A nationally syndicated advice column was asked point-blank whether a 23-year-old man should pursue a coworker who just graduated high school — and the columnist couldn't bring himself to say no.
The letter writer, signing as "Dating Do or Don't," told "Asking Eric" he was dumped by his fiancée and now has his eye on an 18-year-old at work he described as "a young girl" who is "cute and seems very nice." His own friends warned the five-year age gap and education gap — he has a college degree, she has a high school diploma — make her too young. Their advice: date around, don't get locked in.
Eric's response? He noticed the letter writer called her a "young girl" and suggested that instinct is worth listening to — but only to recommend keeping things "casual." He wrote: "Differences in ages between adults aren't inherently problematic." His chief concern wasn't a grown man sniffing around a teenager fresh out of high school; it was that the guy might be on the rebound.
Both NJ.com and The Oregonian ran the identical syndicated column. NJ.com framed the headline passively — "Should he pursue an 18-year-old?" — as though the answer requires deliberation. The Oregonian was slightly more candid, headlining it as a question about whether a "rebound relationship with an 18-year-old" would be "a solid choice." Neither outlet saw fit to flag the obvious: a 23-year-old college graduate targeting a high school graduate at the workplace isn't a gray area requiring nuance.
This is the same mainstream press that spent years labeling defenders of traditional marriage as extremists, that treats parental objections to gender ideology in schools as bigotry, that frames anyone who questions the sexual revolution's body count as backward. But a man who calls an 18-year-old a "young girl" while plotting to date her? That gets a thoughtful weigh-the-options response and a gentle suggestion to take it slow.
The letter writer's own friends had more moral clarity than the paid expert. They told him the age and education gaps were real problems. They told him not to get locked in. Eric's contribution was to strip the moral dimension entirely and reduce it to a timing problem — don't rebound, take your time, date around.
The question isn't whether two legal adults can date. The question is why the institutions that lecture Americans about toxic masculinity and patriarchal power structures go silent when the scenario actually fits their own definitions. A man fresh off a broken engagement, shopping for a teenager at the office, and the best the advice industrial complex can muster is "keep it casual for the time being."
The culture that spent a decade telling you traditional family formation is oppressive just can't find the words to tell a 23-year-old to leave the high school graduate alone.
