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

[TransportNerd]

Mumsnet seems to take a very dim view of age gap relationships, far more so than I think the general population does. I've seen plenty of age gap relationships work just fine.

Every single time they're discussed here, though, someone wheels out the "rule" that you shouldn't date someone younger than half your age plus seven years.

People treat it like it's absolutely set in stone, and that breaking this "rule" is some sort of disgusting taboo. I've even seen someone argue it should be enshrined in law, with penalties for those who break it.

Personally, I've always thought it was complete nonsense. It was simply something in a French novel in the early 1900s. It doesn't really take anything important into account, and ignores the principle that consenting adults can do what they like.

Quite apart from anything else, why is it plus seven? Why not five, eight or ten? I'm sure it's only seven because that's a number that's had mystic significance since ancient times. Not a good basis for making laws!

Anyway:

YABU - yes, it's a rule and shouldn't be broken
YANBU - it's a big pile of nonsense and doesn't mean anything

So that’s one person, not “mumsnet”. I just find it odd you’ve started a thread about a formula that is not widely spouted, about a topic that is not directly impacting you in your life because of a handful of people on the internet who have a different opinion to you. I mean I know that’s MN, discussion forum etc etc, but people usually have some skin in the game in the thread they’ve started.

Yes just to discuss all these hypothetical much older people “of both sexes” that genuinely connected with a “consenting” adult less than half their age, who unfairly get tarred with the same brush as the actual creeps by people who don’t know them (I’m sure they’ll live).

So I put it this way … my mum was 25 when she married my dad who was 46 …they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary before dad died ….they had their ups and downs as everyone does sometimes more downs than ups but it worked out okay in the end … then we have my niece going through a very traumatic divorce involving police .. both are the same age were in the same class at school..,so it seems he was a controlling narcissist… so age does not matter…. it’s the character that counts more than age…

In all fairness, controlling narcissists are far more likely to go for vulnerable people they can control, so are more likely to be in age gap relationships, with them being the older one.

Exactly.

We can all think of huge age gap relationships with 'work' and same age relationships which don't. But generally speaking, I would bet that men (and yes it's pretty much always men) who seek out much younger partners have a higher chance of being a controlling type.

Statistically, these relationships also have a high failure rate.