Red Hot Chili Peppers Singer Anthony Kiedis’ Girlfriend Eileen Kelly Responds to Concerns About Couple's 'Alarming' 33-Year Age Gap

Anthony Kiedis' girlfriend Eileen Kelly defended the couple's 33-year age gap that people either think is "either alarming or impressive" in a Vogue essay published April 21.

The s-- columnist and "Going Mental" podcaster, 30, wrote, "There is something to be said for a man who’s simply had more time to get his s--- together, and my much older boyfriend seems genuinely excited to be with me — not like he’s biding his time before he can swipe for someone better. He is fully aware that he’s lucky."

She met the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman, 63, at a birthday party.

"I sat down next to him at a long table and started talking, as I tend to do when left unsupervised," she continued. "I had just returned from a solo trip to Hawaii, where I’d rented a tiny cottage on the beach in a town so small most people have never heard of it. It turns out he has owned a house there for more than 20 years. It was a place I’d been returning to for the better part of a decade, and he had been there the whole time, just down the road. We joked about whether we’d ever passed each other on the same stretch of sand, or stood in line next to each other at the same health food store. As we kept talking, we quickly realized our lives had crossed in other ways too, an invisible string connecting us."

In fact, Kelly says, "The age gap didn’t register at first. I had met someone interesting and magnetic; if anything, I assumed we’d just become friends. But when we exchanged numbers and made plans to get coffee, I called my best friend, the only person I knew who had dated much older. 'Should I go on this date?' I asked. 'How old?' 'In his 60s.' A pause, then: 'Oh my God. He’s a spring chicken.'"

It's not his first time the "Californication" singer has had an age-gap relationship.

He fathered son Everly Bear, 19, with model Heather Christie, who was 21 when he was 44 in 2007.

He dated actress Ione Skye beginning in 1987 when she was 17 and he was 24, and he dated Jessica Stam when she was 19 and he was 43 in 2006. He began a relationship with Australian model Helena Vestergaard when she was 19 and he was 50 in 2013. He dated Brazillian model Wanessa Milhomem when she was 23 and he was 52 in 2015.

His famous flings reportedly include Spice Girls singer Mel C, Heidi Klum and Demi Moore.

She recognizes that some age differences are perceived differently.

"Take Cher, who is dating someone decades younger than she is. Broadly speaking, the reaction is: 'Good for her. A 79-year-old pop icon has earned the right to enjoy herself.'"

Yes, Kelly is aware of the stereotypes.

"An older man is reflexively labeled 'creepy' and 'gross,' while the woman 'must have daddy issues' or 'must be a gold-digger.' Is it really so difficult to imagine that connection can exist across generations, and that two people of different ages can find something real in each other? The less generous assumptions exist for a reason. A difference in years often means a difference in experience, yes, but also in independence—and a relationship where one person provides the conditions for the other’s stability (financial, emotional, or otherwise) can set up a dangerous dynamic," she pens.

She sees herself as different from the norm.

Kelly continues, "Since dating my boyfriend, I’ve become friends with a successful fashion designer and a film producer in similarly significant age-gap relationships—two smart, capable, fully formed women whom no one would mistake for victims. And like them, I have my own money, my own career, and I have my own home. I love my boyfriend, but I’m not at risk of losing everything if we break up. It’s hard not to see that distance between needing and wanting as part of the balance that makes the relationship possible. If I were 18, or even 21, the scales would be weighted far differently."

For Kelly, the shock value is in the unsolicited public commentary.

"It happens in passing," she wrote. "A question: 'Is that your dad?' Or, directed at him, with a performative smile: 'Your daughter is so beautiful.' The remarks come with a cheerful bluntness, suggesting a certain satisfaction at having correctly identified the matter at hand, and it’s incredibly awkward every time. There is no sense that anything has been overstepped. If anything, it’s the opposite: a pride in just saying the thing that others were probably thinking. And it hasn’t only been strangers: When I FaceTimed a friend to tell her about my relationship, she was visibly disappointed, as if I had violated some shared understanding of what my life was supposed to look like. We speak less now."

Kelly has no regrets about dating someone "twice my age."

"It’s my first time dating someone significantly older, and sometimes I joke with friends that I’ve been missing out my whole life."

She hopes to quiet the critics.

"For some, age-gap relationships inevitably function as a site onto which their broader anxieties—about power, aging, desirability and its perceived limits—can be projected. What people assume about me, about him, about the structure of our relationship, often reveals more about them than anything that exists between my boyfriend and me. The relationship itself becomes secondary to what it represents," she continued. "But the reality is comparatively unremarkable. From the inside, we’re mostly just two people doing the regular, ongoing work of moving through life together."