There's a lot of very impassioned discourse, particularly online, about how "problematic" age-gap relationships are, and the "dangers" of women under 25 dating men who are any more than 2yrs older than them. (Interestingly, there is very little said about men under 25 dating older women, and nothing, beyond the bigots' 'justifications' of their homophobia, about people in same-sex age-gap relationships - I have ideas on why the focus is on young women, but that's another blog post!)
Personally, I feel that peoples' attitudes to age-gap relationships, like peoples' attitudes to many things, are determined by their experience; my grandparents and my parents both had a 10yr age gap, with the man being the older party - in my grandparents' case, my maternal grandmother was 19 when she married my 29yr old grandfather; their relationship lasted for 43yrs, until her death in 2004.
Two sets of my parents' friends also had a 10yr age gap, with the woman being the older party.
A friend of my mother's had a lifelong, genuinely happy marriage, with a truly loving husband, who was 25years older than her. Following his passing, she met and later married a man of her own age - they are happy enough, but the genuine joy she had in her first husband isn't there. Perhaps that's just a feature of age, and her now having someone to contrast her present husband to. Perhaps it's the fact that she - deeply and sincerely Christian, in the best possible expression of that faith - was unable to marry her second husband in church, as he was divorced.
I also have two friends of my own who are both women happily married to men who are 25yrs older than them; I've met the men in both cases, and found them to be decent men, with a commitment to and focus on their wives' wellbeing.
Age-gaps in relationships are simply something I've grown up with, and which are therefore just a part of life's wallpaper. For people whose family members and friends are all with people of a similar age to themselves, and whose primary source of insight into the world is "celebrity culture" and social media, I can easily appreciate how a significant age gap could be something they see as very unusual, and therefore concerning.
And of course, there are enough examples of abusive relationships where there was a significant age gap to seem to justify the reservations that surround older men dating significantly younger women.
Equally, however, there are people of the same age who are in abusive relationships.
To me, the issue isn't age-gaps; it's what I call "trauma-gap" relationships.
A "trauma-gap" relationship exists where one partner has experienced prior trauma and/or abuse, often growing up in an abusive or neglectful family situation, or having experienced sexual assault at a young age, or similar negative life events, while the other has only ever known security, genuine love, and, often, considerable privilege.
The secure partner doesn't see their trauma-survivor partner as a partner, or even as a whole, functional person; they see them as a project they can 'fix' - and, all too often, that 'fixing' means 'making the person into exactly what they want them to be', rather than what that person actually feels is the best version of themselves.
This isn't about "traumatised people attracting abusers", which is the most toxic piece of victim-blaming nonsense I've ever heard, honestly; it's about abusers always looking for someone they suspect won't stand up to them, always looking for someone who will see their controlling habits, their snide put-downs, their constant demands and resentments, as "normal" - because they reflect the upbringing or prior relationship experience of the traumatised person.
What exacerbates a trauma-gap relationship is that the traumatised party's experience of standing up to people in their life has been that it results in extreme drama, physical assault, and brutal loss of precious things; they therefore believe they "can't break up" with the other person, because a break up can only ever be this extreme, dramatic, intense thing, and they're understandably not emotionally able to cope with that; they have no experience of a break up being as straightforward as one person saying to another: "I don't think we're the right people for each other", or "This isn't what I want from life anymore", and both parties moving on - undoubtedly having their feelings in private, but otherwise behaving calmly and appropriately, like emotionally mature adults.
Returning to age gaps, my belief is that people who go looking for people significantly younger than themselves are probably not entirely trustworthy individuals, and may have very concerning proclivities they're trying to keep under wraps, but that genuine, true, mutually supportive love can be something that just happens, and that doesn't place age limits on itself, within the bounds of adults should not even be considering pursuing relationships with people who are not adults. If you "just happen to fall in love" with someone who is still a child when you are an adult - and "child" to me means "under the age of 20", however much nineteen year olds believe they're adults, and whatever the law says about sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen year olds being "legal" for relationship purposes - then you do not pursue that person. At all. You do not tell them you're in love with them, you do not send them gifts, you remove yourself from their circle. If you're still genuinely in love with them once they're over the age of 20, and especially once they're building their own life and security, then let them know how you feel, and see if they feel similarly (or at least willing to give you a chance.)
Am I very suspicious of why a 50yr old would want to date a 20yr old? Absolutely - but who knows if the 20yr old doesn't have their own reasons for dating the 50yr old? At 38, for example, I can't imagine having enough in common with a 20yr old to even consider the possibility of feeling anything romantic for them. I have one particular friend - a mutual friend of mine and my wife's - who is in their early 20s. They are exceptionally intelligent, they've lived a lot of life, they have some genuinely engaging views on a lot of things, they're fun to be around, they can hold a conversation - but I am well aware they would be exhausting and enraging to me if we were in a relationship; my wife, who is 33, feels similarly about this friend; they're a great friend, but would be an absolutely disastrous romantic partner. That's a normal level of perspective.
I do feel that many people now aren't able to distinguish between "I enjoy spending time in this person's company" and "I'm sexually/romantically attracted to this person", and certainly, especially for people on the ace/aro spectrum, society often presents 'romantic love' as 'wanting to be in a particular person's presence', which can result in people confusing good friendships for "being in love."
Personally, I feel that peoples' attitudes to age-gap relationships, like peoples' attitudes to many things, are determined by their experience; my grandparents and my parents both had a 10yr age gap, with the man being the older party - in my grandparents' case, my maternal grandmother was 19 when she married my 29yr old grandfather; their relationship lasted for 43yrs, until her death in 2004.
Two sets of my parents' friends also had a 10yr age gap, with the woman being the older party.
A friend of my mother's had a lifelong, genuinely happy marriage, with a truly loving husband, who was 25years older than her. Following his passing, she met and later married a man of her own age - they are happy enough, but the genuine joy she had in her first husband isn't there. Perhaps that's just a feature of age, and her now having someone to contrast her present husband to. Perhaps it's the fact that she - deeply and sincerely Christian, in the best possible expression of that faith - was unable to marry her second husband in church, as he was divorced.
I also have two friends of my own who are both women happily married to men who are 25yrs older than them; I've met the men in both cases, and found them to be decent men, with a commitment to and focus on their wives' wellbeing.
Age-gaps in relationships are simply something I've grown up with, and which are therefore just a part of life's wallpaper. For people whose family members and friends are all with people of a similar age to themselves, and whose primary source of insight into the world is "celebrity culture" and social media, I can easily appreciate how a significant age gap could be something they see as very unusual, and therefore concerning.
And of course, there are enough examples of abusive relationships where there was a significant age gap to seem to justify the reservations that surround older men dating significantly younger women.
Equally, however, there are people of the same age who are in abusive relationships.
To me, the issue isn't age-gaps; it's what I call "trauma-gap" relationships.
A "trauma-gap" relationship exists where one partner has experienced prior trauma and/or abuse, often growing up in an abusive or neglectful family situation, or having experienced sexual assault at a young age, or similar negative life events, while the other has only ever known security, genuine love, and, often, considerable privilege.
The secure partner doesn't see their trauma-survivor partner as a partner, or even as a whole, functional person; they see them as a project they can 'fix' - and, all too often, that 'fixing' means 'making the person into exactly what they want them to be', rather than what that person actually feels is the best version of themselves.
This isn't about "traumatised people attracting abusers", which is the most toxic piece of victim-blaming nonsense I've ever heard, honestly; it's about abusers always looking for someone they suspect won't stand up to them, always looking for someone who will see their controlling habits, their snide put-downs, their constant demands and resentments, as "normal" - because they reflect the upbringing or prior relationship experience of the traumatised person.
What exacerbates a trauma-gap relationship is that the traumatised party's experience of standing up to people in their life has been that it results in extreme drama, physical assault, and brutal loss of precious things; they therefore believe they "can't break up" with the other person, because a break up can only ever be this extreme, dramatic, intense thing, and they're understandably not emotionally able to cope with that; they have no experience of a break up being as straightforward as one person saying to another: "I don't think we're the right people for each other", or "This isn't what I want from life anymore", and both parties moving on - undoubtedly having their feelings in private, but otherwise behaving calmly and appropriately, like emotionally mature adults.
Returning to age gaps, my belief is that people who go looking for people significantly younger than themselves are probably not entirely trustworthy individuals, and may have very concerning proclivities they're trying to keep under wraps, but that genuine, true, mutually supportive love can be something that just happens, and that doesn't place age limits on itself, within the bounds of adults should not even be considering pursuing relationships with people who are not adults. If you "just happen to fall in love" with someone who is still a child when you are an adult - and "child" to me means "under the age of 20", however much nineteen year olds believe they're adults, and whatever the law says about sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen year olds being "legal" for relationship purposes - then you do not pursue that person. At all. You do not tell them you're in love with them, you do not send them gifts, you remove yourself from their circle. If you're still genuinely in love with them once they're over the age of 20, and especially once they're building their own life and security, then let them know how you feel, and see if they feel similarly (or at least willing to give you a chance.)
Am I very suspicious of why a 50yr old would want to date a 20yr old? Absolutely - but who knows if the 20yr old doesn't have their own reasons for dating the 50yr old? At 38, for example, I can't imagine having enough in common with a 20yr old to even consider the possibility of feeling anything romantic for them. I have one particular friend - a mutual friend of mine and my wife's - who is in their early 20s. They are exceptionally intelligent, they've lived a lot of life, they have some genuinely engaging views on a lot of things, they're fun to be around, they can hold a conversation - but I am well aware they would be exhausting and enraging to me if we were in a relationship; my wife, who is 33, feels similarly about this friend; they're a great friend, but would be an absolutely disastrous romantic partner. That's a normal level of perspective.
I do feel that many people now aren't able to distinguish between "I enjoy spending time in this person's company" and "I'm sexually/romantically attracted to this person", and certainly, especially for people on the ace/aro spectrum, society often presents 'romantic love' as 'wanting to be in a particular person's presence', which can result in people confusing good friendships for "being in love."
I'm asexual (ace), and my wife is demisexual (an ace-spectrum identity; she will not experience immediate sexual attraction; attraction, for her, is something that comes once a relationship has developed, and is often very much centred just on her relationship partner) and aromantic (aro) - I'm very much romantic, in the classical sense, so have had to defer to her for an explanation of aromantic experience: "I love people in many ways, but the concept of 'romance' makes no sense to me; I want relationship connection, and I enjoy showing affection to anyone I'm in relationship with, whether that's friends or something else, but the idea that there's something 'different and special' about one type of relationship connection over all others is baffling to me. I'm happy in my marriage, but I don't understand how people can get married and then just 'forget about' the friends they had before their marriage."
Being somewhat immune to the hormone-madness of instant sexual attraction, we're both much more able to easily distinguish "I enjoy spending time with this person, and I love who they are as a person, and the friendship connection we have, but I'm not in love with them, and that's okay." I'm able to look back at my most serious relationship prior to meeting my wife, and realise that what I had was an exceptionally strong friendship bond, coupled with a problematic possessive tendency (which I've since worked on), and that, if I had married the person I was in love with at that point, it wouldn't have been the level of happy marriage I now enjoy with my wife.
I feel too many people, especially younger people, aren't even aware that this perspective is something that exists in the world, never mind is something they could gain for themselves, and that that's leading people to mistake other forms of relationship connection for "love", with all the baggage and societal attitudes that come with that.
I find talking about 'red flags' in relationships unhelpful - people often genuinely can't see past the feelings they identify as "love" clearly enough, and too many people, of all ages and genders, are easy prey for the sunk cost fallacy, believing that time and emotional resources already invested in a relationship are a 'reason' to continue that relationship beyond the point they begin to recognise it isn't the right relationship for them.
Instead, I'd like to end this post with a quick run-down of a few 'green flags' - signs that a relationship, whether romantic, familial, work-based, or friendship - is a healthy, restorative force for good:
. The other person prioritises you in consideration and conversation, without devaluing themselves
I feel too many people, especially younger people, aren't even aware that this perspective is something that exists in the world, never mind is something they could gain for themselves, and that that's leading people to mistake other forms of relationship connection for "love", with all the baggage and societal attitudes that come with that.
I find talking about 'red flags' in relationships unhelpful - people often genuinely can't see past the feelings they identify as "love" clearly enough, and too many people, of all ages and genders, are easy prey for the sunk cost fallacy, believing that time and emotional resources already invested in a relationship are a 'reason' to continue that relationship beyond the point they begin to recognise it isn't the right relationship for them.
Instead, I'd like to end this post with a quick run-down of a few 'green flags' - signs that a relationship, whether romantic, familial, work-based, or friendship - is a healthy, restorative force for good:
. The other person prioritises you in consideration and conversation, without devaluing themselves
. Disagreements do not become disenchantments or resentments
. Your 'quirks' and 'weirdnesses' are sources of joy and endearment for your relationship partners, and are remembered and attended to, even when those you're in relationship with doesn't share them (for example, a relationship partner who was done with dinosaurs at 10yrs old is always happy to engage with your enjoyment of dinosaurs; they come back from holiday and present you with a plushie of your favourite dinosaur , or they buy you dinosaur cupcakes while you're in town together)
. Your relationship partner talks about you with genuine pride and celebration to others - including when you're not present (for example, you discover that your boss was enthusiastically commending you to one of their peers, a friend eagerly shares how skilled you are at art, writing, or business, and is always looking for opportunities to mention and recommend you)
. When you ask whether you should change something about yourself or your lifestyle, your relationship partner keeps the focus on how you feel, and what is motivating you to consider the change, and expresses genuine support for a change you want to make for positive, self-nurturing reasons.
What are some 'green flags' you've noticed in your own relationships, or that you always look out for when connecting with others?
. When you ask whether you should change something about yourself or your lifestyle, your relationship partner keeps the focus on how you feel, and what is motivating you to consider the change, and expresses genuine support for a change you want to make for positive, self-nurturing reasons.
What are some 'green flags' you've noticed in your own relationships, or that you always look out for when connecting with others?
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