One thing that people with age gaps don’t consider is what the younger person could REPRESENT to the older. When I was 17 I “dated” a 34 year old man for a couple weeks. It gave me a bad feeling and I broke it off before any damage was done to me… but later I was told that he had a thing for some girls under 12. He didn’t really care for me, I was just a nearly legal stand in for some of his HORRIBLE impulses. Good older people simply aren’t interested in younger people romantically.