[umaeypvw] May December

What goes wrong more frequently or more harmfully during or at the end of a romantic relationship of disparate ages, versus one of similar ages?  We assume an older man and younger woman for ease of presentation and to explore the common stereotype.

Here are some possibilities, albeit not relying on real-world research on whether or how much these scenarios occur, but instead mostly enumerating common cultural assumptions.

1. The obvious thing that could go wrong even in the best case scenario is, they stay together, have kids, but the older man dies or gets infirm because of old age, so becomes unable to support the family in child care.
2. Similar is, even without considering child care, after death you are left with a middle-aged woman who will have to support herself by herself for a long time because middle-aged widows stereotypically rarely find new husbands.
3. In light of #1 and #2, time spent by a young women in a relationship with an older man is very precious time wasted, because that time and effort should have been spent on finding a partner of similar age with whom the problems of #1 and #2 are less likely to occur.
4. The problem of #3 is exacerbated because a relationship of disparate ages will go on longer than it "should", because the older man will likely have more skill (acquired through previous practice) than a younger man in maintaining a relationship, and more resources (acquired through life) to spend on maintaining the relationship.
5. The skills mentioned in #4 could be skills that are genuinely good, most notably relationship communication skills which take a lot of time, effort, and practice (often from past failures) to develop, or they could be skills of deception and manipulation, skills also honed through practice.  The latter encapsulates the common stereotype of older men preying on younger women through deception and manipulation, then keeping them trapped in a relationship with those skills.  "Grooming" is one such manipulation.
6. There is a power difference that results in abuse by the Power Corrupts mechanism.  Sometimes the power difference is explicit: the couple met while within some external power structure (e.g., employment, education) and still occupy unequal levels within it.
7. Another source of power difference is the unequal resources mentioned in #4; this turns into power because the man has more resources that he can threaten to withhold from the relationship.
8. Over life, the older man may have accumulated power in the form of social standing and connections which stymies reporting or preventing his abusive behavior.  We will elaborate on this in a future post.
9. The peers and support structures around the woman may disapprove of the relationship, so abandon her.  This exacerbates the problems of #5 (becoming trapped in a relationship) and magnifies the harm she suffers when the relationship ends.
10. A variation of #9 is that the support structure is already gone for unrelated reasons before the relationship begins.  With no support structure, any relationship, disparate ages or not, may go or end poorly, so initially seems irrelevant to this list, which seeks only to enumerate things special to disparate-age relationships.  However, lacking a support structure, a woman may purposely seek an older man with more resources to replace the missing support.  This results in older men being disproportionately represented when this kind of situation (a relationship absent a support structure) goes or ends poorly.
11. A relationship with an older man may proceed more quickly and frequently to physical sexual activity because of the older man's greater previous sexual experience.  Even if entirely consensual, this causes harm if woman belongs to the stereotypical society which values (as "purity") sexual inexperience (especially virginity) in women, or similarly, if the woman defines her own self-worth in terms of purity and sexual inexperience.

#9 and #10 are interesting because a third party is involved in the harm.  They doesn't get mentioned much, perhaps because the third party (the former support structure) doesn't want to accept blame for being a party to the harm.  However, support structures are critically important in any discussion of psychological harm because people often survive extremely painful and difficult experiences without traumatic consequences when they have the right support structure around them.  We hypothesize it is the determining factor for whether a negative experience results in long-term psychological trauma.

We have not elaborated on what the support structure is nor how and when it decreases harm.  Leave it undefined for now, though on the surface, it seems kind of obvious.

In #11, a third party, namely the rest of society, is also involved in causing the harm.

In #9, exactly what is the mechanism that starts with a person disapproving this kind of relationship and ends with them abandoning being part of the young woman's support structure?  Equivalently, why do people at other times remain loyal, remaining part of someone's support structure?

We hypothesize one mechanism involving tribal behavior.  Tribe boundaries are invisible in modern society, but people definitely discriminate between One Of Us versus Not One Of Us.  People had joined and remained in the young woman's support structure for a somewhat selfish reason: for power, in particular, for the power of influencing the woman's romantic relationships toward the direction that most benefits the tribe.  Against a young man as suitor, the support structure can successfully use standard anti-personnel tactics to drive him away if they should disapprove of him, because the young man lacks the resources to defend against the attack.  However, an older man with resources can defend, but in so doing demonstrates that the support structure no longer has power over the young woman's romantic relationships.  This being demonstrated, they no longer have incentive to remain in her support structure, so abandon her.

Another mechanism by which a support structure may abandon the woman is the man manipulates (#5) the woman to behave in such a way that the support structure abandons her, e.g., poisoning her to her friends, or convincing her to abandon them, to isolate her and thereby gain more power over her.  This kind of behavior can happen in any relationship, disparate ages or not, but older men may be more skilled at it because of experience.  Also the promise of greater resources he could expend on the relationship might be effective in convincing her to abandon her support structure.

Yet another hypothesis of why a support structure might abandon a woman is #11.  The support structure only cares if the woman retains high social value (protect the valuable); her promiscuity lowers her value in their eyes, so they abandon her.

The mechanisms above can cause a feedback effect with #10.  #9 causes some of the support structure to leave, leading to behavior #10, which causes more of the support structure to leave, leading to more behavior #10.

#3 and #4 require cost-benefit analysis, especially if the woman is consciously not planning for this to be a long-term relationship.  The cost is time and maybe trauma at the end of the relationship; the benefits may include practice at romantic relationships and using the resources of the older man to further herself during the relationship ("sugar daddy").  Are young women systematically doing this analysis wrong?  Perhaps yes, due to deception and manipulation (#5).

The young woman could practice romantic relationships with men of any age, but she may deliberately select an older man as a better practice partner, because the older partner may be more prepared and resilient, from experience, for the mistakes the less experienced younger partner will make in the practice relationship.  This is part of the cost-benefit calculation.

Previous musing on power differences of #6 and #7, speculating that the power difference might not be as great as it seems at first glance.  The young woman can withhold sex, which has a very powerful effect on the man especially in this kind of relationship, because that was the only reason he was interested in her.  Of course, he could rape her (a stereotypical form of abuse in disparate-age relationships), but that is a very different experience, usually much less pleasant for the rapist (and of course less pleasant for the survivor), than having sex with someone who actually wants to have sex with you.

Every one of the items listed above has potential for harm, but harm doesn't occur every time.  Why is it only sometimes?  Which cases go which way?

* * *

Self-qi generically affects relationships in many ways:

1. Those with low self-qi are more likely to engage in deceptive and manipulative behavior.
2. A member of a support structure with high self-qi is more likely to be or remain supportive, not abandoning.
3. The presence of a support structure around you increases your self-qi.

However, none of these issues seem correlated with age nor are more relevant in disparate-age relationships.