Our Future: The Phenomena of Older/Younger Attraction and Relationships

For the last year I've been in a relationship with a man about three decades my senior. Given that I'm still relatively young, it's also the first serious relationship I've been in. To many, that fact alone would be enough to write off my relationship. Either I'm an impressionable boy with the emotional perspective of a child that's being taken advantage of, or I'm assumed to be using my youth to woo a creepy old man into throwing his money at me. Two assumptions that anyone who actually knows the two of us would likely find absurd and hilarious, as if we're each the butt of a joke that decided to grow legs and form a relationship.

While those are likely the two easiest and most accusatory assumptions one could make, there's a whole slew of others that I'm sure friends, family, and acquaintances have quietly thrown at my feet even if they won't acknowledge it. That there's too vast a gap in experience and maturity for such a relationship to ever work; that I'm acting out upon a lack of parental attention (or some other tried trope regarding repressed emotions); that our relationship is based out of some implicitly kinky power dynamic. I don't blame people for coming to those conclusions, but every time I'm reminded that people do, I can't help but laugh at how severely limited one's thoughts on love and companionship has to be to come to such perspective. To be honest, there's more communication and respect between my partner and I than there is within most of the relationships I've witnessed my friends go through.

I've always exclusively been attracted to older men -- it's something that's just as much part of my sexuality as being attracted to men is. It's not something I can explain logically or rationalize, but for years growing up it was something that I couldn't wrap my head around. I was fine with being attracted to men as a baseline; the type of men that I was attracted to was something it took time to accept. I felt just as isolated from my gay peers as my straight peers. I think, in that sense, I carried the anxiety and internalized homophobia that comes with being in the closet long after I came out.

But more than anything what I find interesting, and really what lead me down the path to accepting my sexuality, is realizing that I'm hardly alone in this predicament. Anyone who's ventured into the depths of LGBT subreddits may have at some point or another happened upon the community r/gayyoungold. A relatively small community, seeing that its current readership sits at around 6000, but given how niche the subject matter might seem to be on the surface, it's bigger than many would likely expect. People will come looking for advice or post about their relationships, most of which have age gaps ranging between a decade and five. You can read firsthand accounts of relationships ranging the full spectrum, from people who have been married and committed for years to sexual misadventures to curious first timers. I've read dozens of posts from young men who are just as confused and isolated by their sexuality as I was, only for them to find a sense of clarity through that community.

While that might be the most explicit example, the further I've ventured into gay culture the more common I've realized older/younger pairings tend to be, especially when considered in comparison to our heterosexual counterparts. And, if anything, these sorts of relationships have only gained traction in the last few years. The concept of the gay "daddy" is certainly something that's risen to prominence primarily in the 2010s, with a handful of hookup apps and gay dating sites now explicitly catering to the demographic of young gay men seeking out older men.

Why exactly that's the case is something that I can't definitively say, however. As I said, it's something that I've never been able to really fully explain myself. In part, I think it's undeniable that being gay as a baseline forces people to expand their understanding of sexuality and love, about what it is and isn't considered "acceptable" when it comes to relationships. It allows parts of one's sexuality to expand beyond what might normally be societally accepted as attractive. But regardless, I think it's undeniable that older younger attraction and relationships are a very real phenomenon within the gay community, a phenomenon that's worth stopping to think about.

Really, all I want is to be respected and allowed to be with the men I fall for, something that I would imagine most young gay men in my same position would hope for. While intergenerational relationships certainly can lend themselves to their own share of problems, they shouldn't be treated as any less valid for that fact alone. We all have our own experiences, our own hardships, our own stories -- something that shouldn't be denied just because our experience with sexuality lies outside the norm.

Kyle Mangione-Smith is a filmmaker and student living in Boston.