Age Gap Relationships
Jul. 29th, 2025 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerAn article appeared in my newsfeed a few days about stating that the topic of age gap relationships has been going viral. I first saw it on BuzzFeed, which tends to pop up with its listicles in my news app, though a bit of further reading I did on the topic today shows that it's a reprint of an article that appeared in Huffington Post a few weeks ago. I'll share the HuffPo link here: Gen Z Is Particularly Weird About Relationship Age Gaps. Here's Why (12 July 2025).
Okay, so what is the answer to the question posed in the article's headline? Well, having read the article twice now (once at HuffPo, once at BuzzFeed) I'm honestly not sure there's a there, there. The author cites mostly social media hullabaloo about specific celebrity pairings but then opines, in a journalistic aside, that collective real opinions are generally more nuanced than what gets likes and retweets on services like X.
People having negative opinions about age gap pairings has been a fact for probably as long as there have been age gap pairings. Literary works from the 1800s wrote of "May-December romance". In the late 1900s terms like "gold digger" became popular, particularly when the relationship involved a significantly younger woman and a wealthy older man. The modernism of shaming women goes ways, BTW. In the early 2000s we heard the term cougar for older, financially stable women who pursue younger men for their looks and physical stamina.
My 2 cents on the matter is that I refrain from judging a priori but instead caution a couple, if they ask my opinion, "Are you in enough of the same place in life?" Because aside from egregious cases, like where the younger partner is underage or the older is in mental decline, that's the biggest challenge: the age gap makes your needs too incompatible.
I faced this question myself years ago. When I was about 22 I met "Jackie" through an online precursor to modern dating apps. Internet tech was primitive back then, so there was no easy filtering on things like age. Jackie and I hit it off as friends and hung out with each other, both in larger groups of friends and alone, several times. But Jackie was 10 years older than me. While we got along as friends we never clicked as romantic partners. And yes, I definitely was asking myself, "Can Jackie and I be romantic partners?" Cuz, duh, we met on a dating forum. I think she was asking herself the same thing, too, and waiting for me to initiate. (Internet wasn't the only thing more primitive back in the 1990s. 🤣)
Anyway, I thought long and hard about it, and decided No. We were good as friends, but I figured things would never work as romantic partners. Not long term, anyway. In a few months I'd be earning a degree and beginning a big job search to launch a new career. Whereas Jackie had already been doing her own thing for 10 years and had settled into a rhythm— one that wasn't exactly great relative to where I planned to take my career, BTW. I didn't see us being compatible.
The point of this anecdote isn't to establish 10 years as the cutoff for age gaps. Obviously it's going to depend on the question I posed— where are you each at in life? Plus, the number of years that put you too far apart in life is relative. 10 years is huge when you're 22 and meeting a 32-year old. 10 years is a lot less of a chasm when you're 52 and 62. When you're 22 even 5 years may be too much of a difference. As one of the people in the news article was quoted, "At 25, I wouldn’t even date a 21 year old."
Update: What's normal for age gaps? Here's one recent scientific study I found.
Okay, so what is the answer to the question posed in the article's headline? Well, having read the article twice now (once at HuffPo, once at BuzzFeed) I'm honestly not sure there's a there, there. The author cites mostly social media hullabaloo about specific celebrity pairings but then opines, in a journalistic aside, that collective real opinions are generally more nuanced than what gets likes and retweets on services like X.
People having negative opinions about age gap pairings has been a fact for probably as long as there have been age gap pairings. Literary works from the 1800s wrote of "May-December romance". In the late 1900s terms like "gold digger" became popular, particularly when the relationship involved a significantly younger woman and a wealthy older man. The modernism of shaming women goes ways, BTW. In the early 2000s we heard the term cougar for older, financially stable women who pursue younger men for their looks and physical stamina.
My 2 cents on the matter is that I refrain from judging a priori but instead caution a couple, if they ask my opinion, "Are you in enough of the same place in life?" Because aside from egregious cases, like where the younger partner is underage or the older is in mental decline, that's the biggest challenge: the age gap makes your needs too incompatible.
I faced this question myself years ago. When I was about 22 I met "Jackie" through an online precursor to modern dating apps. Internet tech was primitive back then, so there was no easy filtering on things like age. Jackie and I hit it off as friends and hung out with each other, both in larger groups of friends and alone, several times. But Jackie was 10 years older than me. While we got along as friends we never clicked as romantic partners. And yes, I definitely was asking myself, "Can Jackie and I be romantic partners?" Cuz, duh, we met on a dating forum. I think she was asking herself the same thing, too, and waiting for me to initiate. (Internet wasn't the only thing more primitive back in the 1990s. 🤣)
Anyway, I thought long and hard about it, and decided No. We were good as friends, but I figured things would never work as romantic partners. Not long term, anyway. In a few months I'd be earning a degree and beginning a big job search to launch a new career. Whereas Jackie had already been doing her own thing for 10 years and had settled into a rhythm— one that wasn't exactly great relative to where I planned to take my career, BTW. I didn't see us being compatible.
The point of this anecdote isn't to establish 10 years as the cutoff for age gaps. Obviously it's going to depend on the question I posed— where are you each at in life? Plus, the number of years that put you too far apart in life is relative. 10 years is huge when you're 22 and meeting a 32-year old. 10 years is a lot less of a chasm when you're 52 and 62. When you're 22 even 5 years may be too much of a difference. As one of the people in the news article was quoted, "At 25, I wouldn’t even date a 21 year old."
Update: What's normal for age gaps? Here's one recent scientific study I found.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-30 04:10 am (UTC)It seems to work for them but I feel like that would be too large a gap for me.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-30 05:19 am (UTC)As an early- to mid 50s person I'm looking forward to many years of active and enjoyable retirement. A person going on 75 would be a lot slower. And if we both were younger, the relative age gap would be even more dramatic. I can't imagine saddling early 30s me with today-me, for example. Early 30s me was so more energetic that slowing him down to the speed of today-me would have been unfair-- and unacceptable to younger-me.
I get it that not everyone looks for the same things in a relationship with a partner. I'm talking here in terms of syncing energy levels and ability to pursue shared interests because that's always been important to me. I'd be curious to hear from someone in such an age gap relationship how they solve for the objectively large differences.