I (20M) sometimes get a lot of hate from guys my age when I tell them I go for older women. It got so annoying recently that I left a group chat that I was in because they would make dumb comments about how “I harass single moms”. To me it came off as them being insecure so it didn’t bother me personally but I left because it was just annoying. That got me thinking about the huge stigma surrounding younger men dating older women.

I’ve mentioned it before but I grew up hardcore evangelical so women who were younger always got pushed to marry while women who were older and single got looked down on. For some reason though I couldn’t click with girls my age. My older brother was the complete opposite and apparently even kissed a girl when he was in preschool lol.

Once I got closer to my teens, there was a woman around her mid 30’s that became a member of my home church and I had the biggest crush on her. Literally everything about her was perfect, from her curves, to her smile, the way she dressed (I still get butterflies thinking about her).

I’ve also mentioned this before but by the time I hit my teens my folks started their own church somewhere else (which has gone terrible for them) and she ended tying the knot with someone else. If she was single and I would’ve pursued her after I turned 18, they would’ve flipped out along with the rest of the church.

The irony is they had no issue with a well known pastor’s daughter marrying the church’s youth pastor when she was 18 and he was in his late 20’s to early 30’s. So there’s definitely a stigma in my experience and it’s really a hypocritical perspective for society to hold imo.