Backstory #3
Apr01
It only gets darker from here, folks. Strap in.
Took a good friend shooting this weekend, and it was her first time. Total natural. We went to Elm Fork and hit the reactive steel bay. She is utterly taken with my .357 Magnum, which she quickly mastered. It’s hot when you hear the CLANG as a steel plate falls over. Unf.
Let’s do more Goth music! Check it out, Hank’s first music video!
Darker? Really? How could this possibly go wrong?
Hey! it’s the theme to House, M.D.! and it has words! Singer reminds me a bit of Elisabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins. I’ve always been fond of 1980s 4AD–Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, (Clan of) Xymox, Dead Can Dance.
Age-split relationships don’t necessarily have to be bad. My SO was 18 and I was 28 when we met and started dating, and we’ve been “together” in some form or another for 18 years now. Then again, I wasn’t into illegal drugs or drinking to excess, and we’ve had some references to Alex having gotten into some of that between her appearance on Top Shot and meeting Mick, presumably courtesy of the “boyfriend” we’re meeting in this strip and/or some of his associates.
Thoughts on the max for the age split? XKCD formula ((Age/2) + 7)? Asking for a friend.
Ehn. When I was younger, I thought the formula was good, but now? I think it’s better just to have a cutoff age policy. For instance, mine would be 24. Gives a gal a few years to get used to being an adult, how to hold her alcohol, etc.
[Age of oldest]/2+7 works well enough. I do like jlgrant’s proposal. Also think 24’s a good cutoff for youngest age (for either partner) to get married, for similar reasons. I got married at 22, and fact is, I hadn’t seen enough of life at 22 to make the decision. (Got divorced at 29, BTW.)
IMO, you can bend the xkcd formula, but only if it doesn’t violate the 24 rule. 44, want to date a 26-year-old? Go ahead, but keep your eyes open. 38, want to date a 22-year-old? Absolutely not, no matter if they’re “really mature for their age” or any other excuses you can come up with.
Of course, a lot of people will realize their impending relationship violates the above rules, but will say, “I can ignore that, I know WE’LL work.” Hopefully your friend isn’t one of them.
When I was dating (which didn’t really start til college), I tried to keep my relationships within 10 years of my own age, preferably 5, because I reasoned that any more age difference than that starts getting into almost a “generational” difference, with what you each grew up with and formative events being so different. My first wife just barely squeeked by the “preferably 5 year” rule, since she was six younger than me, but that ended up badly anyway. My current wife is 8 months older than me, and since we met in our late-30s, we were both looking for someone not into partying and running around. We enjoy being more sedate than our younger selves would have tolerated.
I’d say that the older you get, the less the age difference means. I just married (in 2011) a man 18 years older than myself. But when you add our ages TOGETHER, you get, well, more than a hundred. Come to think of it, maybe that’s the real meaning of the equation above.
To be sure, I was raised in a very old-fashioned tradition in a rural part of a small town, making for perhaps less of a generation gap than otherwise.
The ‘XKCD’ formula dates back to at least 1951, and some say it dates back to Louisa May Alcott of “Little Women” fame back in the 19th century. Just for the record.
Jesus, I’m a pedant.
Holy crap… Alex is Paige Armstrong. Only a shooter instead of a Christian Avril Lavigne knockoff and she was on a reality shooting show instead of a Christian kid’s show.
This is almost chilling.
Yep. When I was 17 I was dating a 31-yo guy. Didn’t last but it was one hell of a trip while it did.
I was wondering why a 17 year old guy named Hugh was dating a 31 year old guy. But then I looked at your last name.
(1) Hugh Mannity is not my legal name.
(2) There’s a very complex backstory. TL;DR I’m one of the people the HRC keeps trying to throw under the bus.
Hi, Hugh! fancy running into you here. As you know, I was 28 and my SO was 18 when we started dating. We’re now 47 and 37 respectively and still an “item” after a brief but disastrous attempt at cohabitation.
and crap, managed to repeat myself. D’oh.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, to find you here.
😀
Yo, Hugh! You coming up the hill this War, to get some bang-time on Munchkin?
Oh, and I took a first-time shooter out this weekend also. Fun was had by all.
Age doesn’t really matter so much as overall compatibility and sanity. I have a friend who got married, she was 24, he was 39. Long story short, it ended up with divorce after he set her car on fire (she was not in it, he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, just being vindictive). Now she’s dating a guy of similar age and things are going well for them.