#20, I concur.

Also, how can you 'hate' Roxy? Do you know her? Did she kick puppies or something equally evil?

Leave #18 alone, they need to get their hate out!

This blog has no point. It's a completely immature and uninsightful musing. I wish I hadn't wasted a few minutes of my life reading it. Ooh you think it'll be really great to have a relationship with someone older because boys are immature. Yeah, you and tonnes of other girls, love.

#23 Very nice use of the metric ton, there!

The consensus seems to be that relationships with older guys are fine, unless a girl feels she simply HAS to have one because boys are rubbish, in which case they reveal an immaturity which said girl claimed to be keen to avoid in boys in the first place, consequently making her look like a massive loser.

Roxy: if you fancy a quick bunk up in the city centre Travelodge with a (probably married) older man, simply go to Vodka Revolution and then Tokyo on a Friday or other non-student night. Unless you are really atrociously ugly, this will be one of the easiest tasks you have ever performed. It is vaguely possible that you might by chance meet a decent older bloke and fall in love in this manner.

If, however, you want to be happy and achieve many of the things you say you are looking for in your blog, just be open and natural and stop setting criteria. Live your life and see who comes along. It may very well be an older man, and if that happens, fair play to you both. It could also be a boy your age, many of whom have been wronged by your sweeping dismissal.

If you did hook up with a much older man, you'd go round telling everyone that age isn't important. And you'd be right. But you need to realise that this ALWAYS applies. Mr Right could be very, very much younger than your ideal.

This all rather begs the question:

When does a boy become a man?

I'm going for about 27-ish.

#16. No I am not daft, thankyou! If youre#8 that said earlier her boyfriend was a quarter century older, you would know what I am talking about. I love boys my own age and generation as friends and of course I have tried to have relationships with them as you do. But I am not confident they make good boyfriend material. My boyfriend is 39 and I am sick of boys who mock this. It irritates me and I think they are mean about him because they feel I am letting the side down. He is youthful and looks great and is funny, caring and cute in ways that, sorry I don’t think guys my age are generally up to. I’m not down on all boys and OK I posted what I said in a general way for humourous effect and failed maybe. I suppose it is totally possible I was hanging with the wrong type and there are some out there that are right for me. But I wouldn’t change my older boyfriend for any of the boys I know. There defininitely is a maturity gap and I think older men are better for some girls. Put it this way. If you and your bf broke up, and you found yourself in a rebound thing with say a 23 year old, what would you miss about the older man? I don’t mean specifically him but the things about him that were about his age, experience and so on. If I broke up with mine I think I would hope to meet another older one if I’m really honest. Going back to a boy my age would be hard. They are just so different. And before anyone mentions it no I am not talking about money.

I've never had a relationship with anyone, old or young, where I've found them to fit your description of boys. I love my boyfriend for who he is, there are perks from an older guy. I've always got on better with older people, and I guess I'm quite mature for my age. But there's a lot of trouble with having a large age gap relationship, mainly societal, and it's not an easy road. I don't think either same age or age gap relationships are superior. I just love my boyfriend for who he is, I find it hard to separate that from what an older man is, it's just him I love. Besides I'd be too heartbroken to ponder such things ... and I don't consider being in a relationship with anyone else ever again, my age or otherwise, so I can't really offer opinion on it!

Dear God 29, I'm sure your THIRTY NINE year old boyfriend can brush off the slings and arrows of a few jibes from your so-called immature friends. We're just silly boys anyway!

Any man that age that gets with a girl of 20 is a perv. Fact.

#32 Thats a bit controversial. Is it really that bad for there to be an age gap? What if it was the other way around, with a 40 year old woman and a 20 year old guy?

Not really, 32. 20 year old girls aren't children, we're adults too, it's not perverse.

Antonio Banderas (51)
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I don't care if it's perverted or not, I just so would!

#35 - LOVE THIS!

'My dad's mate Mark' - so so funny!

#34 - 20 year-olds are legal adults, but that doesn't mean they're adult-adults, and they typically aren't. In many respects, they're still children. People change so much in their late teens and early twenties in terms of life experience, character, personality, and what they expect from other people and themselves, that at 29 they're really not the same person they were when they were 20. At 39 they're different people entirely.

Plus, for older men going out with much younger women, it does raise the question: why couldn't you find a woman your own age? What was it about you that your peers found so unpalatable that you have to go after women who are only just entering adulthood and probably much less astute?

35: to add from a boy's perspective. Helen Mirren. PHWOOARRR

#37. Some 20 year olds are perfectly adult, some 20 year olds do act like children... like many other ages. Yeah, I might change a lot in the next twenty years, or I might change a little, but just because I am going to change doesn't mean I am now a child and it is inappropriate to have an older boyfriend. I am mature; I know I am. I can recognise immeasurable changes in myself that have happened in the past 4 years, who I was is a child and who I am is not. Also, one will also change between the ages of 60 and 80 but is it wrong for a 60 year old and an 80 year old to be together, I presume most think not.

You ask ridiculous questions about the older person in a relationship. My boyfriend was just coming out of a relationship with someone his own age when we met. We met and we liked each other, he could get someone his own age very easily. But, oh, I guess you presume my boyfriend should be with one of the more appropriate 40 year olds that he didn't fall in love with instead of being with me just because he could get them and I'm a naive child.

My boyfriend did not go after a young person, and I did not go after an older one. We are on the same wavelength, we both knew that, so we started chatting and became friendly. Realised we both had a brilliant time together and were attracted to each other. Things blossomed, we are now in a loving relationship. It's nothing to do with an incapability to secure someone their own age and going after me. If you have ever been in love you will surely know that you fall in love with someone without looking to find them or certain qualities in a person. It hits you and that's it, only an idiot would deny it.

My boyfriend and I are in a completely loving, tender, adult and fulfilling relationship. We have fun, we have intelligent conversation, he is my best friend and my love.

But you're right, this is probably wrong and peverse because I will be more grown up in twenty years time than I am now. Despite being far from a child in both looks and attitude I obviously am one, don't know my own mind and am being manipulated by my nasty old incapable-of-finding-someone-his-own-age boyfriend.

#37

Would you ask a black man dating a white girl why he couldn't find a woman of his own race? Or accuse a gay couple of having to resort to same-gender sex because they were 'so unpalatable' to members of the opposite gender? Yes, presumably you would, given the moronic bigotry of your post.

It also speaks volumes about your maturity. If you really think sane, happy, balanced people go out 'after' life partners, or there is some sort of generational selection procedure that relegates men in their 40s who don't come up to scratch to 'having to' have relationships with much younger women...well, it is unlikely that you'd make a credible or useful contribution to this debate.

As I pointed out in my first post on the first page, my 20 year old girlfriend (who is the person you were replying to) has a vastly more impressive emotional range and psychological intelligence than my 38-year old ex-wife. Neither of us went out looking for the other in the way that you seem to believe these things happen.

If this blog has highlighted one thing, it is this: no-one should be in the business of insisting that they have to have a much older or younger partner. In my opinion that is inane, and I can see the girlie flip-side of stereotipcal older male predation in Roxy's stated aims. It also emphasises that a decent relationship is a decent relationship, and that the manic desire of a small minority to scoff at difference (whether it is race, sexual orientation or age that rings your bigotry bell) says far more about the accusers than the accused.