One of my colleagues from college married a former student of his
 

I found this out via facebook.

I went to grad school with this guy. We were acquaintances, but never really friends. Ideal facebook friends, in other words.

He got a job teaching at a college. In his first year he would have taught her when she was a freshman. She's two years removed from being his student. He's 12 years older than her.

There's nothing immoral about this, but am I wrong in thinking this is just a taaaaad bit creepy?

I mean, if they were doing this the right/moral way, they wouldn't have had any romantic involvement with each other whatsoever two years ago. Meaning they had two years to decide they wanted to elevate the mentor/mentoree relationship to something intimate. Then they had to get engaged and married. All in two years. That's it. Two years.

Whatevs. They're happy, I guess. Just... oh who am I kidding. That's gross. That's ****ing gross. It's weird and disgusting and I don't like it. Blech.

EDIT: Not that this matters since the conversation is dying down now, but to be clear my issue with the relationship is NOT about age. She could go marry a 100-year old incontinent man. I don't give a shit. My issue is that there was very likely stuff going on between them while he was still her professor. No, it's not a big deal to me. It's just off-putting and sets off the alarm.

The next person who posts, "there's nothing wrong with that my dad was 34 years older than my mom..." gets a big fat **** you.

More power to him unless she's a gold digging bitch of a home wrecker.

Give it 10 years before you decide how you feel about it. A childhood/HS friend of mine became a teacher and ended up marrying one of his students. He wasn't 12 years older but he was at least 24 or 25 and she was 18. They did everything right in terms of not dating until she was of age and out of his classroom. They've been married 15 years now and have a couple of kids. So while it was a tad strange at first, it worked for them.

They met when they were both adults.

I don't see a problem.

There are ethical issues involved with dating students when you're a professor. The temptation for preferential treatment is too great to just let it slide or go by the honor code. Most deans will agree with that.

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I got confused.

I don't see the ethical problem here if she isn't his student. There is no temptation for preferential treatment if she isn't in his classroom.

That's pretty gross, in general. Not as a rule, or anything, but it's kind of a red flag for creepdom.

(Sometimes I kind of worry that one of my favorite professors was skeeving on myself and a few other classmates, and he's got a younger-by-a-decade wife, but I don't really want to try to reconcile that with how rad he was otherwise.)

Why do you care what other people do when you don't even know them very well, it has nothing to do with you, and it doesn't hurt you in any way?

And if you don't like it, why would you waste time digging around to find it in the first place, and then continue on with it talking shit on the person in a 3rd party forum?

Drama queen..??

I would think that one in your position would be less inclined to judge others based on their relationships or sexual matters. It's not like he was chasing some high school skirt nor has he been her teacher for 2 years.

It seems very unlikely to me that these two wouldn't have been porking on the side when she was his student. In those two years she was doing her grad work (in the same field) at Texas-Austin while he was back teaching in Iowa. Meaning in order to foster a relationship in between breaks for the both of them, they must have decided to be romantically involved before then. Because part of those two years also involved planning out a wedding.

Okay, now I sound like the creep for being nosy in the details, but I'm not the only one from my graduating class who knew this guy who thinks this is a little funky. A few of my old friends even called me up to say "WTF?"

I'm not saying someone's a bad person for dating younger people, I'm just saying it's super tenuous territory if approached with anything but the utmost caution to avoid ****ed up power dynamics and coercion.

And the "you're a tranny so you have to excuse people who take advantage of others or leverage their power to creep on people under their authority" line is serious horseshit. Having a body that made me want to die has nothing to do with "sexual matters" in the first place, though it certainly complicated the shit out of those.

LMAO I was waiting for this post to show up

So you get more pleasure out of that, too? Interesting hobby you've got there.

You said that is pretty gross... I'm sure people have felt the same way about you and your situation. That said, I'm sure people judged you based on who you are and how you felt. That is what I am comparing... not the fact that you had your op and all that. This guy has affection for a lady and she obviously returned those feelings. Who are you to judge that?

These two people care for one another and made a commitment to build a relationship. Why should they ignore how the feel because society tells them that its kind of icky?