David,

Most arranged marraiges were between people of roughly the same age.

please back this up with evidence. Similar to the fossil record, if you don’t have a complete set of marriage records that includes the age of the spouses, I’m afraid all you have is hearsay without hard evidence.

I thank that it is there chouce not ours

i think that is pretty stupid because when that lady is starting to get old she will be like that boy grand-mother and that boy will be like is son but i think that if they love each other as they said that should stay together and see if that 14 years old boy can take through
im 16 and i will never married a 30 years old women but all i can say is god bless both of them

Ugh! Thats just really gross! I mean COME ON! He’s freakin 14. She’s 42! I don’t know HOW they could be in love. They don’t have anything in common. All I really think this relationship is based on is the sex. But I mean...THAT can’t be very good either. He’s probably not even COMPLETELY formed yet! I’m 16 and I would NEVER marry a 40-something year old man. Thats just really gross. Thats like marrying my DAD! And for the parents, they can’t be very good parents! What parents in their RIGHT MINDS would let they’re child, at the age of 14, marry a women older than 18! I know my parents sure wouldn’t! And to tell ya the truth, I wouldn’t get married anyway. With or without my parents my permission. The women and the parents should all go to JAIL! Thats child abuse, molestation. And what about this kid? How is his FRIENDS taking all this, if hes even still friends with him. That has GOT to be embarrassing! And the womens children, if I were them I’d move out! Just the thought of my BEST FRIEND having sex with MY dad, I’d flip!

Reading these posts, am just curious about the age of the posters. Many responses seem to be very immature from both sides.

See, I’m wondering why the parents didn’t ask themselves how this woman met their 14-year-old son. (I can’t access the article that was posted.)

Or how much convincing it took to get the parents to agree to this.

Forget about the moral issues of possible pedophilia (I’m not sure how Alabama state law works in this case) - I’m more outraged by the apparent lack of parenting.

(And, for Lisa’s benefit, I’m 18.)

Hard to say, Lisa, though I’m guessing quite a few of the people posting here are on the younger side as well. My age is listed over there on the left.

i think that they are free to do what ever they need to, and if it works out for them ,then thats more power to them , if it does not, then it doesnt, as long as they are happy. thats what it is eventually all about, being happy

-mrsweetsensir, one love

Not according to most statutory rape laws it’s not.

i dont live by law, i live by love, and i think if we all did that the world wouldd be a much better place

I’m sure that’ll go over well at your hearing.

life is not about ‘’the hearing’’, its a about love, and thats what that 14 year old man and his 42 year old wife have. they got love

Stop now before you convince us all that you really are a complete idiot.

Too late.

:-D

I agree with brandisnapnz all the way.  Yes, these days all that is important is being popular and cool.  All of you older people know that the world is changing and you cant stop it, hehe…
(Im a 13 yr old girl and i know all about what happens at school. I am one of the most popular people there)

Anyways, I saw this on the Maury the day it happened and MAURY IS A NICE PLACE TO GET INFO!!!
(So JoshMan, its nothing to be embarassed about.)
Well i watched it and I thought that it was kind of strange, because no 14 year old wants to marry sum1 with wrinkes and a stretchmarks!(let alone kids)
The 14 year old boy who married this 42 year old woman was best friends with the womans 14 year old son, they went to school together and he stayed over alot. That is how he got to know this woman.  I remember that when they were interviewed together and that the boy seemed quite nervous to talk, but maybe that was just stage fright or sumthin.(who knows) i think he isnt there for the sex, no possible way! i know that guys love sex, and most girls do too (i do) but anyways, :D i have news for you people who think we are too young to understand shit

Emily, if you are under 18 and the guy is over 18, IT IS ILLEGAL FOR YOU TO HAVE SEX TOGETHER.  He could get arrested for statutory rape.  So go out in public if you want, but bear in mind that it could be inviting people to look into what you’re doing.

We older “senile” people may be right, or we may be wrong, but the fact of the matter is, Emily, you don’t know shit about what we know until you get to be our age.  We’ve been both ages, yours and ours.  You haven’t.  So until you’ve actually experienced both, I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t take your pronouncements too seriously.  I remember exactly how much I THOUGHT I knew at 13 and how much I really didn’t.  You’ll find out what you’re missing soon enough ... or not.

(Besides, I guess we’re not too senile to ask for advice, hmm?)

Well, I’m off to have wrinkly, senile, 40-year-old sex now.  See ya.

PS - It’s spelled “ciao.” Just one more thing you have yet to learn ...

One more thing to you, GeekMom, I know alot more than you think i do. And i know that you have lived both ages, but not in this period of time.
many things have changed over the last decade, and alot of things on this earth isnt as good as it should be, but what is the point of living up to your own expectations and being thought a loser, when you could live up to everyone elses and be someone important to the world, not just to yourself.

It is none of your business if i have had sex with him or not you little brown nosing crusty old hag!

And i know how to spell ciao, i prefer to say Chao because that is just who i am, and i like acting stupid because it makes me forget the worse things in life, and there are alot of those things.  People have no reason to listen to other people, whether they are right or wrong.  They only have what they know and believe, and trust me, i never believe something until i figure it out myself, and i bet alot of people MY age would rather learn from experience than have to listen to lectures about “When i was a young lady, we used to ..blah blah blah...” on and on the stupid lectures about what not to do and what to do and when to do it
You make me sick!
let us find out ourselves, cuz we wont listen to you anyway.
IF YOU KNEW ME YOU WOULD KNOW THAT I AM ALOT SMARTER THAN YOU THINK.

Also, I would remind you people who are too senile to remember that whatever I do with whoever i want is my business, and the goverment does not control my life or my sex life.

So go have fun With your wrinkly, senile, 40 yr old sex cuz its prolly gonna be just you n ur favorite vibrator(your too old to get anything good anyways)

Also, i would like to remind people that gay people are not sick or disgusting, actually they make great shopping partners!:D

BE YOURSELVES IN PRIVATE!
BE A PROPER PERSON IN PUBLIC! (for everyone elses sake)

Chao!
Emily

Emily, just a little clue:  if you don’t want the advice, don’t ask for it.  If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.  And if you have to tell the world how smart you are, you’re clearly not (otherwise they would notice without your having to tell them).

But it’s nice to see how easy it is to yank your chain.  Try not to take yourself so seriously, ‘k, “I’m-So-Popular-Girl”?

But they like her for her brains!

Oh man, I hope to hell this is a comment troll because I’m laughing my ass off and it’d be a damned shame if this is a real kid! I suppose some people just need to learn things the hard way and Emily’s headed for one hell of an education at this rate.

If it’s a troll, it’s one of the very best I’ve ever encountered.  They got the belligerent, insecure, barely-literate teenage behavior just right!

Don’t be so hard on the kid - it might grow up in another twenty years

Emily, on the outside chance you’re not a troll, understand this: the “different times” you are referring to are just a cultural veneer on human experience, which is very much the same from one generation to the next. 

In traditional cultures (where little cultural change took place across generations) young people listened to old people because those elders were clearly expert in tasks that the young person needed to learn to survive.

Today both external culture and occupational survival skills are changing so fast that the older person may appear clueless.  So unless the young person were savvy to some fundamentals of human experience, there might not seem to be any reason to listen to people with wrinkles.

Back in Shakespere’s time kids in love thought they were the only ones to ever feel that way.  He wrote a play about it, which you should read.  They talk funny but try to ‘get’ what they’re saying - it’s worth the effort.

That’s a fundamental of human experience and different cell phones, clothes, or pop music change it not one bit.  Us old geezers understand that.  It’s a really valuable thing to know and we’d like to see you not have to learn it the hard way.  But hey, if you insist, knock yourself out.

As for some older person with a 14-year-old, the problem is not with how gross it is (because that’s in the eye of the beholder) but with the issue of consent.  The 14-year-old has strong feelings he or she doesn’t really understand well, and these can be manipulated by an unethical older person who has been there and knows.  The youngster cannot meaningfully consent, which is the basis of what makes a relationship either legitimate or illegitimate.

Improper consent is the basis of all sexual predation law.  A very young person, an intoxicated person, a patient in a counseling relationship, or a person who is under external pressure (such as a military subordinate or a work harassment situation) can’t be said to exercise completely free will in consenting.

I’ve joked that if I knew when I was 15 what I know now, I’d have been dangerous.  Well an older person fooling around with a 15-year-old IS dangerous for that very reason.  They have an extremely unfair advantage in the relationship.  “Love” is the least likely explanation.

Back in Shakespere’s time kids in love thought they were the only ones to ever feel that way. He wrote a play about it, which you should read. They talk funny but try to ‘get’ what they’re saying - it’s worth the effort.

Shake-who??  Decrepitoldfool, you crack me up. 

As someone who HAD been in a relationship with someone ten years older when I was a teenager, I can honestly say that at that age, your lives are so different and your goals are so different that it’s nearly impossible to find common ground in the middle.  People are justifiably concerned about the maturity and wisdom of someone who would prefer someone that much younger over his own peer group (especially when it means risking prosecution).  As you get older, a ten-year difference in age becomes less overwhelming (and by middle age it hardly means anything at all), but age differences are magnified bigtime when one of you is a teen.

Either there’s unfair advantage in the situation, as DOF says, or the older person is completely serious, in which case you really have to wonder about THEIR maturity.