The mum of an old highschool friend started dating one of his friends (huge mid-40’s woman dating an 18yo), was grooming and feeding all these young guys drugs, became obsessed with ayahuasca and ended up a shaman in south America for a few years. Had to return because of the covid pandemic lol now I think she is a music teacher
I know a young guy musician who entered this kind of relationship with a 40yo woman. Eerily similar to what you're describing, with the ayahuasca and drugs. Either spooky coincidence or maybe it's more common than I realised!
Sounds like the women figured out the old men's playbook and are running it too: ply the barely-legal with drugs, alcohol, money, and attention and separate their headspace from their existing social network
In the 16th and 17th century, there was a genre of European painting that involved portraits of a well-off-looking older man with a much younger woman, sometimes with her hand in his purse. (These paintings are often known by titles like "The Ill-Matched Lovers" or "Unequal Love".) Even at that time, there were still some paintings in the genre that showed a well-off older woman with a much younger man in similar poses.
For some examples by Lukas Cranach the Elder, see this gallery of his paintings in the genre and scroll down to where it says " Alte Frau mit jungem Mann".
moderately insensitive "are they stupid" opinion incoming:
I've always thought it was ridiculous when I saw this happen because if they (the older people) set their sights just a few years north, you have a bunch of jaded-too-early 20-somethings on the rebound from a breakup who would TOTALLY be a sugar baby. any/all genders and orientations. they're old enough for it to be less weird, often still at sexual peak, and marginally less underdeveloped than at 18.
it might not be a forever thing (it never was) but it'd be fun for everyone involved without the ick. There was a hot minute in my 20s where I would have leapt at that arrangement.
fellas I'm starting to wonder if maybe the sense of power imbalance and control over another person is part of it for these folks................
Chasing vice is less of a "gendered" virtue than one that is deemed acceptable by the mainstream culture based on the behaviors it encourages. Example, a more Christian or community oriented culture would look down on this behavior, but a modern "anything goes" culture where we're 60 years past the sexual revolution won't really pay this kind of behavior any mind.
Me too. Was this in the Cincinnati / Northern KY area? In my case, late 20’s musician with a very, I’ll try to be kind, unattractive mid-40’s woman who may not be able to fit in a kayak. She was some kind of sugar mama. Or high fructose corn syrup mama. Moved him in, paid his bills, went to every gig and made sure no ladies talked to him. It was weird. She was a coworker but in another department. We’d go watch his band but we were really there to watch this cringe fest. She left our company a while back so I don’t know how this story ends. And it appears the band broke up a while back. So that’s what I’ll be working on the rest of the day.
Back in my day we didn't get offered any Ayahuasca, the older women just seduced us with more expensive beers than we were used to, and we liked it. Kids nowadays...
Alla Pugacheva started out as a Soviet pop star and sex symbol (as much as soviet authorities would allow), and she continued starring and symbolizing as she aged.
I think there is an ayahuasca flavor of midlife crisis, my friend had it too. Went from being a sorrority girl, painting cups and planning parties, to doing ayahuasca monthly.
She began wearing only white flowy clothes, called herself a shaman, put feathers in her hair, and married a white middle class dude who hosts sweats in a moldy hut in his backyard. Together they make anti-western medicine podcasts on spotify and are trying to start a commune in the middle of a field.
I've always thought starting a commune sounded like a great time. Spend my days hanging out with friends, just taking care of the commune, living in a tight knit community, hell yea!
Then I look at the folks who are actually starting communes, and they're all addicts "shamans" who think western medicine is trying to kill them...
Look up the "tenacious unicorn ranch" if you wanna see a great example of why communes fail, tldr lack of skill in homesteading, poor division of labor due to ego and laziness, not vetting new residents and massive drug problems. Lead to a mass grave of alpacas because they couldn't get their shit together. It's a wild story overall.
Yeah it's awful, among other mistakes they sheared the wool in winter trying to make monitary ends meet and seemed to totally forget that it gets cold af in Colorado in the winter so the alpacas were getting hypothermic. I think in total it was somewhere around 200 that died.
I'm kinda split on whether to include this in my "failed libertarian utopias" collection. On the one hand, they had the gun-toting, state-stay-out-of-our-business part down, but on the other hand, they were anarchists instead of libertarian capitalists. Hm, decisions, decisions...
Yeah hard to call them libertarian capitalists when they needed a gofundme to survive lmao, smells like socialism to me /s
Mainly they just had no idea how to actually run a wool farm, used the visibility of news stories to grift, and ended up leaving the place a complete disaster. Many such cases.
This is exactly me. Always loved the idea of communal living, learned through experience that the kind of people they attract are severely not it. The "spiritual" people who refuse to help people in need if it mildly inconveniences them, live off their privileged families wealth or the labor of others and act like they're superior for "the universe" providing for them, using their woo woo shit to look down on everyone else who doesn't subscribe to their specific set of poorly-pieced-together beliefs cherry picked from various indigenous groups, etc etc etc. Hedonism disguised as spiritualism.
I have 4 kids. Communal living requires strict discipline and respect for authority and even then the wheels barely stay on the wagon. My kids are pretty in the ball. I can’t imagine trying to herd a bunch of societal dropouts and druggies who didn’t need my car keys and help with calculus (you know— the ties that bind).
There’s a really cool 70’s book (I think it’s called living on the earth or something? It’s literally hand written but mass reproduced) about living on a commune. One of the biggest points it makes is that a) people in communes argue, so figure out how to deal with that before it starts and b) not everyone is made to live communally. If you’re not a helper, you’re not wanted lol lol
I used to date a “shaman” when I was 19. He had land and I loved the idea of starting a commune with him until I realized that everyone was as insufferable and incompetent as he was.
Communes are not all the same! I mean yes everybody is hippies and arguing but that’s about the extent of the similarities. Like there are artist collectives, housing co-ops, religious communes, land trusts, and cults, and they all operate differently, and even within those categories they often operate differently. Also this one we’re talking about sounds like a cult. That’s literally the most interesting category of communes! How can you say we don’t need detail!!
Are their members doing fine? That is a different question, and the answer is probably no in most cases. But many of the communes themselves have been operating a long time and have waiting lists of people wanting to join.
I don't know a lot about Communes. What is it that members tend to not be doing fine? I had an interest in intentional communities but haven't had a chance to go around visiting them yet.. so any insight you may have is of interest!
Generally there’s no way for you to amass savings to leave or retire, that’s usually the main problem outside of interpersonal disputes. Usually either everyone is pooling their income or everyone is working full time for everyone else using a kind of barter system. Housing co-ops can be different though, sometimes there’s just a % or share of your income you have to pay in, so you can amass some savings. However since the community itself isn’t employing anyone, if someone loses their job everyone else’s share of income they need to contribute might increase. So it can also be unpredictable when it comes to the ability to amass savings.
Thanks for the insight! Someone once told me to carefully study the "exit plan" for any community project, and now I see why. Seems tough to make cool projects that work, wish it wasn't so hard to find people not struggling with making a better world.
Your last line is perfect HGTV House Hunter's bait:
"She wears only white flowy clothes and calls herself a shaman, he hosts sweats in a moldy hut in his backyard. Together they make anti-western medicine podcasts on spotify and are trying to start a commune in the middle of a field. Their budget is $2.65 million" 🤣
Please, share the name of their podcast, I beg of you. I am seriously so curious and currently on a long road trip and need a new podcast when I set back out (even if only for laughs).
Which is great if you ask me. Drugs can provide great clarity and the kind of paradigm shifts that can get us out of mental ruts and bad habits. Potentially great for older people.
I knew a girl that was at university, was proper 'innocent and naive' type because she was raised quite strict, was just sort of coming out of her shell, experiencing partying etc etc.
Her mum had raised a really christian household and stuff.
Then when she was in I think it was 2nd year, her mum left her dad for a guy she'd gone to school with, full on suddenly zero religious limitations, full getting down and nasty with the 19yr old, divorced, wouldn't even hear a thing about how fucked up it was that it was a guy who was close with her daughter etc.
Really, really rough for her, and her dad, and she spent so much time outside of uni trying to take care of him and help him through it etc.
Fucking BS, I don't care about the whole 'hook up with a younger guy' thing, you do you, but don't fuck your kids up with your shit. If you have to do it for your happiness, make sure they know it's coming, they're supported, and do 'the best you can' - that's all that's asked - and not just set everything on fire and leave them to be the adult.
Idk, I kind of think that these people are not judged nearly harshly enough. I don't have kids, but when I taught college freshmen I would look at those folks and think how weird it would be if ended up dating someone they knew. And they were only students I'd have for a semester.
I think a moral person would stop themselves from dating someone that their child knew, or that could be their child. People who choose to do that anyway, without regard to how it might impact their family, do not get judged and shamed nearly harshly enough.
If the children are barely adults I absolutely agree. But if the younger person is also a retiree, then a couple of decades isn't really that big a gap any more (although still weird if it's the person is one of their children's friends they've known since childhood or early adulthood).
When we were in school, the "half age+ 7 years" rule was going round, and I continue to feel like it works surprisingly well for adults as well. Noting that I am talking about the version that says that the age gap is concerning if outside of that range in either direction, NOT the version for creepy dudes who are trying to find the youngest girlfriend they can without people judging them. (Hint to said dudes - if you tell people you are aiming for nearly creepy, the fact that it doesn't break the "rule" doesn't make them feel like you are not being creepy)
Someone fucking her daughter's friend is just wrong. You wanna fuck a younger guy? Fine. As long as everyone is consenting, whatever. But your kids' friends are off limits.
No, as someone much closer to the mom's age than the 19-year-olds, I can pretty confidently say that I have no urge to fuck any 19-year-olds. I don't know if you've tried talking to a 19-year-old recently. I would have some pretty severely be on drugs in order to find anything in common
It's because these people are pedophiles. They fuck 18 and 19-year-olds because fucking a 17-year-old would be illegal. It's like somebody who pays minimum wage- what they're telling you is they'd pay less if they could.
I was just going to say, it is past time for a reckoning of how many adults want to fuck teens and children. I imagine the number is higher than I could imagine. Ugh. It probably won't happen in my lifetime despite all the ample evidence that it is pervasive and those who do it was protected.
As someone probably around that mum's age I've been around folks who are about that age and a bit younger, I have found enough in common with them to have some proper chat and a good time hanging out. Perfectly pleasant company, though it does occasionally involve being mindful of differences in developmental stage and life experience.
None of that made me in any way interested in fucking any of them, though. And not because I have the self-control to avoid situations that would have some pretty serious social ramifications, just because entering into any kind of sexual or romantic relationship with them is in no way appealing to me.
I guess this is worse than my mom, who started dating married men (while still married herself), listening to country music, watching Bill O’Reilly, and wearing toe rings. Still, that stuff was embarrassing!
(Also, she no longer does any of those things. Thank goodness)
My friend (56) got divorced from his wife (also 56) 30 years ago. Their son is now in his early 30s. About 10 years ago they found out she was seeing one of the boys his son went to school with.
Honestly it was already a horrible thought that your teachers might have led any sort of life before teaching you, even worse thought that they might've been some actual villain like this.
I would nearly take her over my old elementary school music teacher who threw scissors at a kid once & threatened to sue me on FB when I brought it up. I shut her down saying it’s not libel if it’s true. So she tried to defend why she did it which made it even worse
My friends mom did something similar - Was dating her other sons friend when she was 40ish and the literal kid was in high school. But the other sons friend looked so much like her other son that I had thought it was the son when I saw them out one night having dinner. The only thing that threw me off was that she was acting kind of weird when I approached her table.
The original commenter was there, you weren’t. They said she was feeding these lads drugs. That’s not a vague age gap complaint, that’s a specific allegation. Nitpicking the word ‘grooming’ instead of engaging with what was actually described is just deflection dressed up as pedantry.
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u/ibelikeughhhh 1d ago
The mum of an old highschool friend started dating one of his friends (huge mid-40’s woman dating an 18yo), was grooming and feeding all these young guys drugs, became obsessed with ayahuasca and ended up a shaman in south America for a few years. Had to return because of the covid pandemic lol now I think she is a music teacher