To think "half your age plus seven" is a massive pile of nonsense?

And if you had an adult child 30+ and they introduced you to their 18 year old girlfriend?

Never heard of that. I’m 64, so half my age plus 7 is 39 and not sure that makes sense at all. Though 30 dating a 22 year old doesn’t sound so bad.

I thougt that the only reason we were taught Quadratic Equations at school was to be able calculate the maximum acceptable age gaps.

Unfortunately I have forgotten how to do them, so rely on my logarithms table - and I'm not much better with them.

I think it should be made law. It would stop dirty old men from taking advantage of innocent young girls, and also prevent gold-digging jezebels from marrying geriatric Texas oilmen and stealing their children's rightful inheritances.

DP was 8 years younger than me. It's a load of nonsense.

Hmm. I do wonder if you’d be as liberal as that if it was your own child. I know I wouldn’t be, that’s just honest.

And do you take people this literally in real life?

I've not read all the posts, but I've read enough to get the general feeling that the sort of age gap envisaged by the formula is far too big.

The simple fact is that it depends entirely on the individuals concerned, so that it's both impossible and extremely arrogant to prescribe a general rule. As many of the posts have proved, there are many, many relationships with large age gaps that work perfectly well despite the tut-tutting of judgmental people.

I suspect that many of those people are in unhappy relationships themselves, and are envious of couples who are happy, so try to find a reason to criticise them.

Realistically, the formula was written only to apply to men, not women, and it's far more common in such relationships for the man to be a lot older than the woman. But one advantage from the woman's point of view is that her hubby is likely to kick the bucket and leave her a hefty inheritance while she's still young enough to enjoy it!

It depends on the ages honestly, I would consider 16 and 19 an age gap. 18 and 24, 25 and 33. Over the ages of 30 I would say 10+ years would be an age gap.

I didn’t think anyone actually took it seriously, did they?

I know my view could be considered a bit quaint, but most of my family and DH’s, including the 2 of us met our spouses (or at least the first ones in the case of my widowed dad and a couple of aunties), at school or within 2 years of leaving school and were within 18 months in age.

DH and I were in the same English set from Y8-11 (although it was still 2nd to 5th year then), and we started our relationship when we were in upper 6th. The amount of shared cultural experiences we have because of our similar age is very important imo, and not just there because of our shared geographical history. We have mates that I’ve known since I was at uni in1995, and this also applies. Nothing worse than reminiscing about your favourite cartoon and the other person just gives you a blank stare.

Another close friend, I met at work, is 6 years older than me and a big 80’s music fan - went to Live Aid aged 16, been to see Duran Duran over 20 times, etc and I was 9 1/2 on the day of Live Aid, which I watched avidly with my mum but there was nearly another 9 years before I started going out clubbing and the music was wildly different then.

What I am saying is- at length - is that I think I would find it hard to be in a relationship with someone who hadn’t been at a similar life stage to me during those events, even if elsewhere in the country/world.

Really? Do lack empathy generally if you’re not able to directly experience something before having some idea of how something could feel?

What about 26 and 38? I see 27 being mentioned alot so curious about how one year younger might be perceived.

I didn’t ask what you would do, I asked how you would feel.

but no one on here is 'doing' anything about age gap relationships, they just have an opinion on them and that's what you seem to be complaining about. So what would your opinion be if it were your child?

I think it's a silly rule. I'm not sure there should be any rules as long as you're both adults and consenting.
I met my DP when he was 28 and I was 46. Been together two years now. Key for us is what we're looking for in life - he absolutely doesn't want kids of his own, though is great with mine, but if we were looking for different things in life it might not work out. I mean, he's 30 and a doctor, it's hardly that I'm taking advantage of an inexperienced young person.

I guess it would depend on what they were like as a person. Just the same as I would if they were both the same age

What do you consider to be an age gap?

You never answered my question about if one of your friends started dating your 20-something year old child.

What about her friends? Do they have both sets of friends over at the same time, so you are having a BBQ with a bunch of 25 year olds? Or has she had to drop her's? Does she go on holidays, still with her friends? Her parents are your age group, were they invited? A 59 year old won't mix in well, on a typical 25 year olds holiday. It's rare, that a man that old, waves off his 25 year old girlfriend, so she can do what most 25 year olds want to do. Often the older man takes that life phase off his younger girlfriend. As long as nothing is given up, fair enough. At 30 and 64, cracks are going to show. It then hits home, that the younger person has thrown away their carefree and maximum energy levels, 20s.
Re power imbalance etc, there's good reason why we don't put under 25 year olds, in adult prisons and you are classed as a young person and therefore have vulnerabilities re housing etc.