While we like to think that relationships and desire are separate from something as ugly as power, in almost every relationship that’s just not the case. And should it have to be? We’re attracted to power in its various forms, and what is powerful to different people varies radically. Power is constantly shapeshifting; perhaps it’s how we wield it that speaks to the suitability of a relationship.
There are examples where power dynamics are more clearly exploitative: where teachers groom students, where bosses pressure junior workers, where famous and attractive male celebrities commit horrifying acts in their pursuit of young women. But there are examples where relationships built on imbalanced power differentials do work.
To assume all age gap relationships are always based on a kind of top-down exploitation removes agency. Often, the social discourse assumes that younger women engaging in these relationships are in danger, that they aren’t knowingly exploiting the age-gap dynamic too. Culturally, we think romance should be fair, just, and morally pure, but this isn’t what happens in reality. Many years of blissful marriage aren’t rendered meaningless by complicated beginnings.
Years on, I wonder if I would consent to a relationship with an older man like the one I was in when I was 17, knowing what I know now. Was it possible for me to fully consent to a relationship with someone triple my age? When put like that, it doesn’t sound like it. And yet, I would describe that relationship—and many of the relationships I had with older men—as one of the most respectful and tender relationships of my dating life. I liked our sex, so did he. Occasionally in relationships with other older men, of course, I experienced the unfair exploitation of power, which left me feeling humiliated. I’m sure I also exploited my powers at times in these relationships too. But this mistreatment was not overwhelmingly a feature of my relationships with older men.
Perhaps we’re so fascinated by age-gap in relationships because it’s easy to assume that there will be greater exploitation and power imbalance. But to me it figures that in a society in which we are taught how to acquire and possess before we are taught to love and liberate, there are submerged dynamics of power and exploitation in many relationships, regardless of the age of the participants. In relationships where people are concerned with liberation, freedom, respect, and care, perhaps an age gap doesn’t matter.