Least Icky Age Gaps

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Sapphire135

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In my current WIP (regency era) the hero and heroine are childhood best friends. They are tragically separated and meet again a long time later when he has assumed a different identity and she does not know it is him.

She is roughly 23 - 24 and I really want him to be about 30 (I wish he could be older). However in order to have a minimum 6 year age gap, that means when they are young she would be 12 and he would be 17.

I am trying not to put modern day sensibilities on this. I know many girls were married and starting families as young as 13 and that most husbands were at least a decade older.

However, I do not want there to be an "ick" factor to their previous relationship. They were young and very close and though nothing sexual happened, I would say that they were each other's first loves.

Any idea on what age to make them when they are younger so it is not too icky?

I need at least a decade to pass before they see each other again, so she cannot be too old when they are younger otherwise in the present she would be considered an old maid.

Hope this isn't too convoluted...
 

Wilde_at_heart

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I'm not sure what thread it was in, but it was a recent one, that essentially 'debunked' the notion that in the past most women married in their teens to men old enough to be their dads.

Though I forget which thread, I did save the link: http://silviamoreno-garcia.com/blog/2014/06/the-problem-with-juliet/

In many times and places, the mean age for a first marriage was actually the mid-twenties for women.
 

Sapphire135

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I'm not sure what thread it was in, but it was a recent one, that essentially 'debunked' the notion that in the past most women married in their teens to men old enough to be their dads.

Though I forget which thread, I did save the link: http://silviamoreno-garcia.com/blog/2014/06/the-problem-with-juliet/

In many times and places, the mean age for a first marriage was actually the mid-twenties for women.

Thanks for the info. I only mentioned the young as 13 thing because it did happen and I am sure was not considered in the same light as it is now.

When my characters first know each other, if she was 10 and he was 16, that would personally make me uncomfortable. But I feel easier (though not much!) with her being 12 and him being 17 or 18.

This age gap when they are younger is giving me a ton of difficulty.

I need them to know that they love each other without him seeming pervy and her seeming too much like a child.

But also, there has to be at least a 6 year gap when they are adults and meet again.

Argh!
 

khosszu

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Hm, I can see your difficulty. I could imagine the 10 - 16 thing working if their relationship on the surface is very appropriate. Like he ACTS like her big brother and protector, but deep down he feels more. In that case the icky factor would go away. But 12 - 17 would work better, if for nothing else, than for the reason that by that age most girls are aware of boys and do tend to have crushes. 10 might be early for most, and she would have to be mature for her age (IMHO) to have a crush that turns out to be her true love later on.
 

Sapphire135

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Hm, I can see your difficulty. I could imagine the 10 - 16 thing working if their relationship on the surface is very appropriate. Like he ACTS like her big brother and protector, but deep down he feels more. In that case the icky factor would go away. But 12 - 17 would work better, if for nothing else, than for the reason that by that age most girls are aware of boys and do tend to have crushes. 10 might be early for most, and she would have to be mature for her age (IMHO) to have a crush that turns out to be her true love later on.

That is my train of thought as well, but I can't help thinking, what kind of 17 year old guy falls in love with a 12 year old girl? Again, that is my modern sensibility coming into play.

She is mature for her age, though. She is the daughter of a widowed squire and has been running her fathers house for him. The hero is the bastard son of a servant. They have a sort of Cathy and Heathcliff relationship.

However, Cathy and Heathcliff were only like a year or two apart and that won't work for my characters, regrettably :(
 

Viridian

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Would a seventeen-year-old realistically be attracted to a twelve-year-old?

People are generally attracted to others who are around the same age and maturity level. I think it's safe to assume this is true no matter the era. There are always exceptions, but those are just exceptions.

Here's an idea:

Why not have the childhood romance be unrequited? Say that your female character loves the male character, but the male character fails to notice. Younger children develop crushes on adults all the time. It would still be sweet -- and on top of that, it would be interesting, unusual, and easy to sympathize with.

I know you probably want your characters to have a childhood romance, but I just don't think the logistical issues can be circumnavigated. And this way, you can have the age gap be as large as you want.
 

Sapphire135

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Would a seventeen-year-old realistically be attracted to a twelve-year-old?

People are generally attracted to others who are around the same age and maturity level. I think it's safe to assume this is true no matter the era. There are always exceptions, but those are just exceptions.

Here's an idea:

Why not have the childhood romance be unrequited? Say that your female character loves the male character, but the male character fails to notice. Younger children develop crushes on adults all the time. It would still be sweet -- and on top of that, it would be interesting, unusual, and easy to sympathize with.

I know you probably want your characters to have a childhood romance, but I just don't think the logistical issues can be circumnavigated. And this way, you can have the age gap be as large as you want.

A great idea, but sadly the childhood romance is sort of the key to the story. I am wondering if I made her fourteen and him seventeen? Would that be doable? All I can think now is that I have to shrink the age gap.

When they meet again, she can be 24 and he can be 27 or 25 and 28 or something.
 

Viridian

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Fourteen and seventeen wouldn't bother me, personally.
 

Beachgirl

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I would buy the 14 - 17 age gap, but would question the plausibility of a 17 y.o. falling in love with a 12 y.o. girl.
 

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Just to make a note, in the time traveler's wife it really icked me out that he travelled to see her as a kid (even though nothing pervy went on) so that the first time she met him was as her like 7 and him like 30.
 

Sapphire135

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What about fourteen and eighteen? Or thirteen and eighteen? Or thirteen and seventeen?

Do any of those strike icky chords??

Not that she was the most mature or likeable character on the planet, but Lydia Bennet was only 15 when she ran off with Wickham and that was a sexual relationship.

My two youngsters will only promise to wait for each other and possibly share a chaste kiss.

I just need him to still be young enough that in 10+ years time, when he comes back as a fine gentleman, she won't recognize him.

I hate sorting out this younger age gap!

Thanks for all your feedback.
 

job

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when they are young she would be 12 and he would be 17.

For the modern reader I do think there's an ick factor with those ages. If I had a daughter just entering Middle School I wouldn't want her having a close-and-personal, 'first love' relationship with a High School Senior. I'd wonder what was wrong with a 17-year-old man that he sought the love of a pre-pubescent girl instead of someone closer to his own age.

Twelve-year-old girls here, here, here.
Seventeen-year-old youths here, here, here.


I know many girls were married and starting families as young as 13 and that most husbands were at least a decade older.

Not so much, I think. The average age of menarche was probably about 15.

Folks of the lower class and middle class delayed marriage till the young man could afford to set up his own farm or get established in business or trade. This led to relatively late marriage -- mid to late twenties for women.

The gentry and minor nobility could marry earlier, being provided for. But I think gentry families rarely married off their mid-teen daughters.
In P&P -- Lydia was considered scandalously young to be 'out' at 15. There's no sense that she's ready for marriage.


Any idea on what age to make them when they are younger so it is not too icky?

I solved a similar situation -- childhood friendship, a decade apart, and then meeting again -- by making the FMC 22 and the MMC 24. I picked a two-year gap in their ages because I wanted to avoid the least hint of squick factor. And I deliberately specified there was only a deep friendship between the 12- and the 14-year-old. No hit of romance or sex.


All that said -- you can get away with anything if you write it carefully and cleverly enough.
Perhaps he wasn't aware of her exact age?
Perhaps he was awkward and shy for his age and that provides a buffer against inappropriate sexual approach to a young girl. He might have been inexperienced. Scholarly.
 
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JulianneQJohnson

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Twelve makes me go ickers. Once you get to the 14 range it doesn't bother me personally, considering that they do not get intimate. I could easily see a 14 year old and a 17 to 18 year old having a loving but non-sexual relationship. Honestly, a sexual relationship at that age is not unheard of, though that gets your ick factor back. There's nothing wrong with a young man waiting for a girl to grow up because he already knows he cares for her. Then they get all tragically separated, and hook back up when the age difference is less of a problem. I would totally buy that.
 

Sapphire135

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Twelve makes me go ickers. Once you get to the 14 range it doesn't bother me personally, considering that they do not get intimate. I could easily see a 14 year old and a 17 to 18 year old having a loving but non-sexual relationship. Honestly, a sexual relationship at that age is not unheard of, though that gets your ick factor back. There's nothing wrong with a young man waiting for a girl to grow up because he already knows he cares for her. Then they get all tragically separated, and hook back up when the age difference is less of a problem. I would totally buy that.

There is definitely no intimacy and, at most, a parting kiss on the cheek when he leaves. But he does ask her to wait for him.

Initially, I wanted more than ten years to pass so there is less a chance of her recognizing him when he returns. But in order for that to happen, I need to make them both younger and somehow 8 and 12 sounds as icky to me as 12 and seventeen :(

The logical way to solve it is to make them 1 -2 years apart, but I hate him to be in his mid-twenties when they meet again.
 

frimble3

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That is my train of thought as well, but I can't help thinking, what kind of 17 year old guy falls in love with a 12 year old girl? Again, that is my modern sensibility coming into play.

She is mature for her age, though. She is the daughter of a widowed squire and has been running her fathers house for him. The hero is the bastard son of a servant. They have a sort of Cathy and Heathcliff relationship.

However, Cathy and Heathcliff were only like a year or two apart and that won't work for my characters, regrettably :(
I think your problem with 'modern sensibility' is thinking that love has much to do with marriage.
If he was a poor boy, age wouldn't matter: if her father was a squire with an estate and money, he wouldn't have a hope of being allowed to marry her, whether they were in love or not.
By the same token, how many of these 12-13 year old girls were in love, or even in like, with the older men their families married them off to?
I would assume that a 17 year old boy, hanging around with a 12 year old was either up to something inappropriate, and looking for someone unlikely to object, or cozying up to her in hopes of getting his hands on her inheritance.
And, what is your objection to his being in his mid-twenties when he returns?
Not enough physical change for him to be unrecognizable? If he was one of those skinny, gawky kids, a few years of hard work or military service would give him muscles; better food, and more of it, would add shape to his face; a better cut to his clothes would improve his over-all look.
If you just don't think he'd be 'mature' enough, consider that however he got to be wealthy, it probably changed more than his physical appearance.

I'd say go with 14 and 17, ten years later, without seeing each other in the intervening years, would possibly make both of them fairly unrecognizable, if only because they'd remember the half-grown teens they had seen last.
 
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elindsen

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One problem I see is him. If you have him at 17 or 18, he'll pretty much look the same. Maybe more muscular, beard, whatever, but his manly face should be there at 18. It would seem weird if she didn't recognize him.

Could they be even younger? Like him 10 and her 7? Obviously it wouldn't be die-for-you romance, but plenty of kids have crushes at that age. The "love" they have for each other could be more cutesy, like them risking it by holding hands. Maybe they are so close as kids but the love is more that brother/sister thing. They never stop thinking about each other, but only as adults do they start to explore that need for each other.

Just thinking out loud here. As far as her being 12, yeah, that's kind of gross. An 18 year old man should be looking at the girls his age that are blossoming, not some girl that's lanky and still a child. Kind of screams pervert.
 

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The ick factor comes into play because of where a person's stage in life would be too different (usually). At 17, boys are definitely thinking about sex already. At 11, there's still a lot of innocence. I think a girl would have to be at least on the edge of teenhood for it to bypass the ick factor. So that would cover the maturity level.

But then there's also the physical aspect. You don't want him looking like a pedophiler, when she still looks like a kid while he's entering adulthood. So what about if she looks older than her age? People would forget that she's much younger, especially if she's mature for her age too.

I knew a girl who was 11 but looked 16. And she acted older too, and people treated her like her perceived age. Although I had been older than her, I looked younger, and people treated me accordingly, even though I was mature (mentally) for my age too.

So I think you need to make people forget her actual age and make them think of her by her perceived age instead, if that makes any sense. Make them think of her as someone older.

HTH

PS. I have to agree though, a person doesn't change much after they've reached puberty, unless it was something drastic like a huge weight loss or something. They fill out more, but for the most part, there wouldn't be a big enough change that he would be unrecognizable. Unless he's got a full beard now? :p
 
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Well 5 and 11 is not going to work in terms of being "best friends." So it would need to be something like 11 and 17 and they'd need a shared interest perhaps animals for it to make sense.

Also I personally would want him to have had zero sexual interest or sexual thoughts about an 11 year old when he was 17. In my opinion it should be an intellectual friendship, like he found her very bright and they shared an interest and their parents were very close friends leading to a lot of time spent together. And of course he could be brotherly and protective. They can have a deep closeness that has no love/sexual thoughts before they meet again and develop them. To me that is more appropriate. And of course he can be very protective and perhaps protect her from a bully when they are at that 11/17 time period. If he asks her to wait for him perhaps could it be semi- joke on his part, or something like he hopes he finds a woman as intelligent as her to be his wife one day, but she takes it seriously? Just an idea.
 
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oceansoul

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I think 14/17 would probably be okay for me. I think considering the time period you're working with is also important. During the Regency era forced marriages at 15 weren't common and 12 was very much still considered a child. Cultural conceptions of maturity are perhaps equally important as age.

Siliva Moreno Garcia's article covers Renaissance age noblewomen. Marriages within the aristocracy did tend to occur earlier in the Middle Ages, but these were a matter of legal union not sexual desire.
 

KimJo

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12 and 17 wouldn't bother me... IF you showed the guy realizing that it's too much of an age gap and choosing not to act on it. Thinking something like "She's a wonderful girl, why can't she be a few years older, I can't love her because she's too young" sort of thing. Even if he *feels* that way, show him being conflicted about it and recognizing that she's far too young and I would probably be okay with it as a reader. (And as the parent of two daughters.)

If it was a case of him being *physically* attracted to her at age 12, that would be kind of squicky. But if he falls in love with her as a person, her traits and the way she handles things and so on, I could buy it. Just show me that he knows it would be wrong to act on those feelings, and maybe show that he specifically is NOT attracted to her physically because she's still mostly a child.

And to have your desired outcome, maybe you could have her confessing her feelings to him, and him saying something like "I do love you, but I'm too old for you and we can't do this. If we meet again when you're older, it might be different."
 

Sapphire135

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I think I need to make him even younger in order for her not to recognize him when he comes back. Perhaps she is 12 and he is fourteen?

It is not a big enough age gap, but I can't imagine how else to work it. Also, the circumstances which cause them to be separated might not have happened if he was older/more mature.

If she is 12 when they last meet and he is 14, then it can be almost thirteen years since they last met.

He is thin and lanky when she knows him, but also like I said, he is a servant. When he returns, he has not only filled into his frame, but he is a gentleman with a totally different way of speaking, different clothes, different mannerisms, etc.

This story is fun to write in the present day, but the prologue when they are both younger is really becoming a pain in the neck.
 

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Well, consider. How much older did they make Sansa Stark to remove the 'ick' factor from her being wedded? She was 12 in the book.

I remember watching a movie called Murphy's Romance, seemed cute at the time, then I learned the breadth of the age gap at the end and the entire movie took on a creepy, icky vibe, and she was 30ish.

I personally, after making allowances for Emma, just roll my eyes at the older guy scenario. Your scenario does sound similar to Emma, so, maybe give it a reread and see what's done there to make the match palatable.
 

Sapphire135

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I personally, after making allowances for Emma, just roll my eyes at the older guy scenario. Your scenario does sound similar to Emma, so, maybe give it a reread and see what's done there to make the match palatable.

It's funny you mention Emma because I always got a big ick factor from Knightley as a hero. In fact, I like him the least of all of the Jane Austen heroes.

I think the only solution is to make the hero young as well and lessen the age gap between them to three or less years.
 

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Also consider, the love of friendship, that later turns into something else AFTER they're sexually mature.

Engaging banter happens all the time between platonics, it's simply a matter of depth in the friendship. Granted, people who don't get out much will assume otherwise, cuz, you know, hetero guys and gals can't be friends, not really. *sarcasm off*

You can definitely demonstrate neutered chemistry early on.
 

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I don't see anything wrong with the age gap. Not because of myths about marriage ages, etc, but because you said they were childhood friends, no romantic/sexual feelings involved.

Also age groups (teenager, preteen/tween, kindergartener, etc) are a modern concept--you were either viewed as a child or as an adult based on your age or your position. For example, thirteen was viewed as old enough to leave school and enter the workforce for a very long time. Marilyn Monroe (then Norma Jeane Baker) zoomed from youth to adulthood at sixteen when she was forced to marry in order to escape being placed in foster care.

But your heroine would likely only see the hero between school terms anyways (I'm assuming they are upper class/aristocrats), so their interactions would be of 2-3 months duration every year if she was permitted the freedom to roam about with him.
 
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