Age gaps

[FlowersforMe]

What would you say is the largest socially acceptable age gap when dating/in a relationship?

@MsTSwift

I don’t think it’s being spiteful. Exceptions prove the rule and its undeniable that the vast majority of age gap relationships are much older men and younger women which I find slightly depressing for the various reasons set out on this thread. It works brilliantly for the man though. Patriarchy in action I guess 🙁

That said almost everyone I know is married to someone within 5 years of their age so ime these big gaps are unusual. The vast majority of sensible people marry same age and there’s a reason for that. There will always be outliers.

You clearly are being spiteful dropping in the word sensible as if those of us in age gap relationships are not sensible.

Tbh I'd rather be not sensible than a totally judgemental arse.

Why would anyone choose a large age gap if they had a good same age option? Makes no sense to me.

Anyway I am not sure I believe all these age gap relationships I don’t know anyone irl in one!

@MsTSwift

Why would anyone choose a large age gap if they had a good same age option? Makes no sense to me.

Anyway I am not sure I believe all these age gap relationships I don’t know anyone irl in one!

Have you ever been in a relationship? People don't go looking for an age gap relationship. I certainly didn't. It just happened. We just liked eachother.

Yes maybe I could have gone oh no I must find someone my own age. Would I have been as happy? Maybe. Or would I have spent lots of years alone desperately looking for someone who on paper was perfect? Who knows. But why would you take that chance?

Ah yes just because you don't know anyone means we're all lying. Or perhaps your friends know you're not very nice and would be judgemental if they admitted to you they were seeing someone older.

If my friends were like you they wouldn't be my friends, tbh.

Well I was very picky when looking for a husband! Someone say 8 years plus wouldn’t even have been on my radar at 25.

I have lots of friends thanks I think I would just about survive you not being one 😁.

The people I am judging are the men who IMO get alllll the benefits in a big age gap set up.

@MsTSwift

Well I was very picky when looking for a husband! Someone say 8 years plus wouldn’t even have been on my radar at 25.

I have lots of friends thanks I think I would just about survive you not being one 😁.

The people I am judging are the men who IMO get alllll the benefits in a big age gap set up.

Well good for you. I didn't need to be "picky" because I found someone who I was happy with.

I can't believe you have lots of friends with your attitude tbh, I'm sure you think you do.

No, you're clearly judging everyone in an age gap relationship. Your "sensible" comment showed that.

Many of us have explained how we "gave up" absolutely nothing and yet here you still are essentially calling people "not sensible"

The people I am judging are the men who IMO get alllll the benefits in a big age gap set up.

I'm interested to know what benefits my DH has got out of this?

@MsTSwift

Why would anyone choose a large age gap if they had a good same age option? Makes no sense to me.

Anyway I am not sure I believe all these age gap relationships I don’t know anyone irl in one!

You don't know anyone who's in a relationship with anyone outside of 5 years of their own age? Do you not mix much?

The vast majority of sensible people marry same age and there’s a reason for that
You say sensible, how about unadventurous? Lots of people meet their partner in school / college / uni. Maybe they're just too unexciting and insecure to wait and see if there's a better option instead of marrying the first guy that comes along? Maybe it's insecurity - worried they wouldn't compare favourably against women older and more "ahead" than them? Oh he'd never look at em, I'm only 25, I'm not experienced, worldly etc enough for him. Lack of imagination? Oh how could I possibly have anything in common with someone who's cultural references are not within a few years of mine?

I mean all of that is bollocks, but so is the idea that the "sensible" thing is to select by age not personality, charisma, success, sense of humour, wit, intelligence etc.

@MsTSwift

Well I was very picky when looking for a husband! Someone say 8 years plus wouldn’t even have been on my radar at 25.

I have lots of friends thanks I think I would just about survive you not being one 😁.

The people I am judging are the men who IMO get alllll the benefits in a big age gap set up.

You're clearly very narrow minded. What exactly is the difference at 25 or a 30 yr old compared to a 33 to??

By all the benefits o assume you mean hot sex with a young woman and then a carer young enough to care for you in your dotage? Except at 33 Vs 25 there's more chance he's got his own car, house, further up the career ladder so bringing in a bigger salary, more experienced in life and bed.
By the time you get to the other end, those few years are particularly significant given there's no drop off age. Yes your more likely to need care at 78 than 70 but you may get still be fit and virile at 78 and you, at 70, might be the one who needs care and support.

Calm down!

Still not buying it - why would you chose to set up a life with someone 15 / 20 years older than you however charismatic or silver tongued. No thanks.

@MsTSwift

Calm down!

Still not buying it - why would you chose to set up a life with someone 15 / 20 years older than you however charismatic or silver tongued. No thanks.

Not buying what?

I met someone. We liked eachother. The age gap just didn't matter. Did I think this will last forever? Well no because I wouldn't have thought that about anyone but it's lasted a long time so far and it works.

Please stop belittling it by saying "charismatic or silver tongued" as if dp had to try to woo me or something. He didn't. He wasn't set out to find a younger partner and in fact I am the first one he'd had. It wasn't something he aimed for, or that I aimed for. To assume it was is incredibly bizarre.

You're very very small minded. It's terrifying.

Still not buying it - why would you chose to set up a life with someone 15 / 20 years older than you however charismatic or silver tongued.

What aren't you buying? That people actually do have relationships with a significant age gap?

Still not buying it - why would you chose to set up a life with someone 15 / 20 years older than you however charismatic or silver tongued.

DH was neither charismatic nor silver tongued. The way you speak about women in relationships with older men makes an assumption we are all stupid. You think my DH gets all the benefits being in this relationship but you can't tell me what they are?

Twenty years between us. 73 and 53. We have been together. 27 years and married 25. He is less keen to be so active now and retired at 68. But we still share everything and have our own hobbies as well.

@MsTSwift

Why would anyone choose a large age gap if they had a good same age option? Makes no sense to me.

Anyway I am not sure I believe all these age gap relationships I don’t know anyone irl in one!

Although most of the comments on here relate to gaps where the man is older, the OP is actually an older woman attracted to someone younger. Can you imagine why that might be? Or does that make no sense to you either?

@MsTSwift

Calm down!

Still not buying it - why would you chose to set up a life with someone 15 / 20 years older than you however charismatic or silver tongued. No thanks.

Why not?

Re men doing it that way round, fertility is clearly an issue. I was 30 when DH and I married, he was 37. If he'd gone 7 years old she'd be 44 and it would be much less likely they'd now have 3 kids.

Oldest gap was 15 years, I was 24. So if he'd gone 15 years older she'd have been 54. So again, no option for children.

You could say they should have married in their 20s if they wanted kids, but why should they marry the wrong woman just to meet people's expectations

@MsTSwift

I don’t think it’s being spiteful. Exceptions prove the rule and its undeniable that the vast majority of age gap relationships are much older men and younger women which I find slightly depressing for the various reasons set out on this thread. It works brilliantly for the man though. Patriarchy in action I guess 🙁

That said almost everyone I know is married to someone within 5 years of their age so ime these big gaps are unusual. The vast majority of sensible people marry same age and there’s a reason for that. There will always be outliers.

"Vast majority" "Sensible people"

I hope anyone who was after large doses of assumption, judgment and condescension to go with their Sunday morning coffee has managed to find this thread with ease.

I chose to set up a life with a man I had met, who was kind, gentle, funny, generous, sexy, good looking and shared many of my views and tastes, the fact that he was 42 and I was 20 was irrelevant. I didn't know he was 42, he didn't know I was 20. He thought I was at least 5 years older, I thought he was in his 30s, but his age had no relevance to how much we liked each other. We didn't even talk about age until a few dates in. We had lots of other things to talk about first - music, football, work, the universe, hopes and dreams, whether he was married (that was one of the first things I asked and I made him show me his divorce papers when i visited his house because i had been lied to before).

I fell hopelessly in love with him, and he with me, and that is why I chose to set up a life with him. Why would you reject someone just because of their age if everything else was exactly right (and they were legal obviously)? It seems quite restrictive and arbitrary. Particularly if you have been with an abusive twat before, you realise that a lovely kind man who you can trust fully is a rarity and should not be ignored if you are compatible.

My ex husband was 12 years older than me.

My current partner is 17 years older than me.

In between I dated someone 15 years younger than me, and someone else 4 years older than me.

Some of us just like people for who they are. We don't assess them with a clipboard and a biro first.

My grandparents are 15 years apart and met when my grandmother was 14 or 15. They’ve been married for 60 years. My grandfather is in excellent health for a man in his 90s. If this was to happen nowadays I’d be horrified but it has worked out well! I don’t have an issue with any age gap between consenting adults really but do think the youngest adult should be mid-20s, have a bit of life experience, not be dependent on their parents etc. if the age gap is significant.

[quote Gensola]@LivBa except for my mum, who has been married very happily for 15 years to a man 17 years younger. I think if anyone has issues on this thread it is the spiteful people who are coming on to criticise other people’s relationships and cast judgement on things they have no experience of and know nothing about [/quote]
@Gensola congrats your mum but I was talking about when it's the man who's the older party; he seeks out much younger women but never simultaneously seeks out women who are a similar big age gap but OLDER. Your mum's situation has nothing to do with the point I was making...

@MsTSwift

Why would anyone choose a large age gap if they had a good same age option? Makes no sense to me.

Anyway I am not sure I believe all these age gap relationships I don’t know anyone irl in one!

Exactly. Interesting they all seem to magically come out of the wood work whenever there's a mumsnet thread on this topic!

Also, I've yet to encounter a woman in a big age gap relationship with a man much older (I'm not talking about small age gaps which are nornal), who didnt have daddy issues or an abusive past or was with him for money or was very gullible and naive for her age (or a combination of these). Naturally, a lot of these women would say they're happy since they don't know any better or their sense of normal is skewed.

@AndNoneForGretchenWieners

Particularly if you have been with an abusive twat before, you realise that a lovely kind man who you can trust fully is a rarity and should not be ignored if you are compatible.

Please don't take the following as a personal attack, as you may be the exception to the rule and have clearly been happy.

But, the fact you'd been in an abusive relationship before the age of 20 meant you were even more vulnerable to the power imbalance of being with someone 15/20+ years older.

Someone of 20 who had already been in abusive relationship doesn't have a benchmark for what healthy relationship dynamics look like, so would find it hard to navigate relationships as an adult having not experienced a healthy one before.

Again, not an attack on you or criticism of your specific relationship, I'm just trying to explain why most people would be troubled knowing a 20 year old woman who has been in an abusive relationship (I'm so sorry you've been through that) who then meets and starts a relationship with a 42 year old man, or a 30 something to be honest.

Exactly. Interesting they all seem to magically come out of the wood work whenever there's a mumsnet thread on this topic!

It's a natural consequence of subject. Nobody in the other boards will be posting about the age gap be due it isn't relevant on those threads.

Also, I've yet to encounter a woman in a big age gap relationship with a man much older (I'm not talking about small age gaps which are nornal), who didnt have daddy issues or an abusive past or was with him for money or was very gullible and naive for her age (or a combination of these).

Good god. You really do share that opinion that women with older partners are lacking intelligence, don't you?

'Daddy issues' 'abusive past' 'gullible and naive'

Hilarious. I'm not gullible. DH didn't shower me with promises and pray on my naivety! We had met each other several times over the course of a few years, eventually we were both single and decided to give it a go. We are married, homeowners, with grown up and preteen DC. Our relationship has been relatively boring if anything. I don't mean he doesn't 'do it' for me, I mean there is no drama, no arguing, none of the crap people put up with from their partners in the relationship boards. We are just a normal, boring family. Don't assume my idiocy because my partner happens to be older than me. He has never treated me in the way that many women are every day. He is a good and respectful man, and always has been. Maybe that's what I fell for, his normality.

Naturally, a lot of these women would say they're happy since they don't know any better or their sense of normal is skewed.

That's really dismissive and quite rude. You have made some rather nasty judgements followed by a wee caveat that of course those who say otherwise don't know what normal is.

Go take a look on the relationship boards. Ask everyone their ages and that if their partner. There are hundreds of woman with a skewed sense of 'normal' who are with partners the very same age as them.

Naturally, a lot of these women would say they're happy since they don't know any better or their sense of normal is skewed

Please stop being so condescending and rude.

I am happy. I do know better, thanks. I see plenty of same age relationships breaking up around me too. My relationship is better than many, many people I know. And if it wasn't, I would leave. And guess what, I can leave because I co own the house, I work full time and I actually have a brain inside my head.

I'm sick of being told I'm some stupid little naive girl with daddy issues. I'm none of those things. But at least I'm not a twat, eh.

Exactly. Interesting they all seem to magically come out of the wood work whenever there's a mumsnet thread on this topic!

Yes. Funny that, isn't it.

A thread in 'Relationships' titled 'Age gaps' and all these people in age gap relationships join in.

I wonder why that could be.

FFS!