Can't A Grown Woman Marry Her Former High School Teacher Who's Almost 40 Years Older Than Her Without Haters?

The short answer is no. But isn’t she likely going to get some haters no matter what? Isn’t that the world we live in these days, especially for an influencer?

Had she met someone her own age and fallen in love, there would still be someone out there to take a big steamy pile on their relationship. It's the way it works.

Let's not simply hand the haters an easy win. Let's give this 22-year-old Italian influencer, who has gone viral with several posts about her romance with her 60-year-old husband, a chance to change a few hearts and minds.

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Who knows? Maybe she can win some of the doubters and haters over. Her name is Minea Pagni, and she's being hit with the gold digger label for simply not allowing an almost four-decade age gap to stand in the way of love.

Those doing that are doing so blindly. She's not in it for the money.

Pagni told the NY Post, "Reducing a woman’s choices to money is one of the oldest and most unfair stereotypes. I have my own goals, my own work, and my own independence."

She insists she didn’t marry for money. She continued, "I married him for who he is — his mind, his values, and the way he loves."

The Age Gap Likely Isn't What Has People Uncomfortable

That sounds an awful lot like a love story. But let's continue, because my desire for this to be a love story and nothing more could be, I admit, clouding my judgment.

I don’t think so, because gold diggers aren’t in it for the mind, values, and way the person loves. They're there only for money. But I could be missing something.

"I knew not everyone would understand, but I wasn’t fully prepared for how intense some reactions could be," she admitted. "Still, I’ve learned that criticism often says more about society’s fears than about our love."

The happy couple initially met five years ago, when he was her high school philosophy teacher. That's right, it's right there in the headline, isn’t it? They met at high school. That's a tough hurdle to make it over.

"I had a crush on him . . . Nothing ever happened. . . . Years later, we met again — as two adults — and that’s when love actually began," Pagni explained on Instagram.

They met again two years ago at a bookstore. They started dating and ended up getting married last month. I went into it thinking people were unfairly going after her. The Post points out comments like, "Rent cannot be that high sis."

But I have a strong feeling now that it's not the age gap people are turning their heads sideways and squinting their eyes at. It's the whole part about him being her former high school teacher thing.

I get it. The trolls might have a point.