Thanks Dissy! Wait, is it alright if I call you that? :)

Of course. I don't think calling me Dissy is dissing me in any way.

We've crossed paths on here before. I was wondering what had happened to ya. Glad to see you're back. I tend to come and go too but I haven't been as busy lately so I'm online more these days.

Good to see you here again, then :-)

Thank you for the insights you offered also. One thing I've noticed is that some younger people are very willful and demanding. They would be akin to the alpha personality in a relationship with an adult that did not have direct and authoritative power over them. Hell, they often exercise such willfulness over parents and other adult guardians who do. The point is, age is not a specific determinant of which of two given parties will be the dominant personality, or in regards to estimating related factors such as strength of will, specific level of neediness, etc.

It's also certainly true, as you noted, that younger people typically have a more furtive attitude towards relationships, and this leaves more potential for the adult partner to suffer an emotional loss than the younger person, who are more apt to move on. One of the strangest and most bogus but persistent social myths I've often seen used against the pro-choice stance is the very non-empirical belief that if a younger person falls in love with an older person, it will invariably be forever, with the expectation that the adult will be with them for life. Younger people don't even typically do this in relationships with peers very often! The expectation that they will for some reason breach this common social protocol with adult partners, and inevitably form an ever-lasting romantic monoamorous bond with an adult they fall in love with, and then become emotionally devastated when they eventually age out of the adult's preferred AoA (age of attraction), only to then be "dumped" by the adult (always unceremoniously and capriciously, in the eyes of the strange anti narrative) is one of the many non-nonsensical beliefs used to rationalize the complete prohibition of intergenerational relationships. Specifically, this strange claim that younger people tend to emotionally bond for life with adult partners they take a fancy to when it's commonly observed that they rarely do this with peers is intended to foster the belief that the younger person takes the greater emotional risk in a romantic relationship with an older person.

To quote my British friends again: This is pure bollicks! In fact, due to the fleeting nature of typical youth romantic attention, adults who formed relationships with them may actually be incurring both a huge emotional risk themselves and harboring unrealistic expectations if they hope for a permanent monoamorous pairing. Because of this, it's been suggested here before that ideally MAPs should consider being polyamorous in a hypothetical future that allows intergenerational relationships. Those that would disparage such an approach are, of course, those who adhere fully to the current societal narrative that the only legitimate romantic relationships are those that are life-long monoamorous pairings. This sort of arrangement works for many adults, but it does not work for many others, who tend to have a natural inclination towards polyamory. This is natural, and has nothing to do with psychological "commitment issues" any more than a homosexual man suffers from "issues with women" that can or need to be corrected by therapy.

The fact that monoamory/monogamy is pushed so strongly on all of society as the only acceptable norm when it comes to romantic liaisons is, I believe, one of the major factors behind the high divorce rates. Clearly, it's not a realistic expectation to either place upon youths, or to insist they are naturally inclined towards monoamorous bonds with an adult they fall in love with when they don't often do this with peers. There will, of course, be youths who do benefit from life-long monoamorous pairings, and they should always be given a choice rather than forced or expected to adhere to any specific type of romantic lifestyle, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a natural "norm" for them. They only seem to aspire to forming monoamorous bonds because everyone in our culture is heavily criticized if they do not.