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Dating Up

My Weird Obsession With Dating Older Guys

By redPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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When I was in high school, I had a serious boyfriend. We were that "perfect couple" that spent every waking moment together. He was my first serious relationship, the first person I had sex with, the first person I went out of town with, the first person I loved. He was just a few months older than me and I honestly thought we were going to last...

~forever~

...but once I moved out of my hometown and went to college, I quickly realized that the world is filled with other boys that, frankly, were way better.

Once I actually started at my university and was living out of home, all independently like a real adult, my life quickly became defined by how fucking young I look. And I'm not talking, oh I look a year or two younger than I really am.

I had waiters at restaurants bringing me children's menus, people asking me in the grocery store, "Where are your parents?" and my all time favorite was when a man saw my nose piercing while he was checking me out at a store and said, "Don't you have to be 18 to get your nose pierced? You look 12."

I got used to these comments pretty quickly, but I would still want to punch everyone that gave me shocked looks I got when I told them I was, in fact, a college student that was 18 years of age.

So a few months into living alone, I realized there were two different types of guys.

  1. The ones that made constant comments about how young I looked.
  2. Or the ones who were in their late 30s and looked at me like I was a 12-year-old snack that they wanted to bite into.

So I embraced it.

The guys that made rude comments like,

"You look like a 12-year-old,"

I would quickly reply with,

"I don't fuck like a 12-year-old."

And the guys that were creepily attracted to my young looks, I decided to date.

It started off pretty innocently, with guys that were maybe 29 or 30 and just looking to have their child-pornography addiction satisfied with someone who was actually legal. It was something I had a lot of fun with. I got to walk down the street, holding hands with someone who could easily be my dad, and when people gave us stares, I would grab their face and kiss them. I got to sit at restaurants and have people wait on me and my super old and mature boyfriend drinking alcohol, while I sat there eating kid's portions of food and drinking ginger ale.

But after a few months, I actually started to really enjoy this lifestyle—being seen with these attractive older guys, bragging to my friends about how my boyfriend was 12 years older than me and could buy us all the alcohol we wanted, sipping on wine while watching movies at their apartments instead of going out to clubs and grinding on each other for four hours because that's what most college students love to do. I tried dating a guy that was 21 last summer, but that quickly ended once I realized how immature he was compared to the other guys that I had dated within the past year.

And now, two years into my college career, I hold a standard of only dating guys at least 6 years older than me. Guys that are graduated from college, have stable jobs, live alone, and aren't interested in going to frat parties or dance clubs on Friday night. Guys that will buy me dinner and not complain about how expensive the meal is. Guys that have a balanced life outside of our relationship and know how to prioritize.

People will question my weird obsession with dating up. My friends will ask,

"Isn't he, like, kind of boring?"

or

"Why doesn't he ever come out with us? Is he antisocial?"

But the truth is, I love how my boyfriends never come out with my friends and I. I love keeping the divide between my mature, older boyfriend with his life put together, and my friends who—no offense, guys—are a total immature mess. Just like me.

dating
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About the Creator

red

young adult anecdotes from my past, present, and hopeful future

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