The 5 Biggest Turnoffs To Dating Someone Younger Than You

1) They have a hard time carrying a conversation.

Dating a guy or girl who is younger than you (meaning an age gap of five or more years) can be extremely challenging. One of the more challenging aspects is dealing with situations where the topics you want to discuss don’t coincide with your significant other’s interests. For the most part, dating someone younger means dealing with someone who has less life experience than you. Take this with a grain of salt, but trying to hold a conversation with someone younger than you (especially about universal concepts that aren’t popular) can be a very risky move.

2) Their personality changes depending on the people they are around.

Do you ever notice that whenever your boyfriend or girlfriend (who happens to be younger than you) is around their friends they act carefree and sociable, but whenever they’re around your friends, they act all kinds of different? This is usually because their conversational skills are not based off of networking alone (which is what older people tend to do), but more off tangible topics that they can only relate to. For example, if they are around people who are into sports, they’ll focus on talking about about the latest celebrity gossip regarding some high-profile basketball or football star. Or if they’re around corporate professionals, they may try to spit out the latest article they saw on their social media news feed. What young people fail to realize is that the most important aspect of conversation is listening and not pretending to be an expert about a certain topic. If you date someone younger than you, you may be dealing with a person who is still in the “fake it ’til you make it” stage of life.

3) They have a hard time getting over an ex.

Men and women between their late 20s to late 30s have been in enough relationships to know when to leave well enough alone when it comes to ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends. When it comes to dating someone who is 25 years or younger, you are dealing with an individual who still believes in the possibility of rekindling ties with a former flame. Trust me. This is a steadfast rule (even though most millennials will believe they are the exception to this rule). Not enough heartbreak has happened at 25 years old for a person to think they are completely over an ex. So if you decide to date someone younger, you must fully expect to deal with all the baggage that will inevitably come with the relationship.

4) They may not be as ambitious or passionate about their careers as you are.

By the time you get to your 30s, you are hopefully in a better place to know what you want to do with your life. When you date an “early 20-something-year-old,” you may have to deal with the fact that they may lack ambition toward life goals. Also young people still haven’t received the big kick in the ass that life gives us all, so there may be a disconnect between you and them when it comes to this paradigm. One of the biggest reasons why people who differ in age break up tends to be because they are in two different places in their lives. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it is something that should be recognized going forward.

5) They haven’t found out who they are yet.

Ultimately what it comes down to when you date someone younger than you is dealing with the constant notion that they have not truly found themselves yet. It is almost impossible for a person to know who you are as an adult when you’ve just turned 23 years old. As cliché as it may sound, to quote Albert Camus, “You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.” So it isn’t quite fair to fully expect someone to know how to act within the confines of a mature relationship when they only have high school and college as the blueprint for success. Life is the greatest teacher when it comes to relationships.

When it comes to jealously, this trait is something that stems completely from insecurity. It comes from not being secure within your own internal makeup and projecting that energy onto your partner. The biggest downside to dating someone who is younger than you is that they are still in the process of discovering who they are. It may not be best to get into deep connections with young individuals if you happen to be older. Focus on dating men and women around the same age or even older than you. It will be less drama in your life and more experience acquired in the long run. Ain’t nobody got time for babysitting.