about the opportunity for development of a relationship (or self), as something that both people work on? Are we encouraging a new form of male chauvinism?

There's many layers that the linked essay could be approached: the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, the rights to personal experience, and the reputation of the boyfriend (and whether that's even needed if it's fictional). The author is also writing about her experience, and rightfully so. But the real tragedy in my mind is that this is all occurring in the public sphere as if it's some judgment on Charles, who is now dead, did not and cannot have any voice.

The grandparent comment is extremely valuable. However, consider again the framing: "we hear a great deal about the bad, the things gone wrong, the dark side and sometimes it seems like there are no good examples out there, no discourse on 'This is what a good relationship look like.'" Again, is this implicitly referring to "what a good male looks like?" What is a "good relationship?" Is it one where the woman is free from negative experiences? Is it one without difficulties? Do good relationships always seem like good relationships? Might it be the case that sometimes what seems bad might actually be good, or that sometimes good relationships have difficult periods?

I worry that the way relationships are framed in public discussions are becoming seriously distorted, around unrealistic ideas one way or another.

It does not matter what was the hair color of your ex; as most women are looking for men with a future, most men are looking for women without a past and not take serious one with a past. The hair color is just an excuse. The entire evolution of humankind built that into men, it is in the genes, it is what they are.

Societal pressure to vilify relations between older men and young women comes mostly from women. Studies (please google it) show that man of all ages 18 to 60 are looking for women 18 to 24. It has a perfectly clear biologic explanation: health and fertility, key factors for healthy children and the viability of the species. But that puts women, especially over 30, at a huge disadvantage if they don't have already children and husbands, so they punish the young women in these relations for obvious reasons.

Young women are sexually attractive for the reasons you state, and I do think that some older women resent the attention that gets, but there's more to it.

The difference in maturity means it's harder to relate. I personally wouldn't want a young girlfriend, despite finding them sexually attractive, because I could not imagine trying to share my life with them - our interests would be too divergent. I think there's a real risk, when one party in a relationship is much less mature, the other party may have an unbalanced or unhealthy set of interests - interests that may end up hurting or harming the less mature party.

The first part of your comment is based on what? It sounds more like a theory that you find in certain circles around the web, which are in my opinion mostly toxic.

And the 2nd part also needs a citation especially the villify part. While I am aware of the studies that you are referencing, they usually focus on sexual attraction. But relationships are not only based on sexual attraction.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/head-games/201308/wh...

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/online-d... - see the chart by age

https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/22/men-regardless-age-will-alway...

There are dozens of articles and several studies that confirm strong ageism in men preferences for relations. Few mention that single career women over 35 are the most unhappy people and a quarter are on antidepressants. From here to taking action against the relations of their age group men with younger women is a tiny logical step.

No idea what are the "certain circles around the web", but the overused word "toxic" gives me an idea: it it men in general? I saw the Gillette commercial.

> But relationships are not only based on sexual attraction.

Long time I hadn't that much of a laugh browsing HN.

I can't even imagine being attracted to a woman between 18 and 24 at this stage in my life. How are these studies supposed to jive with that experience?

Me neither until I met a real case: an uncle lost his family in an accident when he was in his forties; he wanted to start over, so he marries a 25 year old woman, they have 2 kids and that was about 25 years ago (the older son is in his twenties, the younger is almost to 20).

Doing that with a woman his age is almost impossible, fertility and children health when the mother is over 30 is declining rapidly.

In any case, that made me think about life a bit different. In the same situation I would do the same.