The Jailbait Wait

As good a 17th birthday present as any.

"The only reason to wait a month for sex is if the girl's 17 years 11 months old."

— Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother, "Zip, Zip, Zip"

An older character holds back from romantically/sexually pursuing someone younger until the latter reaches a specific age at which point they're considered an adult. 18 is the most common in American media, but it can be older or younger depending on the jurisdiction and time period.

The reason could be based on local laws, or because the elder of the two wants to stick to a personal moral code. Because even if the legal age of consent is lower than the age of adulthood, it is such a moral gray area that most people in this position prefer to wait until their crush is 100% considered an adult before pursuing them, to eliminate any possible ethical concerns.

The delay is solely and explicitly because of the age of the younger character. Because of the association between marriage and sex, choosing not to attempt marriage until the chosen age also qualifies as an example.

See Jailbait Taboo for discussions of the taboo surrounding an older character dating a character below a certain age.

This page mentions Hollywood Provincialism five thousand times, because most things filmed in Hollywood rely on California's age of consent, 18. In other states, let alone other countries, the age of consent can be a year or two younger, or even much younger. It should also be emphasized that lower ages of consent were created primarily to avoid hassling teenagers for being in relationships with other teenagers, not adults.

Examples often overlap with Age-Gap Romance (two characters in different stages of life, such as adolescence and adulthood), Old Man Marrying a Child (marriage between an elderly man and a very young girl) and Wife Husbandry (an older character is a guardian or parental figure who explicitly grooms the younger character for a later romantic relationship). Contrast Ephebophile (someone who doesn't necessarily wait for legal age) and Precocious Crush (a younger character is sexually/romantically attracted to an older character — usually a one-sided attraction). May relate to Bittersweet 17. A person who's called out on this may use the Not Illegal Justification.

noreallife

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Ancient Magus' Bride: Chise is fifteen at the start of the story while Elias is hundreds of years old or more. However, while Chise is technically his betrothed, Elias does not appear to engage in sexual activity with her.

• A declared example from Gals! are Yamato Kotobuki and Miyu Yamazaki: they have been together since Miyu was 14, but, with Yamato already being a cop at the time, they decided to wait until marriage, and are still of this opinion when they get officially engaged (Miyu is 16, by then). The manga ends with Yamato's family springing a surprise marriage on them.
• Sort of alluded to in Hunter × Hunter, where Hisoka's impatient waiting for Gon and Killua is made out to be a parallel to a hebephile waiting for his target to become legal. His wording of how he can't wait to "pluck the fruit that hasn't ripened yet" doesn't help his case. At first, he was very definitely just looking for good fights and they had potential, but after Greed Island where he unabashedly got a (speech-bubble-covered) erection after they found him bathing and ogled their butts, he's apparently equal-op. Especially remarkable in that Gon was probably aware of this (and Killua definitely was) when Gon produced a plan to win at extreme dodgeball that involved Killua being driven face-first into Hisoka's crotch. (By Gon and a super-sonic dodgeball, so mostly it's just a matter of owch, but still.) Hisoka cackled about it.
• In FAKE, Carol promises to go on a date with Dee in five years (when she turns 18). However, she later cancels because she's going out with Bikky. (The whole thing was a joke meant to tease Bikky in the first place since Dee only has eyes for Ryo.)
• In My Wife is a High School Girl, High-schooler Asami marries her physics teacher Kyosuke, but Asami's father forces them to sign a contract that forbids them from having sex until Asami graduates high school or else the marriage is null-and-void. Incidentally, most of the Unresolved Sexual Tension that results is on Asami's side.
• Happens in Cardcaptor Sakura with the Teacher/Student couple. Note that the student is in fourth grade. A fair bit of a wait. However, there is never any implication of a sexual aspect to the relationship or future, instead going out of the way to suggest a pure, true love, to the point that the teacher buys an engagement ring for her. This was changed in the anime, where the love is completely one-sided by the little girl and is therefore treated as nothing more than a Precocious Crush.
• Happens twice in His and Her Circumstances. The first is comparatively normal, between Maho and Takashi. But the second, between Asaba and his "soul mate" Sakura, is extremely Squicky due to the fact he's been one of her father figures since birth. Made hilarious since he wants to back out because her confession creeped him out and is convincing himself he loves her like a "Father". Unfortunately for him, she's having none of that.
• Occurs in Loveless. College-age Soubi engages in an (as of yet) unconsummated relationship with twelve-year-old Ritsuka. Dialogue suggests that Soubi intends to wait until Ritsuka is of age. Still kinda Squicky, since that doesn't stop Soubi being extremely physically affectionate with the kid. There's also a degree of Fridge Brilliance as to why Soubi's decided to wait (besides the obvious): His teacher Ritsu did not wait the wait, and the resulting sexual abuse left Soubi a very disturbed adult, so Soubi doesn't want to inflict that on Ritsuka, who already has enough problems.
• Dance in the Vampire Bund:
  • We see a variant with the Royal Three. It is not that Dukes Ivanovic, Li, and Rozenmann are waiting for Mina to become legal (she is at least 80 years past that point) so much as for her to become pubescent.
  • A straight example is used later on between Mina and Akira during the former's Lotus-Eater Machine-induced no-supernatural-creatures dream sequence in volume six.
• Inuyasha has several examples.
  • Inverted with Ayame, who is the jailbait who received a Childhood Marriage Promise from Kouga, but she waits until She's All Grown Up to seek him out and take him up on the offer.
  • There's also a bunch of girls Miroku asks out, including one who was 11 years old who he promised to meet again when she was older. Interestingly, after 4 years they meet again and she tries to take him up on the offer noting how she's become much more mature in the time. Miroku is notably shocked (he had forgotten) while Kagome mentally notes how awesome girls in this time period are.
• One Piece:
  • Subverted in the case of Vander Decken IX and Princess Shirahoshi in One Piece. The Stalker with a Crush first noticed Shirahoshi when she was six years old, but Decken had no interest in marrying a six-year-old. One of his crew suggested that if he got a certain magical artifact held by the royal family, he could magically age Shirahoshi to his preferred age and it would be a better, if weird, sort of sped-up of Wife Husbandry. ^note It isn't specified if the magic gadget speeds up mental aging well. Interestingly, he doesn't want to marry her for love, but because Shirahoshi has the power to control Sea Kings (basically sea monsters like giant sharks). Though he does go through the Jail Bait Wait simply because she's kept away from him for all that time.
  • Humorously invoked in the twelfth movie, where Nami is transformed into a child by Ain. Sanji being a Chivalrous Pervert, he is delighted at the idea that he'll get to see her blossom into a young lady again. Zoro is quick to call him gross over that.
• In Chainsaw Man, Ethical Slut Himeno ends up doing this for both Denji and Aki, coming onto them but pulling back after finding out they're minors. In Denji's case she gets herself drunk enough to stop caring and basically kidnaps him, but he doesn't go through with it because of his feelings for Makima.
• In Maoyu, Demon King knew about Yuusha since the day he was born. She loved him since that day and waited until he grew up to ask him to be hers.
• In The Circumstances Leading to Waltraute's Marriage, the Valkyrie Waltraute and the human Jack Elvan are married when he completes her Engagement Challenge. As Jack is a little boy who doesn't even know about sex, Waltraute tells the others she will wait until he comes of age to consummate their marriage. Freyja snarks that such a wait is boring.
• The various SexBots in Yuria 100 Shiki are programmed not to have sex with anyone under the age of 18 (although they have a pretty strict idea about what counts as sex). Since they become "imprinted" on the first man they have sex with, Julia decides to wait for her chosen "owner" to come of age.
• Interestingly invoked in High School D×D, where Issei instates this for Koneko. While Koneko's exact age isn't known and it's quite possible she's many times Issei's age, she still has an underdeveloped, immature body, meaning a pregnancy would be disastrous for her and the child at her current size, and Issei doesn't want to risk it any more than she does.
• Junsui Adolescence is about a Teacher/Student Romance involving a School Nurse and a high school girl. It's clear at the end Matsumoto wants to have sex with Nanao but she decides to wait longer.
• Used sinisterly in Yuureitou. Marube makes it clear he is waiting for his eighteen-year-old daughter to turn twenty so he can rape her.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, McGillis Fareed is betrothed to his friend's nine-year-old sister. While she definitely seems excited about this, to his credit McGillis doesn't seem very pervy about this, basically acting polite and stoic as usual.
• The marriage between 50-year-old Steven Steel and 14-year-old Lucy Pendleton in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run is treated as Squick by most characters, until it's revealed that Steven only married her that early to save her from being sold into prostitution, and they're just friends.
• City Hunter:
  • Inverted: Ryo doesn't have the patience for it (he admitted it the one time he tried to raise a girl to fall in love with him), but there are a few little girls waiting for their eighteenth birthday before trying and jumping him...
  • Subverted by Umibozu: upon learning of Miki, Ryo accused him of both this and Wife Husbandry, but he didn't do it. At least not on purpose.
• Twenty-year-old Amira of the historical manga A Bride's Story is very fond of her husband, the twelve-year-old Karluk. While they share hugs and sleep in the same bed and generally spend quality time together, she's clearly anxious for him to grow quite a bit older before they move on to certain marital duties.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Played for Laughs when pro heroine Pixiebob "calls dibs" on Midoriya, Bakugo, Iida, and Todoroki "in three years".
  • Upon meeting her for the first time, Mineta claims that he looks forward to meeting Eri in 10 years, (even though he would be 25-26 while Eri would be 16 at that point).
• In Puppy Lovers, 20-year-old Eri initially tries to discourage her 13-year-old cousin Souta's Precocious Crush on her, but ends up falling for him too. When they finally decide to stay together no matter what happens, Eri's mom makes them agree not to have sex until Souta turns 18.
• 29 to JK has this with the main couple, a 29-year-old salaryman and a high school girl who happens to be his boss's granddaughter. Deconstructed as even when he does have sex with her, he acknowledges that their relationship doesn't look anything outside of sketchy no matter how he explains the situation, and he loses his job for it in the end.
• In My Love Story!!, Suna's older sister Ai was silently attempting this with his best friend Takeo. She's three years older than the two of them and was hoping Takeo would still be single by the time he started college. She's completely dismayed when she finds out that someone actually beat her to the punch, but relents once she realizes that Takeo and Yamato are completely smitten with each other.
• Played with in Zombieland Saga: Revenge. Saki confesses her crush on radio host White Ryu, who gently turns her down but tells her to come back once she has grown into a young woman. The twist is that Saki is secretly a zombie, who died as a teenager but is actually closer to forty. Being a zombie, she will remain physically a teenager forever, a fact that briefly drives her to despair.
• Sensei wa Koi o Oshierarenai is about a Student/Teacher Romance between Japanese Literature teacher Rinko Yoshitaka and her 17 year old student Ryo Arase. While they have agreed to start dating as of the start of the series, Rinko is determined not to kiss or have sex until he turns 20.
• Rebuild World: The slumlord Sebia is stated to have been keeping Sheryl as his favorite while he waited for her charms to grow with age before making her his mistress. Akira kills Sebia in self-defense before that could happen, but Sheryl's close ties to Sebia result in nobody being willing to associate with her in case it'd make them a target of Akira's revenge, causing Sheryl to turn to Akira himself for safety.
• This is alluded to with one couple that appears in Fly Me to the Moon. The main couple, actually. They agree to get married when he is sixteen but then she disappears until his eighteenth birthday. It's explained that that's when they can get legally married, but considering The Reveal that she's over a hundred there may have been a second reason...
• Used as a Brick Joke by Devil May Cry: The Animated Series and Devil May Cry 5. When trying to brush off a job to protect the young Patty Lowell, Dante sarcastically mentions he might be interested in her in 10 years time, though this is simply him trying to get her to go away and when he takes her in he acts as her Parental Substitute. Unfortunately for Dante, Patty remembers this comment and upon turning 18 tries to get Dante to come to her party, noting that she's "not a little kid" to which Dante slams his phone down, unplugs it when she tries to call again, and agrees to take a new job on the singular condition that his information broker can get him out of going to her party.

Comic Books

• In the Lobo - The Authority Jingle Hell crossover, Lobo offers to come back and hook up with Jenny Quantum, who is a toddler at the time, when she comes of age.
• In DC Comics, an alien Green Lantern named Arisia had a crush on human Green Lantern Hal Jordan. He could not reciprocate because she was only 13 years old. When her feelings for him caused her ring to age her body into adulthood, though, Hal was okay with it. Then about a decade later it was retconned into being okay when it was revealed that 13 years on Arisia's home planet was over 200 Earth years. She still acted like a kid, though and the writers never specify whether Arisia was 'old enough' by her home planet's standards. He does, however, get called on it almost immediately by basically the entire Green Lantern corps.
• After Infinite Crisis, teenage Supergirl started a short-lived flirtatious relationship with twenty-something Anti-Villain Captain Boomerang, with no invocation in sight. Then suddenly enforced with a vengeance when, after a Journey to the Center of the Mind storyline had kept her away for a few months, Boomer, Beast Boy and every other Y-chromosome who so much as glanced at her suddenly went out of their way to confirm that they had no intention of acting upon their attraction to this stunningly hot super-babe. Must have been a few letters. That or her cousin let everyone know she was off limits, and nobody argues with the Man Of Steel.
• An issue of Archie Comics takes place a couple of centuries in the future, and Archie helps Betty babysit her young cousin. Among the cool devices they have in the future is a mirror that can show what you'd look like at any age. The cousin uses it to show what she will look like when she is sixteen, and Archie quips that he might just put himself into cryo-freeze to wait until then.
• In Incorruptible, Max Damage breaks off his relationship with his sidekick Jailbait (who picked her codename entirely on purpose) after his Heel–Face Turn, citing this reason.
• Colossus and Kitty Pryde were technically like this for years. In fact, when they first started to show feelings for each other, editor-in-chief of Marvel (at the time) Jim Shooter was a little concerned about it, seeing as Kitty was only fourteen and Colossus was five years older. Kitty had even suggested breaking the taboo and not waiting in one story where they were both implanted with Brood spawn and expected to die, but he refused, instead simply granting her a passionate kiss. The wait eventually ended in the pages of Astonishing X-Men; as Wolverine mentioned offhand when he noticed the two of them afterwards, "Bout time..."
• Wonder Girl (Infinite Frontier): Played for Horror as this is a particularly horrifying example. It's revealed that Eros knew Yara ever since she was a child because he was the one who murdered her mother and led the siege that slaughtered her tribe. All so that he could have her all to himself as the perfect wife once Yara was finally of age.

Comic Strips

• Scary Gary: Inverted. When Leopold tells Beatrice that he will not date her or anything because she is a child, her takeaway is that she just needs to wait a few years and then she can marry him.

Fan Works

• A running joke regarding Hermione Granger in The Editing Room's "abridged scripts" for the Harry Potter movies:
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (when she appears at the Yule Ball):
    Audience: Holy shit, get a load of the—
    Emma Watson: Not seventeen until next year.
    Audience: —the purity and innocence of this young child.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:
    Audience: You eighteen yet? I'd really like for you to come over here and ride my-
    Emma Watson: Next movie.
    Audience:-my magical broomstick! Oh, what a fantastic world of innocent whimsy! Tra-la-la!
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
    Audience: Eighteen yet?
    Emma Watson: Yes actually, I turned 19 on-
    Audience: I WILL FUCK YOUR TITS OFF FAP FAP FAP FAP!!
    Emma Watson: Bloody fucking hell, I can’t wait to be done with these movies!
  • Another case of Hollywood Provincialism; the age of consent in the UK is 16.
  • A related running gag in CinemaSins "Everything Wrong With" the various Harry Potter films is "Hermione isn't old enough to be hot yet."
• Common trope in Star Trek (2009) fanfiction regarding Pavel Chekov. Who is, as he loves to remind us, only seventeen. Which actually means that he's completely legal at home in Russia, where the age of consent is 16.
• Lord Archive subverts the Cardcaptor Sakura trope with mentions in his fic Be Careful What You Wish For. with the third-grader aged up considerably, but not enough. She even mentions they have been trying to get pregnant, even though she's only thirteen.
• This is a point in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fic People In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. Zuko hurriedly mentions that he'll be sixteen in two months (sixteen being the age of legal majority in the Fire Nation), and the result is both funny and sad.
• Appears in modified form in the Harry Potter fanfic Backward With Purpose, an AU in which Harry, Ron, and Ginny travel back in time to prevent the gruesome deaths of their friends and family. Only their minds travel back in time so that they wake up as 11-year-olds with adult minds. Harry and Ginny are married and the fact that they have the minds of sexually-active married adults but the bodies of prepubescent children is a source of great tension (and is a recurring issue throughout the story).
• A common theme in Laurence/Emily Roland fan-fics for Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. Especially emphasized since Laurence is 31 as of 1805, while Emily is, consequently, only 10 years old as of the same year. Even with aging both characters, that's a massive 21 year age difference...not to mention that Laurence slept with, and even proposed to, Emily's mother, Jane Roland, the fact that Laurence is old enough to be Emily's father, and and other squick factors.
• In the Death Note AU Change of Circumstances Light assumes that this would be his present from L on his 18th birthday. L was clueless. Hilarity Ensues.
  L: Light-kun, is there a particular reason you presumed I would show up unannounced at the stroke of midnight the moment it became legal to ravish you?
• Meg's Boyfriend: While Meg and Zack start dating when she's 17 and he's 20, they at first promise not to have sex until she's 18 (Though read below at the Family Guy section for inconsistencies with the real-life Rhode Island's age of consent). Subverted Meg decides that she wants to have sex anyway.
• The Star Wars fic "Revenge of the (kinder, gentler) Sith" features Padme Amidala as a Sith who persuades Anakin to join her kinder version of the Order after Palpatine's death. While Padme isn't attracted to younger men normally, after meeting Anakin when he's nine and she's eighteen, they become lovers only five years later, as Padme's Sith nature means that she has physical needs she won't ignore but at the same time she has such a strong bond with Anakin that she refuses to hurt him by taking other lovers.
• In the Gunslinger Girl fic "Crossing the Bridge" by Danjo3, the SWA has been shut down and some of the cyborg girls have been adopted by their handlers. This is supposed to happen with Jose and Henrietta, but they keep finding excuses to delay the adoption for years until she turns seventeen and they hook up as girlfriend/boyfriend, with both parties swearing that nothing sexual happened before then. As Henrietta was eleven when the SWA shut down, the idea of this trope being in play severely creeps out Triela.
• In Pony POV Series, it is briefly mentioned at times that Princess Luna is waiting for Pipsqueak to grow up so she can make him her consort.
• Implied in most shipping fan works based on the Beetlejuice cartoon, owing to Word of God (see Western Animation, below).
• In The Great Alicorn Hunt, Luna has sworn off sex after reaching the tragic end of a Mayfly–December Romance until she can find a partner with a comparable life span. That was fifteen centuries ago, and she's getting desperate. When she learns that there's a new alicorn prince, she's eager to meet him - and upon doing so, learns that he's only fifteen. Then Mach demonstrates his skill at off-the-hoof romantic poetry, causing Luna to demand that he not speak to her again for six years (after being reminded that the age of consent in Phillydelphia is only eighteen, she decides to make it three).
• Played with in Advice and Trust. Asuka and Shinji were already having sex beforehand, but Misato made them wait until Asuka's fifteenth birthday after she found out about their Secret Relationship (since making them wait until they were 18 when they were already being forced to serve as Child Soldiers wouldn't exactly be fair).
• Deconstructed in the The Twilight Saga Hate Fic Resisting Devotion. Quil had imprinted on Claire when she was just a toddler and was willing to wait until she was of legal age to make his move, spending those years making himself into the perfect man for her. Claire, however, is absolutely squicked out by this, and at the end, she viciously tells Quil that their friendship is over and she'll be getting a restraining order out on him. On top of all that, she's also a lesbian, and thus they never would've worked out anyway.
• In the original Digimon Tamers series, there is Ship Tease between Ruki and Ryo who are both 10 and 14 respectively, although, in the Dub, Ruki is 13. In Digimon Re: Tamers within the Citadel of the Heart continuity, there's still an age difference with Ruki at 17 and Ryo at 19, and Ryo is given very strict guidelines by Ruki that Ryo is to not touch her or look at her in a sexual manner until she turns 18 in a few months. It's downplayed a little bit as Ruki allows Ryo some breathing room as to make sure she's not too strict with the guidelines; if she engages Ryo in a simple kiss, Ryo is allowed to kiss her back, but only if Ruki initiates the kiss first. When talking with Jeri about it during lunch, Ruki does admit she's perhaps being a little too harsh on Ryo and does sometimes make innocent physical moves such as hugging or cuddling to ease the tension, so long as it doesn't end up becoming sexual in nature.
• Inverted in Relic Of The Future. Winter, at the age of sixteen, develops a crush on Jaune who in this continuity is about ten years older than her. She decides to wait at least until she is nineteen before making a move on him.
• In Strange Days, one of the ways in which A/B/O society is weird is that children (even potential future children) can be betrothed. Nothing physical happens, but everyone involved understands what's going to happen in the future.
• In Conflagration, Weiss had to wait three years for Ruby to be old enough to date without legal repercussions. She also uses the time to prepare, having a dragon Grimm summon ready to keep Yang from interfering as well as using the fact that Weiss kept Ruby protected from Yang's sexual escapees with Blake and Sun.
• Discussed in Retracted Resolves, where Weiss plans on sleeping in Team JNPR room once Ruby is asleep to avoid sleeping with her, since by the time he becomes an adult his girlfriend will still be two years younger and thus a minor.
• In Reboot Snape discovers who his soulmate is when he's physically sixteen and is horrified that she's only eleven. He carefully keeps his few interactions with her big-brotherly until she's old enough for him to date.

Films — Animation

• In The Princess and the Frog: Played for Laughs and most likely not seriously. For context, Charlotte is obsessed with marrying a prince, but just gave up the chance with one her own age.
  Charlotte: Who would have thought the prince had a younger brother? How old did you say you were?
  [looks down towards her feet]
  Little boy she's dancing with: I'm six and a half.
  Charlotte: Well, I've waited this long.

Films — Live-Action

• Big ended with this possibility being mentioned, as Tom Hanks' character was returning back to his 13-year-old body, thus ending his romance with Elizabeth Perkins.
• In Beautiful Girls, Marty tells Willie to wait 5 years until she's 18. He turns her down but very sweetly...
• The film Blank Check has a bit at the end where the thirteen-year-old protagonist asks the woman he has been pursuing for the film when he might see her again. She says to give her a call in ten years (though he argues her down to six). Then she kisses him (as in, an actual kiss on the lips).
• Comin' Round the Mountain: Played for laughs with the "You're 40, She's 10" routine, featured in this movie when Al asks Wilbert how long he has to wait for Matt to be his age before marrying:
  Al: Now here's the question: how long do you have to wait before you and the little girl are the same age? Now go ahead now, there's a very simple question. Think hard.
  Wilbert: I mean, the whole thing's ridiculous.
  Al: What's ridiculous?
  Wilbert: If I keep waiting for that girl, she'll pass me up!
  Al: What do you mean!?
  Wilbert: She'll wind up older than I am!
  Al: What're you talking about!?
  Wilbert: She'll have to wait for me!
  Al: Why should she wait for you!?
  Wilbert: [with emphasis] I was nice enough to wait for her.
• In Drowning Mona, Jeff Dearly is a little too friendly with the daughter one of his and Bobby (Casey Affleck) Calzone's clients (they're landscapers). This leads to the following exchange between Bobby and Jeff:
  Bobby: Dude, she's like thirteen.
  Jeff: Finally!
• Mentioned, if not seen directly, in the first The Fast and the Furious movie. When Mia is telling Brian about the ins and outs of the relationships among her friends and family, she summarizes her brother and his girlfriend's relationship thusly:
  Mia: Letty grew up just down the street. She was into cars since she was like ten years old. Dom always had her attention. Then she turned sixteen...
  Brian: And she had Dom's attention.
  Mia: Yeah, it's funny how that works out.
• Discussed in Hard Candy, where 32-year-old Jeff hits on allegedly 14-year-old Hayley.
  Jeff: I'm gonna have to wait four years for you.
• In Kick-Ass, Todd, Dave's lanky friend, instantly falls for Hit-Girl after seeing her slaughter several gangsters, much to Marty's disgust.
  Todd: I think I'm in love with her dude.
  Marty: She looks like she's about eleven years old, but...
  Todd: I can wait! I solemnly swear to save myself for her.
  Marty: I can see how that would be really difficult for you.
• Random Harvest: Charles' 15-year-old step-niece Kitty says straight-up that she wants to marry him and asks him not to do "anything rash" over the next three years until she becomes legal.
• Real Genius:
  Sherry: Mitch Taylor?
  Mitch: Who?
  Sherry: I'm Sherry Nugil. And I've been waiting three years for this.
  Mitch: For what?
  Sherry: For you to be old enough.
  Mitch: For what?
  Sherry: For this. [kisses him]
• This seems to be the case in The Sandlot, as the narrator (Older Scott Smalls) states that his friend Squints eventually married Wendy Peffercorn, the teenage lifeguard.
• Played with in Stoker. Charlie is rather obsessed with his niece India, but as he points out to her mother, she's already eighteen by the time they meet. Turns out, he's been infatuated with her for years, but he deliberately waited until she was already technically of age by the time they meet. This is mostly due to this trope, but also possibly to avoid the Westermarck Effect.
• Played with in Waiting..., which has nothing to do with this trope otherwise. Ryan Reynolds' character has a thing for underage girls and spends most of the movie flirting hard with the seventeen-year-old hostess of the restaurant. In the end, as part of general Character Development for all the cast, Reynolds' character insists on waiting until the hostess' eighteenth birthday for them to do the deed.
• In Womb, the protagonist's boyfriend is killed in a car accident. She then gives birth to his clone. It starts out creepy and then gets even creepier when the child reaches adulthood and Mom is jealous of his girlfriend.

Jokes

• Scene: a car, parked on a Lover's Lane. A policeman approaches, and shining his light inside, sees a teenaged girl sitting in the backseat filing her nails, and a somewhat older-appearing boy sitting in the front seat reading a magazine. The policeman looks at the girl more closely then asks her, "How old are you?" She says "17", then looks at her watch and adds, "For 22 more minutes."
• Played for Laughs with Abbott and Costello's "You're 40, She's 10" routine, in which Abbott asks Costello how long he has to wait until he and a girl in the scenario are the same age:
  Abbott: Now here's the question: how long do you have to wait before you and the little girl are the same age? Now go ahead now, there's a very simple question. Think hard.
  Costello: I mean, the whole thing's ridiculous.
  Abbott: What's ridiculous?
  Costello: If I keep waiting for that girl, she'll pass me up!
  Abbott: What do you mean!?
  Costello: She'll wind up older than I am!
  Abbott: What're you talking about!?
  Costello: She'll have to wait for me!
  Abbott: Why should she wait for you!?
  Costello: [with emphasis] I was nice enough to wait for her.

Literature

• Ascendance of a Bookworm:
  • To get proper treatment for her Devouring, seven-year-old Freida has agreed to become The Mistress to a nobleman. The nobleman however isn't expecting her to move into his estate until she has her adulthood ceremony at age fifteen, which the age at which people are allowed to get married in the setting.
  • One of the characters is sixteen and in love with a woman a few years younger than him, so he's waiting for her to reach marriage age when introduced.
  • In the capital city, all marriages are celebrated during a single yearly festival in the summer. There are also four seasonal coming of age ceremonies in which all children born during that season fifteen years ago legally become adults. The seasonal coming of age for people born in the summer comes after the festival with the marriage ceremony, which can be frustrating if at least the youngest half of a couple is born in the summer.
• Subverted in A Brother's Price. Jerin fears he will be married off to the not particularly attractive Brindle sisters (his people practice polygyny), and tries to comfort himself with the thought that at least the younger ones are not of age, so it will be years before he has to service all thirty of them.
• In The Ground Beneath her Feet by Salman Rushdie, Ormus proclaims melodramatically that he won't touch Vina until she's sixteen years and a day old. And he doesn't.
• In Teresa Edgerton's second Celydonn trilogy, Gwenlliant is married to her cousin when she is twelve; he is more than a decade older and would have preferred to wait at least four years before courting her, but her father forced the issue by setting up an Arranged Marriage for her with a Domestic Abuser. A long period of platonic roommateship follows. At one point Gwenlliant spends about a year longer in the Inner Celydonn than has passed in the real Celydonn, which has two unintended side effects: reducing the wait, and of separating them for so long that a Wedding Deadline is introduced.
• In the To Ride Pegasus series by Anne McCaffrey, Sasha (who is in his thirties) is patiently waiting for Tirla (who is approximately 12) to grow up. It's definitely mutual. They marry on her sixteenth birthday (the minimum legal age to do so in their society), and it's implied that it was Tirla who was pushing to get married so quickly.
• The Twilight Saga: The teenage wolves who imprint on a 2-year-old and a newborn. But Renesmee (said newborn) will be physically 18 in 7 years, so Jacob doesn't have as big of a problem.
• In Katherine Kurtz's In The King's Service, we learn that Jessamy MacAthan was made to marry her husband at age 11. Sief MacAthan thought waiting to consummate the marriage until Jessamy turned 12 was generous, but Queen Dulchesse pulled rank and made him wait till Jessamy turned 14.
• Subverted in Lolita, when Humbert plans to impregnate his already underage Lo so that once she gets too old for him, there'll be another one on the way.
• In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Colonel Aureliano Buendia falls in love with Remedios Moscote when she's only about nine or so, but waits to marry her on her father's prompting until she reaches puberty— when, in fact, she's still only about fourteen....
• In Meg Cabot's 1-800-Where-R-U series, teen psychic Jess falls for older bad boy Rob... who turns her down. He later explains that he turned her down because he had a criminal record and was on probation until he turned 21 for trespassing in a swimming pool. He didn't want to get in further trouble for dating a minor. However, it is later revealed that Rob was planning to propose to Jess pretty soon after she turned 18. Except she joined a war instead.
• Justified in the Morganville Vampires series. Shane insists on waiting the few months until Claire is legal, but they're no more than a year apart.
• In the Black Jewels series, Daemon and Jaenelle meet when he's 1,700 and she's 12. However, circumstances keep them apart until she's 25 and he's ... still a hell of a lot older.
• Pages could be written on this for the works of Piers Anthony - well, perhaps not, given that some of them don't wait — but a particular note needs to be made of the sixty-plus-year-old judge and the fourteen-year-old drug addict prostitute in And Eternity. She spends a few days in Heaven, during which two years pass on Earth, so it's legal (at least in that jurisdiction) — but she's still fourteen in body and mind! And they don't entirely wait, either — they get it on during a camping trip while the girl is possessed by a (to be fair, much older) ghost.
• Subverted in the Danielle Steel novel Family Album, which had a 15-year old girl falling in love with her best friend's father. They actually do consummate the relationship while she's still underage. The "wait" is regarding them marrying, which they can't do until she's 18. Her family is outraged when they discover the relationship and vows to press charges for statutory rape, but when she makes it clear that she won't testify against him, nor will she ever forgive them, they are forced to resign to this.
• This was a long-running plot in the Emily books by Lucy Maud Montgomery (of Anne of Green Gables fame). In the first book, Emily of New Moon, Emily Starr first meets Dean Priest, a distant relative who went to school with her father, when he is 36 and she 12. On that first meeting, he explicitly tells her, "I think I'll wait for you," though Emily doesn't understand what he means. In the second book, Emily Climbs, in which Emily is an adolescent, a local man tells Emily that Dean is "just biding his time till ye get old enough for coorting," an idea Emily finds ridiculous with someone old enough to be her father. In the final book, Emily's Quest, they are engaged when Emily is about 20 or so, though she breaks it up when she realizes her feelings for her childhood friend Teddy.
• With the May–December Romance pairing of Tom/Rose in the Casson Family Series, this is something of a given, but McKay handles Rose's Precocious Crush on Tom delicately and Tom's hints of attraction toward her so subtly, causing their relationship to be one of the least Squickiest examples of the trope around. Oddly enough though, this implication doesn't appear in many of the fanfics in the Casson Family Series archive at FanFiction.Net, although it would make a good plot point in story. But then again, the trope is employed so subtly most people probably aren't even aware of its existence in the books.
• In the Mercedes Lackey book When Darkness Falls, the hero's sister makes a Heroic Sacrifice in the book's climax. She then reincarnates. Her lover from her previous life arranges to be betrothed to her infant self. Note that 1: The lover (and the girl in her new incarnation) are both elves, so the wait isn't that long compared to the lifespan of either of them, and they will still be able to spend centuries together after the wait ends (This also resolves the Mayfly–December Romance concerns that caused problems with the relationship earlier in the trilogy), and 2: She was reincarnated as a noble-born elf, and their culture saw nothing wrong with betrothing newborns.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: A vast majority of marriages among the nobility assume an age of consent of sixteen, give or take, with early twenties being looked on as Old Maid in the making and hitting puberty being a good baseline in a pinch.
  • Queen Margaery Tyrell (16) is waiting for the day she can bed her husband, King Tommen Baratheon (8). Played with in that she's much more interested in the political aspects than any sort of sexual desire. In the meantime, she's getting him wrapped around her little finger. This one was arranged, with Margaery's hand being the price for the Tyrells' continued support of the throne. The rule regarding marriages in this setting is that they can be set aside so long as they haven't been consummated. So it's the Tyrells who are eagerly counting down the years for the Rose's flower to be plucked, as that would cement Margaery's queenship when Tommen comes of age, while Tommen's mother Cersei is so paranoid about the expanding Tyrell power in the royal court that she spends much of the fourth book searching for and manufacturing evidence of Margaery's infidelity so as to dissolve the marriage. As far as the two lovebirds themselves are concerned, they seem to get along well, with Tommen looking up to Margaery like a Cool Big Sis.
  • Much angst goes into Sansa Stark having her period at age twelve, as that means she can be wedded and bedded by King Joffrey.
  • One off-screen Arranged Marriage involves a teenage Lannister cousin (The son of Tywin's brother) taking control of a minor house by marrying its sole surviving heiress, who happens to be an infant. When he goes missing and is presumed dead, there's a bit of Gallows Humor about how the little lady is the first bride in the Seven Kingdoms to be wed and widowed before she'd been weaned.
• In the 1632 series:
  • A rather non-squicky example between Princess Kristina of Sweden (9) and Prince Ulrik of Denmark (28), who are betrothed by their parents, to be married when she grows up. Ulrik has no romantic interest in her and accepts the betrothal out of duty and political necessity. As it happened, Kristina turned out to be Wise Beyond Her Years, and Ulrik grows fond enough of her to look forward to their marriage. (His greatest fear had been being married off to a boring, unintelligent noblewoman — fortunately for him, Kristina is neither boring nor unintelligent).
  • Also played with in the series, with Lt. Eddie Cantrell. He's all of twenty when he falls head over heels in love with the sixteen-year-old Anne Cathrine, daughter of King Christian of Denmark^note but not a princess, as her father's marriage to her mother was morganatic. He specifically ruminates on the different age-of-consent laws he's used to but acknowledges that none of that applies in the 17th century^note at sixteen, Anne Cathrine in her time is very much considered a grown woman of an age to get married; it's her royal bloodline that makes her off-limits. In the end, it turns out her family had been plotting to manipulate him into marrying her, knowing that he'd be a useful political and technical resource. Neither Eddie nor Anne Cathrine have any problem with this.
• Legacy of the Dragokin: Lydia tells Benji to wait until he's eighteen to start a relationship with her because he's ten and she's much older than that. Sex is not mentioned or even alluded to, making this a G-rated Puppy Love example.
• In The Host (2008) Jared refused to sleep with Melanie until she turned eighteen. Wanderer took note of this, and lied about her age so that Ian wouldn't have the same scruple.
• In The Hunger Games, it turns out President Snow and the participating Capitol citizens do have certain standards (at least publicly) concerning the Victor prostitution ring, so after Finnick won at 14, "they couldn't really touch him for the first year or two. But ever since he turned sixteen..."
• The Dresden Files has Molly Carpenter invoke this on herself in her POV short story, Bombshells - she was Dresden's apprentice and had a whacking great crush on him from childhood. He took her on at 17 and dealt with her promptly coming onto him strong by dumping a pitcher of ice water on her head and gently informing her that that wasn't happening. Ever. While aware that she was very attractive, he was disgusted by the very idea - he's known her since she was little kid, and as Molly observes, her father is a) his best friend, b) the uncle he never had. He thought it was over and done with and remained oblivious while she decided to wait. By the time she's in her mid-twenties and he's in his late thirties, and she's no longer really his apprentice, he tacitly concedes that it's not impossible, eventually - though he's in love with someone else and she becomes the Winter Lady shortly after, meaning she Can't Have Sex, Ever without crippling the other participant.
• Played with in The Inheritance Cycle with a Mayfly–December Romance. The human teenager Eragon crushes on the hundred-year-old elf Arya, and she eventually says she'll consider it in a decade or two, since even if he'll live as long as her as a Dragon Rider, he's still not old enough right now.
• In Emma, Mr. Knightley confesses that he's been in love with Emma since she was thirteen (at which time he was in his mid-twenties). Given that young women could marry as young as fifteen in Regency times, it's more of a surprise that he actually waited until she was twenty-one to act on his feelings.
• In Lords of the Underworld, the protagonists occasionally comment on the obvious sexual tension between Gilly (who's either 16 or 17, depending on the chronology of a given book) and William. Most of them ^note including William himself are disgusted by the idea and try to prevent it, but a few distinctly immoral or alien characters don't see what the problem is: the Harpy Kaia actually refuses to sleep with William because of Gilly's "prior claim" on him.
• In the historical novel My Lord Brother the Lionheart, the widowed Queen Joan of Sicily - favorite sister of King Richard the Lionheart - reminisces about her late husband, known as William the Good. She recalls his many kindnesses throughout their marriage, and in particular notes that although she was ten when they married, he refused to consummate until she was fourteen.
• In The Red Tent, Laban agrees to give Rachel in marriage to Jacob, but (per Adah's orders), they have to wait until a) Rachel menstruates and b) a customary 6 months after her first period. Only then would she be considered (in that time and place) eligible for marriage. (So the "7 years" he was to work for Laban to get her in the Biblical canon become 7 months instead.)
• In Safehold an Arranged Marriage between Cayleb's brother Zhan and Nahrmahn's daughter Mahrya is part of the treaty where Emerald joins the Empire of Charis. However, because Zhan is still a child, the actual wedding is put off until he comes of age.
• In The Wolfhound:
  • Little Doe gets a Precocious Crush and essentially engages herself with the titular hero in the very first book when she's 12, and Wolfhound is 23. Through the course of the series, Wolfhound considers himself duly engaged and having also taken a shine to the girl, patiently waits for the circumstances to let them be together. Little Doe on her part has to hold against the pressure of her domineering mother to marry into their neighbor clan, until she runs away with her male friend in a similar predicament and his girlfriend. It's implied that Wolfhound and Little Doe finally get together after the last book when they are 19 and 30, respectively.
  • On the other hand, Tilorn and Niilith marry basically right away, when Tilorn is in his thirties and Niilith is 15.
• In John Ringo's Black Tide Rising series, Faith Marie Smith and several members of her team of Marines constantly think about establishing a romantic relationship. They repeatedly discuss how the age of consent in Arkansas is 14, which is convenient because Faith turns 14 in the last book. Unfortunately, events conspire against them and the plot point is never followed up. Besides, they are all wrong, as the actual age of consent in Arkansas is 16.
• In Warrior Cats, there's nothing in the Warrior Code that prevents apprentice/warrior (apprentices usually being 6-12 months old, roughly the equivalent of 11-18) romances, but it's looked down upon nevertheless. In Spottedleaf's Heart, Thistleclaw asks the apprentice-aged Spottedpaw to be his mate. She declines because of her age. Thistleclaw says that he'll wait until she's a full-grown warrior if he has to.
• In Basil by Wilkie Collins, the protagonist proposes to his crush, who's seventeen. Her father agrees to the marriage on condition that they live apart until she turns eighteen.
• In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Ben and Francie meet when he is eighteen and she is fifteen. By the end of the book she is almost seventeen.
  She looked at the ring on the third finger of her left hand. Ben’s high school ring. “M.H.S. 1918.” Inside was engraved, “B.B. to F.N.” He had told her that while he knew his mind, she was too young to know hers. He gave her the ring to bind what he called their understanding. Of course, it would be five more years before he’d be in a position to marry, he said. By that time she’d be old enough to know her own mind. Then, if there was still the understanding, he’d ask her to accept another kind of ring. Since Francie had five years in which to make up her mind, the responsibility of deciding whether or not to marry Ben did not weigh too heavily upon her.

Live-Action TV

• Lampshaded, or possibly subverted, by Lee Nelsons Well Good Show by a gag about implied sex, or at least the intention, following a local girl's 16th birthday.. "yesterday..pedo!! today... LEGEND!!" Lee's cheerful inanity, sentimentality ( especially about "his nan" ), naivety and imperviousness to Squick when he is committing it, versus his sensitivity when someone else is the culprit, make him the perfect vehicle for this sort of gag
• On How I Met Your Mother, after Ted reveals that he and Victoria have decided to date for a month before having sex, Barney comments, "The only reason to wait a month for sex is if she's 17 years 11 months old." This, and the Friends example below, are examples of Hollywood Provincialism, as New York's age of consent is 17.
• A Friends episode that aired in 2001 had Joey hit on a woman who revealed she was 16 years old. His response? "See you in 2003."
• House:
  • In an episode, a 17-year-old is smitten with House and gives him a calendar counting down the days 'til she's 18.
  • In another episode House snarks that no one can touch a supermodel patient for three years because she's 15. Both being examples of the aforementioned Hollywood Provincialism since the age of consent in New Jersey is 16.
• On 3rd Rock from the Sun, Dick mentioned that a French film released years ago was finally coming out in the U.S. because "they had to wait until the actress was of legal age."^note Note that in Real Life, the only thing that would actually matter is the actress' age at the time of filming.
• One episode of Off Centre revolves around the main cast talking about how they lost their virginity, while Euan is waiting for his latest conquest to turn 18.
• Explicitly stated in the episode of Taken when Dr Chet Wakeman and Mary Crawford do it the day she turned 18.
• In an episode of Reno 911!!, the deputies appeared in a commercial for a pocket guide to the various U.S. states' legal age of consent.
• MADtv had some fun with this trope:
  • One sketch parodied an Olsen Twins movie featured their male costars counting down until the twins' birthday, taking numbers to determine the order they'd take their turn "befriending" them.
  • "I'm Not A Child," parody of "Not a Girl (Not Yet a Woman)" by Britney Spears, went all out with the fact that Britney is now an adult that viewers can fantasize about without shame.
    Britney: (adlibbing) You're watching porn right now, do you understand?
• Inverted in The Thorn Birds. Meggie growing up and being of legal age is what makes Ralph start to push her away, knowing he can no longer hide his feelings for her or pretend that they're innocent.
• Done rather adorably in a Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch where a suspicious policeman knocks on the window of a parked car and ask how old the occupants are. The boy in the front seat says he's seventeen. The cop asks if the girl knitting in the back is sixteen, and he checks his watch and says, "Not yet... in about ten minutes."^note  Harsher in Hindsight, as Chris Langham, who played the policeman in this sketch, was later busted for being in possesion of under-age pornography.
• The Olsen Twins referenced this trope in their Saturday Night Live appearance the week before their actual 18th birthday.
• The Brazilian Soap Opera Xica da Silva's many nude scenes with leading actress Taís Araújo were shot when she was seventeen, but couldn't be screened before she turned eighteen. According to the actress herself, some tabloids kept countdowns to her eighteenth birthday, so they could see a half-naked seventeen-year-old. The actress considers this work an Old Shame for this reason.
• Lampshaded by Bill Maher in a Real Time segment about Emma Watson when he said: "Wow, she was just a cute little eleven-year-old girl in that first movie, who would have dreamed that eight short years later, she'd turn out to be nineteen?"
• Soap: Billy has an affair with his teacher, but they wait until his 18th birthday before she gives him her "present." She also quit her job so they could be together without any ethical problems.
• In The Good Wife, Alicia's 15-year-old daughter is found to be on a list of hottest politician's daughters. Said list notes Illinois has an age of consent of only 17 and suggest people start their countdown clocks.
• In Impractical Jokers, as Murr's punishment, he plays a sculptor showcasing an exhibit titled "Me, Myself, and I". The first sculpture is a countdown clock that says "Time Until Legal". This is done in front of an audience and Murr gets shot with dirty looks all around.
• In Roseanne, when Becky marries Mark, Dan is furious and thinks about calling the cops and getting the marriage annulled because Becky was only 17 and Mark was over 18, but Roseanne talks him out of it because she'll just run off and do it again in a few months when she turns 18. The age of consent in Illinois is 17.^note However, because Mark was an adult, she would have had to get her parents' permission, an oversight by the writers.
• In one episode of Castle, the eponymous character makes the paper as one of New York's most eligible bachelors. Not only does basically every woman they meet in the episode feel the need to comment on it, but his teenage daughter comes home with several requests. After she mentions one elderly teacher- "Too old?"- she mentions that one of her classmates is also interested, and she'll be eighteen in a few months. Castle isn't interested though.
• Million Yen Women has Shin forced to live with five women he doesn't know. One of the titular women is actually a seventeen-year-old high-schooler. She's the one to make a move on him, but instead of asking him if he's interested in immediate sex, she asks him if he'll be interested if she gets in the mood after turning eighteen. Ironically, the legal age of consent in Japan as stated in the country's criminal code is thirteen, the eighteen years figure featuring only in a Children Welfare Act, which is a sort of bylaw. This creates a large legal grey area, where the sex with the 13-to-18 minors is not a crime but only a misdemeanor, not to mention the enforcement being quite spotty.
• Married... with Children had a meta-example with Kelly. Since Christina Applegate was a minor in the show's first three seasons, the live studio audience kept their wolf whistles to a minimum, and her taste in clothing was relatively modest despite screaming "trashy 80's girl." But once Applegate turned 18, the show blatantly made Kelly into Ms. Fanservice and the audience responded in kind.
• Played for drama in Broadchurch. One of the characters had previously been arrested for underage sex with one of his students, aged 15 years and 11 months. (They would later marry.) He laments that if they'd just waited four weeks everything would have been fine.

Music

• The title and chorus of "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" by Neil Diamond seem to indicate this but the verses don't mention it.
• "Pop Star" a parody of Nickelback's song "Rockstar," has a line that says "my listeners will be people in their 'tweens/and old perverts who can't wait 'til I turn 18."
• Lil' Bow Wow had a song called "Just Playin' With Ya" in which the (then 12-ish) singer was macking on a woman old enough to be his mother. One of his lines includes: "I'll call you up when I turn 16."
• The song "Does Your Mother Know?" by ABBA is about this trope, and Mamma Mia!'s use of it (actually, Tanya in general) resulted in a rare female example.
• Referenced by Eminem in his song "Ass Like That":
  Hilary Duff is not quite old enough, so I ain't never seen a butt like that, maybe next year I'll say "ass" and she'll make my pee-pee go "doing doing doing!"
• Mack Maine in the song "Every Girl" raps "And in about three years, holla at me Miley Cyrus."
• Motörhead's "Jailbait". Although by the end the narrator seems to think it's worth the risk...
  • A concert promoter once asked Lemmy if he'd sign an autograph for his daughter. Lemmy asked how old the daughter was. Promoter said "three." Lemmy wrote:
  Soon, baby.
• The Vandals made a song called "Fourteen", which was about someone falling in love with a fourteen-year-old girl.
  ''I wanna hug and kiss you nearly every time I see ya,
  but I don't want the neighborhood to get the wrong idea.
  But the day will come when a love like ours is not a crime.
  Just give it time!
• Nas' "Big Girl", where he basically proclaims his excitement over a girl now being old enough to legally pound into submission.
• "Nørgaard" by The Vaccines: "Her mind's made up, she don't wanna go steady / She's only seventeen so she's probably not ready."
• Metro Station's "Seventeen Forever". Coincidentally the band is fronted by the brother of Miley Cyrus (who was once the subject of more than a few jailbait countdowns). It's sung from the perspective of a guy lamenting about how the girl he likes is still underage.
  We're one mistake from being together/Let's not ask why it's not right/You won't be seventeen forever/And we can get away with this tonight.
• "Come Up The Years" by Jefferson Airplane.
• "Come Back When You Grow Up" by Bobby Vee.
• "Wildflower" by Cee Lo Green seems to be about this:
  I'm just proud to say that I was there to pull her out of the ground
  Standing out in the crowd, oh my, how she's grown
  Hold her with both my hands and put her right on the table when I get her home
• Carol by Smokie: when the narrator makes a move on Carol, she says "I'm not 16, if you know what I mean", so he's "counting the nights and days".
• A Question of Time by Depeche Mode. "You're 15, and you look good".
• Brazilian band Raimundos has in "Me Lambe" a guy seducing a teenager, and being arrested for it. The cop explains she's 17 "and her dad is a doctor", but admits he'd hit her too while adding "if it was next year, it'd be normal!"
• Country classic "Forbidden Angel" by Mel Street. "I love you so, I know I can wait to unlock Heaven's door/When my forbidden angel is not forbidden anymore."
• Inverted in "Penelope" by Zak Waters. Now that the singer is eighteen he wants to date his old babysitter.
• 'Happy Birthday" by Gary Glitter. "Then I am gonna do, things to you, I've never done before! When you're old enough, ha, I do my stuff, till you beg for more!" Becomes a lot harder to listen to when you learn what Glitter got arrested for...
• Epic Rap Battles of History invokes this during The Incredible Hulk's rap battle against Caitlyn Jenner:
  Hulk: Best thing you make: Kylie ass! She 18? HULK SMASH!
• "House of Fun" by Madness is a comedy number about a boy trying to buy condoms on his sixteenth birthday (the age of consent in the UK), although it doesn't state whether he has someone specific who's been waiting, or if he's just hopeful.

Myths & Religion

• Greek Mythology
  • Theseus kidnapped Helen when she was a young girl, intending to marry her when she grew old enough. However, she was rescued by Castor and Pollux.
  • Aphrodite found baby Adonis right after he had been born from a tree. Apparently he was such a good-looking baby that she decided she had to sleep with him once he was old enough, handing him off to Persephone to raise. Then Persephone decided that she wanted him too.
• In the Chivalric Romance of Ogier the Dane, he was visited by six fairies at birth. One of them, Morgan le Fay (more famous from Arthurian Legend), declared that he would have a long life with her on the magical island of Avalon. When he's 100 years old, she arranged his shipwreck. They may still be together, given that longevity blessing and how time works on Avalon.

Print Media

• A men's magazine (GQ or some such) had a calendar in one of their 1999 issues with June 9th marked "Natalie Portman, whom we admire solely for her acting ability, turns 18 today."
• Some British newspapers such as The Daily Sport were known to count down the days until a girl would pose topless on her 16th birthday - Lindsey Dawn McKenzie in 1994 is an example. Several models began their careers at sixteen, posing as Page 3 Girls in The Sun - Samantha Fox, Debee Ashby, and Maria Whittaker.

Radio

• A radio interview with Billie Piper when she was 15 had host Chris Moyles openly (albeit humorously) commenting on her attractiveness, along with the statement that the men of Britain (including himself) were eagerly awaiting her 16th birthday when she'd be legal in the UK.
• Radio hosts Lex and Terry kept a daily countdown for several years. When the Olsens finally turned eighteen, they threw a birthday bash for them. They sent an invite to the girls, which was never answered.
• Opie & Anthony also kept track of the Olsen twins' countdown to adulthood, albeit not daily. The twins turned 18 in-between radio gigs (fired from WNEW, and waiting to work for XM Satellite Radio). When the show finally returned, they were asked about the Olsen twins. The pair revealed that they lost interest in the twins the day they turned 18.
• Natalie Portman minced no words in how disgusted she was when her local radio station ran a countdown to her 18th birthday as a running joke.

Tabletop Game

• Curse of Strahd: Something Strahd has to do a lot; the titular vampire has spent centuries chasing the various reincarnations of his beloved Tatiana, after the original committed suicide to escape him. The curse in question is that he always fails, with every reincarnation dying before he can successfully "woo" her, and forcing him to try again in a generation or so. In the event that he finds her latest life when she's still a child, however, he won't act beyond keeping a close eye on her.

Theatre

• Uncle Peck does this in Paula Vogel's play How I Learned To Drive. Complete with daily countdown. Complete with SENDING the daily countdown to Li'l Bit in the mail. Which is pointless after the Anachronic Order of the play reveals he molested her when she was eleven.
• Not mentioned in Romeo and Juliet but still present. Juliet is betrothed to marry Paris at the age of thirteen. While young marriages like this were common in those days, they would have to wait a few years before the marriage would be consummated (if only for the sake of preserving Juliet's chances of producing heirs; when Paris says "younger than she are happy mothers made", Juliet's father replies "and too soon marred"). Doubly so, since Paris is implied to be several years older than her. But of course, she does it with Romeo - who is closer to her age.

Video Games

• In the English-language translation of Final Fantasy VI, the precocious young Relm briefly flirts with Edgar, who seems visibly disturbed... until he tells her to come see him in a couple of years. This is a change from the original Japanese version, in which upon learning that she's only ten, he comments that he needs to get a hold of himself or it's going to be a crime.
• Referenced in Jam Kuradoberi's win quote against Bridget in Guilty Gear XX: Upon finding out that Bridget's a guy, she suggests that he come see her again in five years. This gag gets a Call-Back in the above's Spiritual Successor, Blazblue, where Kagura Mutsuki tells Platinum the same thing after defeating her.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Handsome Lech Zelos is caught being nice to a little girl, and claims that it's 'so she'll remember him fondly in fifteen years or so'. This is probably part of his Obfuscating Stupidity persona, though.
• The Sims:
  • The Sims 2 has a sort-of version of this. Teen sims can have romantic relationships with other Teen sims (although they cannot WooHoo), but cannot have romantic relationships with Young Adult, Adult or Elder sims. When one of the Teen sims Grows Up, the game will automatically turn their relationship into a platonic one. If you want them to stay together, you have to wait until the other Teen sim Grows Up and then rekindle their romance from scratch. This gets annoying since sims only age if you play them, so if you want a teen romance to keep going, you have to juggle the families to keep both sims at relatively the same age, or else one will outage the other. This is even worse if your sim romanced an NPC teen, since NPCs never age, and so the relationship is doomed.
  • Until The Sims 2 University came out, that is... The "Send Sims to College" option can be used to instantly age up any Teen NPC in a town to a Young Adult and turn them into a playable character in the process.
  • An even later expansion (Free Time) adds a prompt whenever a playable sim ages up that enables up to three sims in their age range to age up as well. This can even be used to age Townies and other NPCs your sims have relationships with, fixing the problem with romancing NPC teens.
  • In The Sims 3, the same rules apply regarding the interactions between Teens and Young Adults. Interestingly, there seem to be more than just a few mods that actually make it possible for adults to flirt with teens.
• Neverwinter Nights 2 features a druid stalker who seems to have been watching the player since he was a child. Potential differing races and aging rates combined with different interpretations of some vague dialogue could make this much less creepy by way of putting a teenage elf to work keeping an eye on another teenage elf, who she develops a crush on; the timeline in Neverwinter Nights 2 and the age of puberty of elves in Forgotten Realms can be inconsistent.
• Played with a bit in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A young (10-12ish) Link meets the Gerudo leader, Nubile Savage Nabooru. She enlists his help, promising a reward. Once Link (around the age of 19) saves Nabooru and she becomes a sage, she says "It's a shame. If I had known you'd become such a handsome man...I would have kept my promise!"
• In Persona 3 Portable, Ken Amada asks the Female Protagonist to do this when he realizes that he can't be her ideal man while he's still a child. However, in the original Japanese version, he still gets the "You spent a long time" phrase when maxing out the social link. The English version edits it slightly in order avoid controversy. Note that this is a Mature-rated game already.
• Persona 5: If you successfully romance Kawakami, then at the end of the game, before you leave town, she tells you to return after graduation so they can rekindle the relationship without any problems. As with Ken Amada above, that doesn't prevent her (or any of the other romanceable women) from "spending a long time" with you.
• Zig-zagged in Sengoku Rance. Rance is very specifically not a pedophile, so he decides he'll wait for Kouhime to grow up before making a move, quote: "Hm, I think I should give her 5 years. [looks at her again] Eh, make that 3 years I guess." As they grow into a more brother/sister dynamic, it just becomes a joke between Rance and Nobunga, Kouhime's brother: Rance implies he's waiting for Kou to grow up, Nobunga cheerfully says he won't allow it, and Kou is confused. One of the first things that clues Rance into the fact that Nobunga is possessed is he jokes that he's going to take Kou's virginity... and Nobunga is suddenly fine with it.
  Rance: ...what?
  Nobunga: Kill the Tenshin Sect, and I'll give you Kou.
• Referenced and Played for Laughs in The King of Fighters XIII. If you pit Chivalrous Pervert Benimaru (in his early 20's) against Cute Bruiser Kula (14), he laments that she's too young for him and say something about how it would've been much better if they met five years later. Kula hears this and naively asks "what will happen in five years?", and Benimaru is horrified.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • Ricken is the youngest male among the Shepherds but is able to marry most of the female characters. His S support with Cordelia addresses this, by having her accept his proposal but wait until he's a little older for them to actually marry.
  • Averted by necessity with Nowi, at least as far as looks go. She looks like a cute preteen human but is actually a manakete (a Were Dragon that can switch between humanoid and dragon form), and really over a 1000 years old, making her a preteen in Dragon years. Any partner of hers that is not nearly as long-lived would have to accept her looking like that if they want to marry and have children within their lifetime, and the game does bring it up when Nah, her daughter, wonders what her dad saw in Nowi for her to be the result.
• Alluded to with Corvo and Jessamine in Dishonored. Jessamine selected Corvo as her bodyguard when they were twelve and nineteen, respectively. They became lovers once Jessamine turned eighteen. The trope is somewhat subverted in that Jessamine, as Empress, had all of the power in the relationship despite the age difference.
• In Lyrica, Du Mu falls in love with a girl who looks like Shiue and immediately proposes to her. When her mother objects that she's too young to be married, Du Mu promises to come back and propose to her again after 10 years. He fails to return to the girl after 10 years, and her mother marries her off to someone else.
• In Great Greed, the King offers you the hand of any of his daughters in marriage. Should you choose Princess Cup Cake, who is only eleven, he says you'll have to wait until she's of age before you can marry her.
• Fate/Grand Order: After a series of failed arranged marriages between the Violet Family and Goldie Family, the two patriarchs decide to arrange a marriage between their youngest children, Cain Violet and Laurie Goldie. Cain is at high school age, whereas Laurie is still a young child, although Cain's mental age is very close to Laurie's age. Since the most important part for the two families' alliance is the engagement itself, not the marriage, the marriage won't happen until Laurie has come of age and they can reconsider the engagement when that time comes. We later learn that Cain has pretended to be mentally handicapped and is fully aware of what's happening around him. After witnessing his mother's suicide and learning about the story behind it, he decides to go through the engagement to change both families for the better.

Visual Novels

• In Higurashi: When They Cry, Dr. Irie says he's waiting for the 9-13 year old Satoko to become older. How serious he was when he said he wanted to marry her is a matter of debate, though the series implies he really only sees her as a daughter figure.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Battler several times makes passes at Maria and promises to make good on them when she's old enough. How serious he was is a subject to debate, but Maria gladly and without hesitation takes his offers as sincere.
• Played with in Hatoful Boyfriend. Yuuya points out that birds can reach sexual maturity in a year, implying that age-of-consent is a non-issue for them. This makes the human protagonist the only underaged member of the cast, despite Ryouta's route saying that she's chronologically far older than most of her love interests. Long story short, Kazuaki's route ends with him promising to wait until the heroine is older.
• In The House in Fata Morgana, the twenty-one-year-old Jacopo falls in love with Morgana (who is a full decade younger than him), and resolves to wait until she's sixteen to confess his feelings. Word of God states that he's attracted to her soul and would have fallen for her whatever her age, form or gender. It's implied that this will repeat in their third life; this time she's already sixteen when they meet, but times have changed since their first life together in The Middle Ages, and the modern incarnation of Jacopo is just as disgusted with his own feelings for a minor.
• In Long Live the Queen, Elodie is fourteen at the start of the story, and many of her suitors are significantly older or several years younger than her, leading to this trope surfacing in several routes. The age of majority in Nova is fifteen, but even among the characters, it's usually considered too young for marriage.
  • The trope is discussed most extensively in the case of twenty-six-year-old Talarist, since he is the only character who tries to court Elodie in every route of the game. Should she agree to marry him early in the story (as opposed to the final chapter), her outraged father Joslyn reminds Talarist that she is only fourteen, and Talarist assures him that he understands it will be a long betrothal and he wouldn't rush her with anything. In case Elodie marries him when she is sixteen, the epilogue makes it clear that he is "in no hurry to provide an heir for the throne".
  • Elodie herself becomes the one to wait in case she betroths herself to twelve-year-old Adair during the game. There is an option to allow him to try to kiss her, but it results in nothing but awkwardness; so the best way to really bond with Adair is to share his interests in animals.

Web Animation

• In the Camp Camp episode "Into Town", after Max and Nikki get kicked out of a strip club (they thought it was a bakery, long story), the bouncer tells Nikki to "come back when [she's] 18."
• Parodied in one Joel Haver video, "Joker's Most Devious Plan Yet", where the Joker reveals to Batman that he's effectively groomed a teenage girl on Kik and is waiting for the exact moment where she turns 18 — not to do anything, but seemingly just for the satisfaction of knowing that now she'll be "sexy". Batman is so deeply disgusted at the "legal, technically" crime that he not only beats up and arrests Joker on principle, but wishes he'd go back to murdering people.
  Joker: I've done my research, Bats! I've done all sorts of research, and I know [the age of consent in] EVERY state!
  Batman: I — I've never killed anyone, before, but I will kill. This will be the exception, I will break my own rule, and I will... I'm gonna fuckin' kill you.

Webcomics

• In Questionable Content, Steve was dating Ellen and got freaked out when he heard she was underaged; he's 24 and had assumed the age gap was a lot smaller (she entered college a year early). When she turned legal age (the following Tuesday), they locked themselves in their bedroom for a day.
• An (exaggerated) older-female younger-male example occurs in Homestuck, in which Vriska's ancestor Marquise Spinneret Mindfang has used a magic cue ball in order to see that the person who will kill her, The Summoner, will also be her lover. Due to the way trolls work, at the point she learns this, he hasn't even been born yet.
• In The Dreamer, Alan waits for Bea to be of proper age before he can court her.
• In Sabrina Online, during her Flash Forward dream sequence, Sabrina sees Tabitha drooling over Timothy. At that point in the story, Tabitha is around 20, while Tim is 16. Tabitha says she's more than willing to wait for him to be legal.^note The age of consent in Ohio, where the comic is set, is indeed 16. But she'd still have to deal with his parents, Amy and Thomas.
• Treading Ground makes it explicit. In fact, it supplies the image for this trope. It also deconstructs the trope. Nate later discovers that the legal age of consent in South Carolina (where the story is taking place) would have made Rose at the age of consent from the moment he met her. Much later, they discuss the effects of being raised by popular media, complete with a name drop for SoCalization, then-trope-name for Hollywood Provincialism.
• A variant is mentioned in Moon Over June when Hatsuki brags that her first porn shoot started late the night before her 18th birthday and was timed so her clothes actually came off at the stroke of midnight. Summer's more surprised that Hatsuki was a virgin until she was eighteen (it should be noted, Hatsuki's Canadian and their age of consent is 16).

Web Original

• Whenever a teenage starlet gets big, you can be sure to find a website somewhere on the internet counting down — in seconds — to the day she turns 18, complete with her most suggestive photos (e.g. Britney Spears as Catholic School Girls Rule in her "One More Time" video, or the cover of Rolling Stone where she appeared in lingerie, both taken when she was 17). These are usually satirical, commenting on the hypocrisy of shaming people for being attracted to a teenage media figure that has been overtly sexualized. But alas, plenty of people take these sites at face value.
• More than one Web page^note including, of course, The Other Wiki collects information on the age of consent and related laws in the U.S. states, Canada, and the rest of the world.
• Mara Wilson speaks against this trope here.
• CinemaSins: The first few Harry Potter movies got a sin for "Hermione isn't old enough to be hot yet." One of the later ones got "Hermione has to be old enough to be hot now. Right?"

Western Animation

• Family Guy:
  • In the episode "The Thin White Line" mega-pervert Quagmire asks Meg if she's 18 yet. When she says no, he quickly moves on to talk to someone else (an example of Hollywood Provincialism, since the age of consent in Rhode Island is 16). What's really bizarre about Quagmire in this case is that he's willing to have sex with underage girls, including a 12-year old crossing guard (though he claims she was Older Than They Look) and Connie D'Amico but is willing to wait for Meg. Word of God suggests that since Peter's his best friend, he respects his daughter slightly more than most women.
  • In the episode "Barely Legal", Meg is confused about romance, as she's developed a creepy crush on Brian because he was nice to her. Quagmire advises her to come to his house so he can "set her straight". When she arrives, Quagmire puts on some romantic music, takes off his robe (revealing his tiger print banana-hammock underneath)... and gives Meg some heartfelt advice to help her work things out, before sending her home with a children's book he remembered fondly, being an almost-perfect gentleman the whole time. Go figure.
  • In the episode "Quagmire and Meg", Meg did turn eighteen, and Quagmire was trying to seduce her from the get-go. Peter and Lois' enraged reactions at finding their daughter in a love shack with Quagmire border on the out-of-character.
  • In the episode "Deep Throats" Meg is romantically involved with Mayor West, who has no problem waiting for Meg to turn 18, 21, or 25 (the age at which Meg could legally rent a car). ^note This is also incorrect; a car rental company will rent you a car if you're at least 18 and have about $5,000 in cash plus a credit card because their insurance won't cover damage to the vehicle. It's not that it's illegal to rent below 25, it's that the insurer won't cover the vehicle and someone under 25 might not be carrying insurance of their own that would cover the vehicle.
  • In the episode "Hannah Banana" Stewie tells Brian that Miley Cyrus is sixteen, and Brian responds, "I'm eight." It turned out to be a moot point since she was actually a robot.
• Robot Chicken:
  • Had men counting down until the Olsen Twins were of age, then referred to the fact that the girls would never do those guys anyway.
  • Another episode did this with Britney Spears in a parody of Citizen Kane.
• In the Home Movies:
  • Episode "School Nurse," Nurse Kirkman, having been soured by an earlier date with Coach McGuirk, tells Jason (who has made clear his Precocious Crush on her) that she would like to be his girlfriend, but not until he turns 30. Jason realizes that she'll be in her 60s by that time, and he quickly loses interest.
  • In the episode "Class Trip," 38-year old McGuirk states that "it would be wrong" to get involved with a coworker, specifically, his ditzy young supervisor at the coffee shop.
    McGuirk: Plus, how old are you?
    Clarice: Nineteen.
    McGuirk: Well, I could POTENTIALLY get involved with a coworker.
• Inverted in Barbie in the Pink Shoes. When Kristyn reveals that she is 17, the response is "well, better late than never."
• Happens in an episode of Brickleberry when Woody meets an extremely attractive 17-year old during a summer camp that the park is hosting, leading to him desperately trying to avoid sleeping with her until her 18th birthday a few days later. After she turns legal and they have sex, it's implied that the girl is actually Woody's daughter by one of his old girlfriends, which neither of them knew, leading to a horrified Woody screaming in rage at his dick.
• In the season two premiere of Archer, the title character meets a very flirtatious rich girl who turns out to only be 15. Archer, in a rare show of sexual scruples, refuses to sleep with anyone underage, despite the age of consent in her country being 14 but tells her to look him up when she's legal. Even more surprising when he susses out that she's an Unexpected Virgin who's just trying to get noticed.
• Word of God has confirmed that this is the protagonist's attitude towards Lydia in the animated version of Beetlejuice. (She's about twelve, but he's clearly not going anywhere anytime soon.)
• Kaeloo: In Episode 191, Stumpy, a ten-year-old, is magically turned into an adult and realizes that he will have to wait several more years until his girlfriend becomes old enough for their relationship to be legal again.
• Humorously addressed in the Johnny Bravo episode "Johnny Bravo Meets Farrah Fawcett", where Johnny is bugged by Little Suzy begging that he come to her birthday party and he tries to get her off his back by telling her not to call him again until 15 years later when she is a co-ed.
• Discussed as a last resort in the Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures episode "Cyberswitch". When Jeremiah Surd's plan to kill Dr. Quest by swapping bodies with Race Bannon gets foiled, he settles for hijacking the teen-aged Jonny's body instead, with the assurance that his lover and accomplice Julia would be willing to wait for him to age up. Mercifully, Jonny defeats Surd in Questworld, rendering that plan pointless.
• BoJack Horseman: In the episode "Escape from L.A.", BoJack is hit on by Charlotte's daughter Penny, who tells hm that having intercourse wouldn't be bad because 17 is the age-of-consent in New Mexico. BoJack at first doesn't go along with it due to moral reasons, but his emotional instability after being rejected by Charlotte makes him reconsider. Charlotte stops him just in time.

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