An older man is ideal though, wouldn't he be opposed to all of that junior high drama?
Some of us have relatively recently been discussing (and it's a recurrent discussion) the appeal for an older man of finding a much younger woman (for some or perhaps many, preferably a virgin). Despite the visual appeal and some other advantages of youth, I tend to both look at those advantages as not worth it in the long run
and consider the potential for finding such young women who would seek out one of us geezers to be a serious long shot (like the odds of winning the lottery). Now, please don't think this is a pitch for you in particular,
@Obedient Christian girl, to set your sights on me, because it's
not (icus2gtbt), but just recently I have been unsuccessful at pushing out of my mind the serious desire to pursue a particular young woman in my life who is almost 50 years younger than I am. Life circumstances relatively similar to the ones I experienced myself growing up have forced this young woman to mature much more quickly in many ways than her peers, and she is also friendly with me in a cheerful, respectful and some kind of sensuous way.
Your post inspired me to share this, because I have a response to your question: junior high drama, as you put it, actually has advantages as well as disadvantages (and some of that is because being of junior high age is truly one of the most natural ages for people to begin courting instead of wasting their time learning academic subjects that will generally be of no use in their futures).
@steve's suggestion is a legitimate one; intermediaries provide the atmosphere in which individuals on both sides of the gender divide can seriously consider making advances toward each other in a way that protects them from the onslaught of their own personal insecurities that are to some extent founded on already having a history of having experienced some biting rejections. Being told that a person of interest has no interest in you is a hard pill to swallow. Yes, males aren't adept at reading female cues, but females (especially young ones) very often have a habit of spewing out those cues rather indiscriminately, only to stomp on the egos of many of those males who respond to those cues. It becomes disheartening and in many cases can lead to men becoming downright unwilling to stick their necks out. My own wife, who is 15 years my junior, let me know she wanted me to pursue her by giving me an embrace that created clothed contact between significant body zones, if you know what I mean. Had she not done that, I can guarantee you there are four individuals between the ages of 16 and 27 who would never have existed (our children); I would have
never made the first move with her. This is all part of a very nuanced set of mating rituals that humans have always struggled to perfect. You will have to determine for yourself where you are going to land in the continuum of the dance. Scripture is a great framework of guidelines related to all that, but It doesn't portray itself as a complete instruction manual. The basics of who you are and are not to sleep with are in Leviticus 18, but Lev. 18 doesn't say much of anything that could be construed to explain how boys and girls are supposed to go after each other before they actually uncover each other's nakedness.
In my own case, my musings about the current young woman in question will in all likelihood remain in the realm of the privacy of my own mind (other than having shared them here), but I can promise you this: if she did indeed have some kind of interest in exploring a possible permanent place in my family, given the intricacies of 21st-Century-Shizoid Reality, it would most
certainly be not only preferable for
her to provide me with some kind of tangible expression of that interest than it would be for
me to do the same with her -- despite the fact that,
in general, males are the ones to take the lead in that department. And it could be the greatest of all blessed strategies for her to enlist the aid of an intermediary to give me the message. The same in fact, would be true to a different degree in the case of a woman almost my age who was interested in me; it would be the last thing on my mind to be concerned about whether it was a junior high drama kind of thing -- I would just be flattered and thankful that she had thought highly enough of me to give me the message that I was in her sights.
I'm not just saying this to you; I'm saying this to anyone (and have said it to my own teenage daughters): getting hung up on following all the rules of tradition and cultural suppression that swirl around you will not necessarily provide you with any contentment, peace or happiness in life. Stop, look and listen. And above all take stock within yourself of the future you want to experience. You have to know what you want your future to look like before you can organize your life so that it heads in that direction instead of the millions of other distracting directions that will present themselves. When you know what you want your future to look like, then, and always with as much integrity as you can muster, make your moment-to-moment decisions with that future in mind. Are you living into your future by making this choice or that choice? If you are, then it's perfectly legitimate to be a woman who risks looking too forward on the path of pursuing a man who she perceives to be the very man who could lead her in a life of successfully glorifying God.