foreign hey hey this is turning at some point so you know we watched Bell Collective on Friday or Saturday depending when you watched it and um I came across an article called Nine reasons why young women should avoid significantly older men at all costs and I wanted to go over some of those points and see if y'all recognize some of these things in Latrice and some of the other reality TV people we've seen including like Ashley Darby um yeah so let's go through these points the power Dynamic can be skewed when you're in your late teens or early 20s you're most likely still in school or at the beginning of your career you have limited life experiences and disposable income you're dependent on many things around you and most often insecure about yourself meanwhile most times those older men have a career money social status decade long or more experiences in all sorts of areas and they're more likely to be ahead of you in life in establishing yourself it is unlikely that they'll see you as an equal partner whose career Ambitions life goals deserve the same level of respect and priority as theirs you can't be true to yourself when you're with a significantly older man there isn't just an age Gap there are also gaps in maturity levels Lifestyles perspectives and life stages to bridge these gaps it's often you the woman who has to adjust yourself to fit the man who feels the pressure to position herself as more mature than the girls my age to accelerate your life and to prove to him and mostly yourself that you're grown up enough to be dating him and deal with his issues while in reality you're not at all emotionally or psychologically ready you also don't have enough security both emotional and financial to challenge the status quo and stand up for yourself when your interest is at stake you'll likely find yourself trapped in a relationship that's set entirely on the man's terms which will gradually destroy your self-esteem and self-respect the relationship is set up to fail if you specifically seek them out because they're older than you or they seek you out this relationship is predicated on superficial factors related to age you might not know who they are as a person outside of the older man Persona and they might not be able to see beyond your youthfulness what happens when all he has left is his old age and you're no longer youthful the relationship might be smooth selling in the beginning as you get carried away with all the so-called benefits of dating an older man but true differences in incompatibility will become obvious as the relationship progresses in the next five or ten years you'll change dramatically while he will be set in his way two common possibilities one he will set your growth and traumatize you in the process two you will grow apart from him and want to leave they don't care about your intelligence one of the tactics these older men use to lure much younger women into their arms is to make the woman feel like they value them for something other than their youthful Beauty they will choose intelligence as they know that the much younger women who are responsive to them are likely to have troubled relationships with their parents and are hungry for approval when they say you're smart they actually don't mean you're smart they know if you're really smart you would not want to have anything to do with inappropriate men like them they know you're insecure they want you to get addicted to their validation their validation is meaningless and worthless their compliments might make you feel good momentarily but they don't mean anything because they're not real they're part of an agenda nothing they say to you has any value when their procession of you is tied to your gender and age and they can't see you as a whole person who doesn't just exist to boost their ego and satisfy their desires if anything they're likely to assume you're naive and have low self-esteem and standards to accept them without questions and Overlook their flaws which women their age don't put up with they're not a prize there's no respectable position to give you validation they objectify you they don't simply want you for who you are they want you for reasons that have everything to do with themselves being with you would first serve as an ego stroke they may feel younger more desirable more fun better than the other guys who aren't in the company of young and beautiful women they could also get away with their Peter Pan syndrome and commitment Theory as they think much younger women wouldn't want to get married anytime soon they're not the solutions to your inner problems if the reason why you are drawn to relationships with significantly older men is because you lack parental figures growing up or you don't feel secure about yourself these men won't solve your problems they will amplify your pain when they fail to show love and care for you or Worse make you feel abandoned you'll think it's your fault and you're not good enough while in many cases these older men are just emotionally inept and empathy deficit the love and care you crave from your parents can't be found in the relationship with older men even though they might be as old as a parent they're not your parents they don't have caring responsibilities for you and they don't love you just because they have romantic and sexual intentions with you and again their validation is worthless it won't fill you you have to do it yourself and elsewhere you're not equipped to deal with their issues and character flaws when you have limited life and dating experiences you're not prepared for all the psychological issues a significantly older man might have or his manipulative tactics to trap you in the relationship if you wish us to do so you can't see through him like you do a college person your age you might not even have the financial resources needed to leave the relationship when it turns abusive when the power dynamics are skewed you will struggle to call him out and set the terms of the relationship to meet your boundaries and standards you might not even know your boundaries and standards yet you can easily get gaslit and be able to feel crazy because you simply haven't seen any better you might even hide the relationship from anyone because of the stigma associated with the age Gap and so you're isolated from friends and family your brain hasn't fully developed yet if you're under 25 your frontal lobe which is responsible for rational thinking has it fully developed as a result your decisions may not be as foresighted and beneficial for yourself as you would like you're more focused on living in the moment you don't fully understand the long-term consequences of your action you take emotional pain much harder at this age who you are around 20 and who you are at 25 will be drastically different and you don't want to be dealing with permanent consequences for the rest of your 20s a relationship with a significantly older man can leave a long lasting impact on you if it goes horribly wrong which most likely will happen for the aforementioned reasons it can wound you for many years and give you a damaging view of romantic relationships okay so that's a very biased article um obviously I really feel like the person that wrote this especially if you just read all of it she probably went through this or she knows somebody that did go through this but yeah I really do see a lot of Latrice in here and some Ashley Darby in here too so let me know what y'all think talk to you later bye foreign