In a love relationship, does age matter? If so, what are the reasons an age difference can be a strain, and if you do think age matters, how much of a gap to be a potential issue?
If you think age matters, what are the specific issues that can it cause ?
Age is a shorthand proxy for maturity and life experience. However there are 25 year olds with more maturity and life experience than people who are 40.
There is a saying ‘half your age plus 7’. I don’t agree with it, but its a rough shorthand. If you are 30, then 22+. If you are 40, then 27+.
Yes age matters. Everything matters. An age difference means a difference in many aspects of life. I think for most people commonality is what leads to strong relationships. But for some, there are more important things than age and all of it’s derivatives.
QFT.
As I noted in Skald’s thread, when I was 18, I started dating a 32-year-old; we dated for a year and a half before the relationship flamed out.
Yes, we were strongly attracted to each other, and we were in love. Yes, we had certain interests in common (we met playing D&D, and we shared interests in pro football, space exploration, fantasy fiction, etc.) However, she’d simply experienced a lot more in her life than I had:
- She’d been married twice (and, thus, divorced twice, as well)
- She’d served in the Air Force for four years
- She had two children (her ex, who was still in the Air Force, and stationed in Germany, had custody; I never met them)
Meanwhile, I was a college freshman, and had never even had a serious girlfriend before her. As it turned out, though I absolutely cared deeply about her, I just couldn’t relate to her life experiences.
The differences between us just wound being more than love alone (well, that, and really good sex) could overcome, and she broke up with me. She needed someone with whom she had more in common. Our relationship was (not surprisingly) not popular with my parents, and I believe that was another part of the reason why she broke it off.
kenobi 65,
It seems like external pressure or if not outright pressure, then an attitude of being less than accepting, is one of the most common issues in age differences like this. It makes me wonder how perhaps alot of these relationships might do ok, if not for the external disapproval factor from family.
It matters if you think it matters, otherwise not. I’m only two years older than my wife – to be precise, 2 years, 1 month, 1 week and 4 days older – but I do know May-December relationships over here that have worked just fine. (But others that have not and for a variety of reasons.)
It doesn’t sound like that to me. It sounds like being at extremely different life stages was the main problem.
That’s why age matters - it generally means you’re at different life stages, or, if you’re not, why not? I mean, why would a 32-year-old be at the same or similar life stage as a teenager? What if one or both want kids? Then age can, in pure biological terms, matter.
If there’s a good reason they’re at similar life-stages, or they just have so much in common otherwise that it doesn’t matter, then the age difference doesn’t have to break up a relationship and IME usually doesn’t. If they break up it will be for other reasons.
The oldest woman I’ve dated is old enough to be the grandmother of the youngest woman I’ve dated.
Age ain’t nothin’ but a number!
Everybody has a different feeling for what is too large a gap, clearly. But I think most everyone could/would make an exception, based on a real dynamic, instead of a projected ideal one. By which, I mean, we might feel one way if it were our teen daughter, and another if both parties were over eighty.
I should think I would be more concerned about in equities in power over the other. So I wouldn’t mind if you’re far apart in age, so much as far apart in world experience. Student/teacher, boss/underling, etc.
( my hubby is 9yrs 9months older than I, not that either of us ever cared about it as I was almost 30, he almost 40! However whenever I round it off and say we’re 10yrs apart, he corrects me, “No, not ten yrs!” So I figure it must be some sort of threshold of some importance for him?)
They are just numbers.
Exactly. The disapproval of my parents, as gentle as it was, was simply the icing on the cake.
She’d served in the military. She’d gone through two marriages, and two divorces. She’d had two children. All of these were things that, at the naive age of 18, I simply had no way to really understand what she’d experienced, or how those experiences had shaped who she was.
I won’t say that she was substantially more “mature” than I was, because she had her own issues (including being a 32-year-old who’d taken up with an 18-year-old 
), but we truly did come from two very different places in our lives. Once the novelty of the relationship started to wane, those differences became more pronounced, and those were the primary factors which doomed the relationship. (I should note that she dumped me for a guy who was closer to her own age, and had served in the military. 
)
kenobi
On a sidenote, it seems like your parents were actually alot more open minded and tolerant than many parents would have been, when I think about it, considering the fact you were a teenager, (especially if you were living at home, and even more so if you were still in high school )
As far as the issues, I agree the difference in life stage matters but that seems to be less of a factor the older you get, ( if you had been 32 or even mid to late twenties for example and she was in her forties).
I think the attitudes and subsequent acceptance or lack of acceptance by family and even society is another big one, but this depends on the ages involved and the relative gender. If the older party is say, a 46 year old man, and the younger party is a 30 year old female, the stigma will likely be less than the other way around. For some reason society in large part still attaches a negative motive or stigma to it, much more so than if the older partner is male.
I was a college freshman and sophomore during the relationship. I was still, technically, living at home, but I was off at college (several hours away from home) most of the time.
And, yes, they were likely far more tolerant than many might have been. I think that part of it might have been that, up until then, they had never really had any problems with me – I’d been an excellent student, never got into any trouble, rarely if ever needed to be disciplined.
They absolutely were not fans of the relationship, but it came down to, “we don’t like it, we want you to know we don’t like it, but you’re old enough that it’s your decision – we’re not going to tell you what you can and can’t do.”
Very likely, but then, there might have been other issues which might have come into play – the biggest would probably have been children. I would then have been of an age when I’d be looking to have a family, while she would be of an age where she really didn’t want to have more kids.
And, then, you look at things today. I’ll be 48 in a couple of days…I’m firmly in middle age, but I’m still in excellent health, I’m very active, and am looking at another 15 to 20 years of my career. She’s 62 now (I haven’t seen or talked to her in over a decade), and just a few years away from retirement. We’d then be looking at once again being in very different places in our lives.
You start to get into other potential stereotypes at that point. If it’s an older man / younger woman, it’s often assumed that he’s having a midlife crisis (and might have divorced his wife to hook up with a young hottie), or that she’s a golddigger. If it’s an older woman / younger man, we now have the charming term of “cougar” to describe her. 
[QUOTE=kenobi 65;16115348}
You start to get into other potential stereotypes at that point. If it’s an older man / younger woman, it’s often assumed that he’s having a midlife crisis (and might have divorced his wife to hook up with a young hottie), or that she’s a golddigger. If it’s an older woman / younger man, we now have the charming term of “cougar” to describe her. :p[/QUOTE]
Ah yes, the gold digger stereotype if a female is younger, and a cougar if shes older. Compared to the motive of a midlife crisis for the man, it seems like whichever end of the age spectrum the female falls on, she ends up being more stigmatized imo, I would rather be portrayed as having a midlife crisis than a golddigger. Not that these always are attached but agree with your overall observation
Basically, it matters if it matters. There are plenty of relationships with age differences which work well, many don’t.
I’ve been in love twice, first with someone 16 years older and then with someone 6 years younger. Age wasn’t a big part of the reasons each relationship ended, but it was more of a factor in the 2nd, even though it wasn’t so big a gap and we were in similar stages of life with similar levels of experience.
Of course age matters. My boyfriend’s age is within a year of mine, and we’re very well-matched in terms of life experience, upbringing, and cultural background. Anytime I date more than 5 years up or down, there are higher barriers to entry worry about. I’m not saying I’d never date up or down that far, but it’d have to be one hell of a guy to make it worthwhile.
It’s also important (to me) to have the same approximate life expectancy as my partner. Of course accidents can always happen, but there’s a better chance of us dying at around same time than there would be if I were 28 and dating a 45-year-old.
“It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.”
“Before a man’s forty, girls cost nothing. After that you have to pay money, or tell a story.”
When I was 29, I had a thing with a woman who was a very hot 48. When I was 40, I had a thing with a woman who was 26. The younger woman’s conversation trended to shoes and getting a Walkman, so I knew it was doomed. For a short term fling it was great, but not for a long-term relationship. The older woman was mellow and relaxed, with adult issues and thinking. Of the two, I preferred the older woman and the age difference didn’t matter. With the younger, the age difference was definitely an issue.
My partner is 20 years younger than I am, same birthday. Our age difference has never been a problem; actually, our different perspective has brought a wonderful dimension to our relationship that it wouldn’t otherwise have. And so far, we’ve been together over 25 years.
panache,
Thats a good point, I think an age difference and accompanying difference in life experience and perspective can add alot of vibrancy,depth and richness to a relationship.
I sometimes think that age/life experience differences matter more the younger you are (or perhaps more correctly, the younger the younger partner is). Like **Chefguy **and **kenobi **have said, it’s a matter of where you are in life. A 30-year-old and 18-year-old are in vastly different places in life than, say, a 44-year-old and a 32-year-old, but it’s the same 12 year difference. And there’s the “different strokes” factor, too: some people could get past it, some couldn’t. I think I’m more in the “couldn’t” camp, myself; I look for a parter at about the same stage in life as myself because I’m more comfortable with that and want to share it. Others crave the differences.