In-Universe Dialogue on Relationships with Age Gaps

How to write what other characters have to say when dealing with the Official Couple having a large age gap? In my story, the couple are a guy and a girl. The guy looks like he's thirty-five years old with the girl being sixteen years old. The guy is actually is as old as the girl because of an experiment that he volunteered for, with the accelerated aging as a side effect. He uses an alias throughout most of the story and he and the girl were wed in their home country.

For the backstory, the country where the couple came from made it easier on relationships between men and women with large age gaps, specifically adult men and teenage girls. This was the result of the winners of the country's elections that had happened the year before. They made a law where it will be no crime for couples with big age gaps provided paperwork is done first. This includes everything from dating to sex.

How is this monitored? The party that rules the country has everyone and everywhere bugged. One reason for that is to make sure if the relationship is a proper one, where the older partner isn't taking advantage of the younger partner or if they couple had done the paperwork. It will be responded by use of the State Sec.

For the story proper, the guy and girl are married and have done the paperwork before tying the knot. However, how to write dialogue where they have explain it to people when they're in other countries that would frown upon such an idea?

edited 11th Jan '18 7:37:47 AM by HallowHawk

Regardless of what they look like, why are sixteen year olds married? And depending on what you mean by decriminalizing age gaps, why would their home country have decriminalized statutory rape? Speaking of which, depending on where they go in the world they could just be in for social disapproval (sixteen and thirty-five is sadly legal in a lot of places) or they could be in for jail time (it's also not in lots of places).

Think about the answers to those questions and you'll have the beginning of an explanation.

It's only the lead female who actually took up the offer of the law. To add on how this law works, consent ages are eighteen and sixteen for males and females respectively. This is enforced on all administrative regions.

As I pointed out before, there's paperwork that has to be done before a relationship between people with wide age gaps. If it's say, a male teacher confessing to a female teenage student, both of them have to go an office run by the State Sec to do paperwork to consolidate themselves as boyfriend and girlfriend. Likewise if they want to get married. Does it stop there? No. If the two want to get it on, there's paperwork for that too.

This is only for those who wish to do such a thing. If a man in his thirties confessed to a teenage girl and the teenage girl refused, the older man cannot press it further. He'll have the State Sec to answer to if he does so. Same if he coerces the girl because the State Sec will gather evidence about how that happened by way of bugs. Another benefit of the paperwork process, and by extension, relationships with age gaps, being voluntary is this will save the trouble of putting up with financial problems, as well as teenage pregnancy.

Same process too for same-sex couples because homosexuality is legal there.

Now then, allow me to ask this: which countries do legalize relationships with big age gaps and which countries don't?

As for the couple, they're not together all the time for their relationship will be a compromise with their respective occupations. The lead male is an agent for the State Sec and the lead female is a guard working in a facility that functions as both a psychiatric hospital and a prison for certain types of criminals (dissidents who resorted to violence that surrendered and those who you'd consider the type to commit actual statutory rape).

Why the difference? Why make age of consent younger for women than for men? Because the result of that is legalizing sex with teenage girls while keeping it so that men have to wait until they're adults.

You didn't answer the question. Why is the state legalizing statutory rape? In fact you've just given me far more questions like, why is the state condoning a student/teacher relationship, which is even worse. He's not only a lot older, he's got power over her. If such a relationship were to exist, he would need to lose his job, if not go to jail. Even in places with ages of consent that are under eighteen, this relationship would be and should be illegal. Hell, even if the girl were eighteen this relationship would be, and should be, illegal; it's an abuse of power.

Also "male teacher confessing to a female student". You know that's automatically sexual harassment, right? Why would the state be trying to legalize this and normalize it.

...You realize that "big age gaps" aren't the problem, right? In most of the First World, once someone is legally an adult they can consent to sex with any other legal adult that they wish. A relationship between an eighteen year old and a thirty-five year old might be frowned on (and rightly so much of the time) but it's not illegal.

Some places, sadly, set the bar lower; there's quite a few places where it's sixteen, which means that teenagers may engage in sex with legal adults before they're legal adults themselves. Which is creepy as hell honestly, and any adult who goes trolling a high school for a date probably needs help, but that's beside the point.

Regardless a country where adults can legally have sex with sixteen year olds isn't exactly rare in the modern world. The only thing you've done differently is add a lot of paperwork for reasons I can't comprehend (as well as trying to legalize student/teacher relationships which is just no).

State Sec? So it's a dictatorship then? And why is a sixteen year old girl working at a prison for rapists. That's...well that's a remarkably bad hiring decision to say the least.

It sounds like a country created for Ephebophiles, if it is mean to be a dystopia created for Ephebophiles , then, it looks fine.

If it sounds like a reasonable place to you, well....

edited 12th Jan '18 11:37:03 AM by KazuyaProta

In the end it comes down to what you want to make, if the aim is to create a setting that’s a authoritarian hellhole built to cater to pedophiles then this sounds like a solid way to do that, but if you’re aim isn’t a setting that horrifies the reader with its abusive, all powerful, aggressively pro-pedo government, than it’s not going to work.