A study by Emory University, Atlanta, has found that the bigger the age gap between couples, the more likely they are to separate.
Couples with a five–year gap are 18% more likely to separate than partners closer in age; this number jumps up to 39% when the couple has a 10-year gap and up to 95% for couples who were born 20-years apart.
The research concluded that the ‘ideal’ age gap for couples was only one year or less. But can age gap relationships really work and why do people find it so hard to accept them?
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio still continues to come under storm after his appetite for younger girls was discovered by the internet a couple of years ago. His string of age gap relationships became an internet meme, but many took the situation very seriously.
One Twitter user wrote: “Leonardo DiCaprio is nearly 50 and dating teenage girls. I’m sorry but a 50-year-old man that dates teenagers is a predator. Being a celebrity doesn’t exempt him from being a creep.”
Leonardo DiCaprio’s turn over of girlfriends, seems to suggest that Emory University’s research is correct: Age gap relationships don’t last. However, I fear in DiCarpio’s case, it’s more of a complex on his part and when his partners turn 25 they simply ‘age out’.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about age gap relationships. My last relationship was with a man eight years older than me – when we met, I was 19 and him 27. I think the whole fact of us cracking on when I was still a teen thing really altered people’s perceptions of the relationship. My friends thought my ex was doing a DiCaprio, and it was all a bit creepy.
I would always protest that age gap relationships work as long as you share similar goals and are in similar life stages. For me and my partner this was true: we both worked full time in bars, both went out drinking (a lot) for fun, and neither of us wanted to seriously settle down.
Now out of that relationship and looking back, I notice that we ALWAYS made jibes at each other based on age and quite often, I was dubbed as immature for expressing basic emotion. I don’t believe this would have happened if we were of the same age. I wouldn’t say we split solely because of the age gap, but I do think that it played a role.
Most recently, I was at the pub with some old work colleagues who were chatting about a 27-year-old bartender who was planning on asking out a 19-year-old barista. Weirdly, this is the same workplace that me and my ex partner met – there must be something about that place!
Quite honestly I winced a bit, and started to understand where my mates were coming from when they thought it an age gap too large. 19 does just seem very young.
Wincing when you hear of an age gap relationship such as this isn’t actually uncommon. Aversions to such relationships can stem from cultural and societal norms entrenched within our society.
Dr. Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist, told the BBC: “In many cultures, it is not considered acceptable to fall in love with someone who is much older or younger than you.” She says there’s also an evolutionary standpoint: “The drive to have a family can have an impact on who we choose to have a relationship with – both from a biological perspective but also in the sense of both parents being alive to raise the child.”
In most societies today however, people hold increasingly progressive views on love, sexuality and relationships. So why do so many people still have aversions to the age gap and dub them as doomed to fail?
In a video circulated on TikTok, life coach Matthew Hussey said: “Age gap relationships don’t work. It’s not because there is necessarily a chasm in the way these two people feel, it’s that there is a huge chasm when it comes to their relationship competence and their experience, that really does matter. In an age difference relationship, you will have to try and be equal in a situation where you are inherently unequal.”
However, some people believe that negative mindsets such as this are uncalled for, with many age gap relationships being both happy and healthy.
Adult film star and sex coach, Sterling Cooper, said: “I don’t think there is a limitation to age gaps. I don’t see why people should be chiming in and stopping it, whatever happens between two consenting adults is no one else’s business as far as I’m concerned.”
And you know what, I think I agree with Cooper. If both parties are consenting and are happy and healthy in their age gap relationship, what should it matter to anybody else? On the whole, maybe we should attempt to lean against doing a DiCaprio, but at the end of the day, who’s to say his future soulmate doesn’t just happen to be a 19-year-old woman?
If you think an age gap relationship is for you, why not give it a go? Even if it’s not for long, it might be fun whilst it lasts.