maybe you're just awkward and close-minded but there is nothing wrong about such romantic relationship (where one was already much older and the other was still a child at the time of their first meeting) unless the romance started when one is still a child (which makes it wrong and pedophilic). using your logic, your parents shouldn't have had sex and created you because they were all children. but ofc now that your parents are both consenting adults, they could have sex. their age doesn't matter unless the relationship is inherently abusive and manipulative
The age gap isn’t the problem. The problem for me is when they established a relationship ever since the youngest in the age gap was a child.
If that’s being close-minded then so be it.
Not to mention, I specifically said this barely gets a pass because MC didn’t realize that he was fking the child he cared for. Multiple stories don’t do that. Multiple stories have MCs raise a child they F later. If that’s your cup of tea, it doesn’t make you more open minded than I am. It just means what’s acceptable to you isn’t acceptable to me.
Of course, he was grown when the ML was a child. I, for the life of me, can never understand why authors think it’s hot to pair people who knew each when one was a child and the other was 10-15+ older. Makes no sense to me. Ain’t no way that at 10, I was attracted to a 20-30 year old. Yet this is how they keep writing these stories. It’s only less awful when the person who is 10-15+ years older doesn’t realize that the person they’re fcking was a child they knew until after they did the deed. Silver lining is so thin, it barely exists.