How do I deal with a huge age difference?

My friend is twenty-one and I'm fourteen. Is this bad? We've been friends for I'd say a month and a half, which to me seems very fast for a friendship to develop trust and a good bond, but honestly it feels like we've been friends for a year or something.





I don't know if my mind is deciding to mess with me as it does with most adolescent teenagers who are confused with almost every choice they need to make, so right now I feel as if I'm crazy thinking I can have such a close bond so quickly with someone with such a great age difference. Also the fact that this person is also male is a bad thing, no? If it was a girl, people probably wouldn't care. But age and gender matters when people are being close minded and jumping to conclusions. I trust him and I trust that he would never do anything to harm me physically or emotionally.





Is it a bad thing for me to be hanging around him, or a bad thing for him to be hanging around me? We talk a lot and usually have a lot of fun joking around, etc., but I always think that the age difference will be something bad.





To me, age is the number of years you've been living and it doesn't have to do with anything sometimes. But then again, younger people usually are more naive so they don't make the best choices sometimes.





Am I making a right or a wrong choice?





I know worried mothers will be saying things such as ';Oh no, you're much too young to be in contact with someone of that age. You think you know everything, but you know absolutely nothing!'; as well as other comments like ';This man is only trying to trick you! Everyone over the age of 18 is a bad person!';





Your opinion on this situation?


(Also, it isn't just me thinking about this. He was the one who brought it up in conversation.)





NOTE: We do NOT have any sexual relations, relations having to do with love, etc. Neither of us have any interest in each other in that way.How do I deal with a huge age difference?
It depends where you are living. In some cultures, it's quite normal for an adult male to take a younger male under his wing and mentor them. If everyone around you is advising you against this relationship, you should listen.How do I deal with a huge age difference?
If you dont have any sexual relationship like you say, then it's NOT a bad thing at all. (: I'm 18 but when I met my best friends, I was 16 and she was 29. (: We're great friends. Nothing wrong with that at all!
(1) If age difference bothers you too much, just leave your friend.


(2) If you enjoy his company, if he's better than other guys, it's your call again, then stick around.


(3) If he's fun to hang out with, no harm in this.


(4) If you're cool to hand out with, he's gonna get more happier with you.


(5) Don't lose your simplicity in such understanding.


(6) Talk about what's on the computers, movies, studies, love, beautiful people etc.
yeh as long as its purely platonic it's fine, I used to hang around loadsa older people when i was a kid. Helped me mature and they all took care of me when I needed it.





Just make sure this guy hasn't got a hidden agenda and all your friends know about him too yeh?
Are you guys more than just friends?
No one even bothered answering your question. Personally if feel the exact same way as you. When I was 12 I had a friend that was 6 years old. We were best friends practically. After I moved I came back, and she was 11 and I was 18. It felt much more different, but yet the only thing that stopped me from having fun with her like we did in the past was my state of mind. I felt too ';old'; to be her friend, and didn't want to be judged for being her friend. Age is just a number. But in society we are forced to include our age in many things, and it interferes sometimes with way of life. Like a 14 year old and a 21 year old seen together might seem terrible to some people thinking it's just not possible to be friends without something lurking in the dark.





Maybe our society can be a better place if their was less emphasis on age. Why can't friendships, love, any type of human relationship be because of who you are and not how old you are. Why are we grouped in ages. One day you go to bed you're a child(17) and wake up an adult(18). One day you're 17, and you're considered a child, and the next day you're 18 and crushing on a 16 year old and considered a pedophile. There's so much worry for teenagers, and the treatment of teenagers like they don't understand. It's wrong to group everyone under the age of 18 as naive. As if adults are never naive. A naive person means inexperienced in life. Is anyone from 18-21 any more experienced in life? Not really. You're not experienced in life until you truly have a life, such as permanent job, taxes, bills, and etc...things that make you an adult.





It's hard for me to give you advice, cause I'm 19, and I feel the same way. But if I had to give myself advice, I would say, you got to start thinking beyond the number, and start living a quality life with people for being people and not for how long you lived. It's also not right and naive to group people by who lived the longest to who lived the shortest. Who cares what others think, because sometimes what you think is more pure than what they think.





And if other people think dirty things about what a 21 year old might be doing with a 14 year old when in reality nothing is happening, than they are the creeps for imagining it.
Just remember, AGE IS JUST A NUMBER, If you connect, you connect, whether or not it is sexually. When I was 18 I had a 28 year old friend. He worked at my favorite bowling alley. Friends or more than friends, if the fire, passion, and love is there, you could be friends with an 80 year old. Don't let anyone tell you different, okay?