Age Difference?

[Toasty]

[Deleted]

[AutumnDae]

It's quite a big age gap, being teenagers....and you being the younger. Usually the girl is younger, but oh well.

If you two feel comfortable with her, and she's alright with it, and your mom is too, then I see no problem!

[Maverick]

Some people may say 3 years is ok and some may say its not. Don't worry about what people may think or recommend. Go into the relationship and see what happens. If it isn't meant to work out it will end.

[byee]

This q comes up frequently, and it's a hard one to offer a pat answer for.

I think it depends on a number of factors. First, 3 years when you're 13 and she's 16 is a pretty big diff. Not so much b/c of the things that you can see, but more importantly, the things you cannot: Emotional maturity, needs, experience, a sense if who you are and what you need, these are all very different at 13 than 16, not so much at, say 30 and 33. So, there's the potential for difficulty based on those rather significant differences, which result from puberty and the differeing rates of brain development, it's a biologically based difference, like height.

Then there's the reason's why you'd be attracted to someone that much developmentally different than yourself. Typically, people feel most comfortable with those closer to their own age at puberty, b/c they just think, act, and feel the same (because of the brain development thing). Dating someone who's in a different stage often indicates a discomfort with your peers, or perhaps more precisely, a need not being met. Older girls are often seen as 'nurturing' or 'more mature', things that are important in a relationship, but from someone in your peer group, not necessarily someone with more life experience.

It's best to consider what your needs are, and perhaps as importantly, what your expectations are (as well as hers). When you enter into something out of need (rather than want), there's usually more emotional intensity involved, and therefore the risk for devastation is much greater should things (inevitably) not work out.