Older Subs with Younger Doms Part Three: What About LGBTQ Relationships?

If you missed the first two parts you can find them here:
Older Subs with Younger Doms Part One

Older Subs with Younger Doms Part Two

Last month I posted a two-part blog post about the older sub/younger Dom dynamic and I was promptly called out in comments for making it heterocentric. My examples focused on male Doms and female subs and most of the discussion did too.

The complaint is understandable since most of the time I make more of an attempt to recognize all pairings or speak more generally. As I’ve said repeatedly, I do tend to default to M/F relationships here for several reasons. One is that my current dynamics are mostly M/F.

The other is that I write M/F romance books. A lot of my readers here have migrated over from my fiction and most of them are more interested in M/F dynamics.

Despite that, most of what I discuss isn’t especially targeted to one gender pairing over another and should be useful in any dynamic, at least that’s the goal. Pronouns are simply for convenience in a lot of my posts.

But in this case, I had a specific reason for focusing mostly on the M/F dynamic. Unfortunately, the part that explained that reason was left on the cutting room floor when I realized both posts were way too long.

I went into edit mode to shorten them by about a thousand words each. I know I’m wordy, but it was too much. It wasn’t until I got the comment and looked back through the article that I realized that it had been cut.

So, my apologies for that.

I had intended the topic to be just two posts but since that comment brought the problem to my attention I decided to go ahead and do a third rather than re-edit the others. LGBTQ relationships really should at least be addressed anyway, even though I don’t think this topic applies to those dynamics as much.

Here’s the thing… the older sub/younger Dom dynamic can obviously happen in any kind of pairing. Gender is irrelevant, when we’re talking about ages. However, it’s only in the M/F category that it seems to be a huge issue.

In other words, I think it’s mostly a hetero problem. I believe this is a society issue. The way our society is built now and the way it was constructed in the past casts hetero relationships in a certain mold.

Relationships that pair younger men with older women specifically seem to be mocked because it surprises people or feels off to them somehow.  The pattern they’ve been presented with most of their lives says that in an M/F relationship the woman should be younger. Anything else just feels odd to people.

For instance, you never see a woman called a cougar when she dates a younger woman. It is only with a younger man that this seems to upset the apple cart—for all the reasons I listed in part one and two.

In the few movies/shows where we have lesbian couples of differing ages it’s almost never done as a comedy. It’s not treated like a joke. It’s just two women, and one happens to be older. There’s almost no emphasis put on age at all in most of them, even when there is obviously a gap.

You see M/M relationships represented in shows or movies a little more often. But the only references I’ve seen to age in these dynamics is an older partner worrying they don’t have enough energy to keep up with the younger one. These worries are usually just met with reassurance that it doesn’t matter and then they go on.

Of course, these are regular romance, not kink, but kink dynamics do often, to a certain extent, mimic or include romantic relationships.

Throughout history hetero relationships tended to be the main dynamic and often the only one that was even spoken about. Most of what was written down and retained for us showed M/F because anything else was often taboo—or, as we are finding out now, misunderstood.

Many pieces of art or literature that have been recovered over the years were originally described as showing women together or men together as ‘good friends’. They jumped right over the obvious explanation—that they were gay relationships—and explained it away in any way they could.

So when we look at marriage or romance historically we are presented with mostly hetero examples. Those examples have been used as a pattern for how relationships are meant to be. And most of them showed an older man with a slightly younger woman.

This blueprint for romance copied right over when it came to M/F kink relationships. Add to that pressure women feel from men (maybe not their specific man but from the wide world of men in general) to look young, to look attractive and you get a heterocentric issue that just doesn’t seem to crop up as much with same sex pairings when it translates over to kink.

Some of it could be that people don’t tend to put that kind of pressure on their own gender. Maybe, in part, it’s because people who share a gender know better how to ease those fears and concerns better. I have my own theory, which I’ll share at the end of this post.

Either way, it’s rare that I see an older female sub with a younger female Dom worrying about being too old, or worrying that their Dom will get tired of them because they are older— and I know of several such relationships. Yes, now and then there might be flashes of insecurity, but they don’t become huge relationship problems.

It’s rare that I see a younger female Dom reject a female sub for being too old. It’s rare that I see a female sub reject a female Dom for being too young. Women just tend to have different priorities when looking for compatibility. A woman being a few years older isn’t going to turn a female Dom off in most cases.

At one point I had four female subs and three of them were older than me by a fairly significant amount. I did, at times, feel a little insecure being their Dom at a much younger age.

But life experience makes up for a lot and I knew that I had been through more than most people at my age. I was often told I came off as wise beyond my years, so I didn’t let being younger hinder me.

I never cared what other people thought. I was never embarrassed that my girls were older. I never worried they wouldn’t take me seriously as a Dom because they were older. It was just a non-issue most of the time.

But I have seen male Doms who seemed extremely uncomfortable with playing with older subs. I have seen male Doms reject a female sub because she was older. I’ve seen subs get dumped because a younger, prettier sub came along.

But this is probably a small segment of the population.

Believe it or not, it’s with the subs that most of the rejection takes place. I’ve seen many female subs reject a male Dom for being younger or even just looking too young. Most subs I’ve talked to who are looking for a hetero dynamic will say they prefer the Dom to be the same age or older.

Especially with those looking for a Daddy Dom. They simply are uncomfortable with the idea of submitting to someone younger than them. Again, a lot of this is how our society is structured. The men are supposed to be older. It’s ingrained in us.

A major reason for it can be tracked all the way back to childhood. Like most little girls I was always told that girls mature faster than boys growing up. I think most girls are given this idea.

It seems true because we see boys get away with a lot of bad behavior that girls are reprimanded for– because they are just being boys. As if they can’t help themselves…

More is expected from girls as they get older, in all aspects. So, you do have a situation where young girls aren’t interested in boys their own age because they seem irresponsible and childish. They start looking at older men to find someone who equals their maturity.

None of this is healthy, obviously, and the problem comes from how our society is built. Girls aren’t naturally given magical maturity at a certain age. They get it because it’s expected from them. It’s demanded in a way that it isn’t from boys.

Once it’s in their head that older men are more mature it becomes natural to prefer them. Unfortunately, it also makes it easier for some older men to prey on them. Even when evidence shows that they aren’t actually more mature because they’re older, the preference is still set.

When a woman says, “I like older men.” everyone chimes in with “Me too!” When a guy says he likes older women you get crickets, laughing, or maybe a joke about cougars.

Even with book covers I hear many women say they prefer a man with gray at the temples, or complain when a Dom on the cover looks too young. With my Daddy Krampus book, I got several comments that he was a bit young looking for their tastes (He looks about twenty-five) even though the character is immortal so it’s irrelevant.

And again, these are things I’ve almost never seen with F/F dynamics.

I’m not personally familiar with any M/M kink relationships where the Dom is younger, so maybe problems do crop up there. I can’t speak to that. There’s not really a way to research this super narrow topic so I can only write about my own experiences and what I’ve seen.

That being said… I do know a lot of male subs, and some are gay. I don’t typically see the low self-esteem issues and insecurities around age with them that I see in women. I don’t see many men obsessing about every age line and worrying a Dom won’t be attracted to them if they have a few gray hairs.

I’m sure this does happen, of course. Any time you make gender generalizations people will wave examples of why you’re wrong. I just haven’t seen it personally.

So, from my experience and what I’ve seen, the issue of younger Doms is more of a hetero problem. And that’s why I focused more on those relationships specifically.

My closing thought is this: We have no ‘programming’ when it comes to relationships that are gay or nonbinary. There is no pattern set for what these dynamics should look like whether they are romance or kink based.

We don’t have centuries of history telling us who should be older and who should be younger in those pairings. In a way it makes it easier to just do whatever works for you.

Hetero relationships have been the public-facing norm for families since way back. Because of this, those relationships are locked into a set structure that can be hard to break out of.

When your relationship starts away from that pattern you have more opportunity to set your own boundaries and that, in my opinion, is why you don’t see this problem in same gender relationships as often.

I would love to hear from people with different experiences. Or people who have younger Doms either in comments or e-mail.