We met like four years ago and have gotten to know each other since then. We talk about our lives, work, struggles, relationships, video games, music, et cetera. Sometimes, though, I feel like this friendship shouldn’t exist because people may find it strange that I am friends with someone 14 years older than me. What do you think?
Why would it be weird to be friends with anyone?
Seriously, it isn’t something that an age gap matters at all. If anything, having friends of all ages is a good thing. Yeah, you’ll usually have the most in common with people closest to your age, but that’s not the only thing friendship is built on.
You can have pretty much nothing in common as long as a few core things are. Mutual respect is mandatory. The ability to accept differences and communicate about them is mandatory. Past that, friendship is about shared experience, not necessarily having had the same life. The things you do and talk about as friends is what really matters.
Now, you do run into things where most people just aren’t able to communicate with someone that’s diametrically opposed in some way, but all that means is that one of the people involved in unable/unwilling to accept and communicate about something. It isn’t inherently impossible to overcome major differences just because they exist.
Hell, the only reason it’s weird to be friends with anyone is when there’s a question of propriety. In those cases, you’d have to navigate things very carefully, but it still isn’t an automatic barrier to friendship, it just makes it harder to navigate. Like when there’s a power imbalance and one of the two might feel pressured to give way to the other or suffer some consequences; like a boss and employee, or a student and teacher. That’s hard to navigate, and it may mean that a decision has to be made about delaying the friendship.
That’s the same with adults and minors. You can be friends with people that are pretty damn young, but it is a very tricky thing to manage. Often not worth the hassles for the older person, but it isn’t inherently bad or weird solely because of the ages; it’s the issue of propriety and power imbalance. It’s damn near impossible to not influence someone that’s younger, so making sure you do things right is complicated and requires enough energy that being friends instead of just a mentor and mentee is unlikely.
But online? That really reduces a lot of difficulty to begin with. You aren’t having to deal with some of the little things that are barriers. It’s just two people communicating, you don’t have to worry about the things that are sometimes a difficulty in person
I think people have forgotten that generation gap friendships are good thing. They’re never common, because overcoming that initial span where you need to have some reason to get together and become acquaintances first is a doozie. That’s why friends from school (including college) are often very deep. You have enforced togetherness lol. You have a structure where you don’t have to manufacture a reason to know each other and get together. By the time you’re out of school, those formative bonds are in place to build on as you age together.
But it’s a good thing when it happens. Diversity of friends in any way is a good thing. If we’re only friends with people exactly like us, are we actually good friends at all? When our friends are different from us in some way or many ways, we can enrich each other all the more.
So, nah, y’all are both grown-ass men. Nothing weird at all.