When I was 22, I started meeting with a lawyer in his 30s, with whom I had nothing in common. My age was a lot of buying – initially as a way to put me and my “maturity” against “other girls my age”, then eventually to belittle me for being a “kid”.
And it seems that many other women who have entered into a relationship in early adulthood with someone considerably older than them can relate.
Over the weekend, Taylor Swift’s All Too Well was re-released in a 10-minute version, with extra lyrics and an accompanying 14-minute short film, telling the story of an age gap relationship.
It was a major conjecture that the song was inspired by the star’s former relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, who was nine years her senior when they dated more than 10 years ago. Swift has not confirmed whether the story and film are based on personal experience, or entirely fictional. However, the music video with actors Dylan O’Brien, 30, and Sadie Sink, 19, spoke to many people.
Throughout the video, directed by Swift herself, we see a heated argument between the fictional couple in which O’Brien’s character downplays Sink’s character and manipulates her feelings. For many viewers watching, the relationship speaks to the unequal power dynamics that are sometimes found in relationships with a significant age gap.
While some of these relationships can and do work, especially in later adulthood, a difference in age can be particularly difficult – or perhaps problematic – when one person is in a different stage of life to another.
Since the release of the video, many girls and women share the hardships they have encountered, as seen in the All Too Well video.
PHOTOGRAPHY INC. by Getty Images
Like Sink’s character, who has to deal with his partner’s tantrums, I also watched my former partner throw car keys at me, tell me I was blowing things out of proportion, and gasping at me about how things were. I wish I had seen the signs earlier and questioned why a man in his 30s was courting some decade younger, and why he wasn’t interested in women his own age.
This is something 20-year-old Sara * can relate to. When she was 18, she met a 36-year-old lawyer at a party.
“He was very charming,” says Sarah, from London. “It must have been a random thing, but one thing leads to another and we were ultimately much more serious than we thought.
“I think the biggest red flag was that all of his exes were much younger than him. And it looked like he was getting old, but the ex was between 18-22 years old.”
It soon became apparent that Sarah and this man were in different stages of their lives. “I was still at university halls trying to calm down with ramen for dinner and he was this really great lawyer who had his own 4-bedroom house and expensive cars,” she says.
Sara realizes the unequal base on them was now, but at the time, she could only honor him. Later, the cracks in their age gaps began to show and they broke up recently, just shy of their two-year anniversary.
“You unknowingly idealize them in your head, so much so and you feel like you’re demanding their validation every step of the way,” she says.
“The thing I clearly remember is how he made me cry and put me in some of the darkest moments of my life and then immediately would have a way of pretending it was my fault.”
Sara said friends expressed concerns about gas lighting in the relationship, but for a long time she did not recognize these behaviors.
“He also had a way of pretending it was that he was smarter than me in every aspect and made sure to show it every step of the way,” she says. “As they say when you look at red flags through pink glasses, they just look like flags.”
Sara was of legal age (as was Swift in All Too Well’s story – “It’s supposed to be fun to become twenty-one”), but other women considered relationships they had with older partners when they were minors.
Heather *, a 23-year-old neuroscientist from Texas, began seeing a man in his early 20s when she was 15.
“I remember before we started dating, I googled laws on age of consent (which was 16 in our state) because I was afraid I would have him in trouble,” she says. “Looking back at it now, if you have to google age of consent, you’re probably just going to leave.”
When the couple started dating, she says he started cutting her off from friends, and they ended up just socializing with him and his friends.
“The scene in the movie All Too Well, where they fight after dinner, brought back a flood of memories,” she says. “When he and I were with his friends, he would hardly admit me, and he used those same gas-lit arguments. Every time we disagreed or I mentioned how he treats me, he would call me immature. ”
In hindsight, Heather describes this man’s behavior as “extremely verbally violent” and says he often focused on her age as a way to belittle her. “Also because of our age difference, he was a bit obsessed with my virginity,” she says. “That in itself should be a huge red flag, but I was only 15 years old and still didn’t have a serious relationship.”
After their breakup, Heather says it took years of therapy for her to feel ready for a “normal” relationship.
“I think in our culture men meeting younger women are too normalized, and so a lot of people have seen nothing wrong with our relationship,” she says. “I am now in a very healthy long-term relationship, but from time to time I will find another behavior or something I do in this relationship that I have developed to protect myself from people like [him]. ”
Victoria Guerrero, 22, also from Texas, had a similar experience, although she did not share a huge age difference. When she was 19, she spotted a man who was five years older.
“We met at the university we both attended,” she explains. “Although it was a small age gap, I was 19 when the relationship started, which made a huge difference. It was the first serious relationship I had with anyone I met during college.
“Age played a huge role in our relationship because I was constantly hyperconscious about how less experienced in life I was than he was, and he also reminded me at every step of the relationship that he was much more mature and responsible than I was.”
Guerrero was the same age as her boyfriend’s little sister, but she says she felt “in love” with the idea that an older man might be interested in her.
“Looking back now, I don’t know why I didn’t question that he wasn’t interested in people his own age,” she says. “I still feel pain, sadness and regret when I look back on it, but I’m also glad it’s behind me and I know a lot more now than I did at 19.”
Therefore, Guerrero was particularly moved by the All Too Well video.
“I think that’s why the release of the 10-minute version of All Too Well is so special to me because she was in a very raw and heartbroken state when she first released the original version and now she sings it out of an empowered state of knowledge. that she grew out of it, even though she shouldn’t have had that experience at first, which is something I’m really related to. ”
* Some names have been changed and family names omitted to provide anonymity.
.