Age Gap: High School Dating (Older girl/Younger Boy)

[sadiesluvsyu]

I just turned 16 on September 9th and I'm a junior (supposed to be sophmore) that normally likes college guys. But, recently my perspective completely flipped, when I got to know this French freshman who is 14 (but DOES NOT LOOK OR ACT LIKE IT AT ALL). I acttually thought he was a new junior at our school! Even then I don't normally date high school guys in GENERAL. But, with this guy I guess it's different; anyways, a couple weeks ago at homecoming, I came late because of dance.. But I asked if he wanted to take pics with me, and he immediately started dragging me everywhere -showing interest. Then I asked him to dance and (our homecoming was casual with the "Grease" themed so I wore shorts and a tube top), I danced like my "orginal party/freaky girl style" . Last year I went to formal with a freshman that is also on dance team but he knew that I was dancing like that to be funny and just laughed it off shyly... However, THIS YEAR that DID NOT happen, he actually started following along by touching me and kept trying to get near & grind on me, when my friends danced with me (maybe it's a French thing?). It was kind of adorable . I know I shouldn't say this, but I felt like i was raping him or either kind of wrong because he was younger ... Anyways, we were friends before but were even closer now since we somehow had "Falcon Fest"/Challenge Day at Torrey pines high school today. He's very intelligent which is kind of a turn on .... plus he hangs out with my age group. A lot of my friends think that he is cute too and had were shocked that he was younger. I feel sometimes that WE DO have some type of sensual relationship since hoco (like when we hug eachother), but I don't want to ruin his innocence*** (I know right.... what innocence? ) I would like to hang out more & go to more parties... maybe Formal? Prom? with him but dahh ... what do you think? Somehow, I attract guys that are a year or two younger than me and others that are three to six years older than me... HELP!!!

[Sam W]

Hi Sadiesluvsyu,

It's actually not all that odd to attract, or be interested in guys who are both older and younger than you. In fact, in some ways, a 14 year old may be a better person to date than a 19 year old (especially since it's not an adult dating a teen, and has less of a possibility for the the predatory older dude phenomenon). So, if this younger guy seems into you, and you're interested in him, there's no harm in asking him out.

And, just as an anecdote, I was once a 16 year old who dated a 14 year old (he was 15 by the time we started dating), and there was some weirdness from other people. I often wonder if the genders had been reversed if there would have been as many weird comments.