re: Age gaps in relationships. What are your thoughts?

If you are an adult, I'd say for a relationship 21 should be the bottom... Too weird with drinking laws otherwise.

Going on a single date or hooking up with younger is totally cool.

My wife's 15 years younger than I am. All is good.

I'm 50 BTW. ... A young 50. :)

quote:

---

She came after me. I've been the one hesitant. I figured she just wanted to sow some wild oats with me, so I didn't want to get emotionally attached. But she tells me that she's falling for me.

---

Nothing wrong with that. Just understand the difference between what shes saying to you, such as "Im falling for you" and what her actions say. I look really young, wonder if I'll have a huge age gap someday lol.

quote:

---

half your age +7

---

Who made this rule and does it apply to women dating younger men?


Eta: I'm asking for a friend.

LINK

quote:

---

The rule is widely cited, but its origins are hard to pin down. In its earlier incarnations, it seemed to be a prescription for an ideal age difference rather than the limit of what’s okay. In The Moon Is Blue, a 1953 film adaptation of the 1951 play by Frederick Hugh Herbert, Maggie McNamara—playing 22-year-old Patty O’Neill—asks her 30-year-old suitor, “Haven’t you ever heard that the girls is supposed to be half the man’s age, plus seven?”

---

quote:

---

The rule also appears in The Autobiography of Malcolm X. In the 1950s, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad “taught that a wife’s ideal age was half the man’s age plus seven”; this age gap should make up for women’s maturing more quickly than men, as well as ensure that the husband was sufficiently authoritative over his wife. When Malcolm X met his future wife Betty Sanders, he interpreted the fact that their ages fit the rule of seven as a sign that they were destined for each other. Muhammad might not have been the most reliable relationship counselor, though; he was also concerned about height disparity: “a tall man married to a too short woman, or vice versa … looked odd, not matched,” he preached.

Now, the half-your-age plus seven rule has entered the cultural lexicon. It’s defined ten times on UrbanDictionary, gets its own section in Wikipedia’s page on age disparity in sexual relationships, is espoused by Barney Stinson on “How I Met Your Mother” and is referenced by The Washington Post and The Awl.

But the rule of seven may not actually describe what people consider acceptable. In 2001, a team of Dutch social psychologists, led by Bram P. Buunk of the University of Groningen, examined desired minimum and maximum ranges across different ages by approaching people in public spaces—railway stations, libraries, malls—and asking them (anonymously) what ages they would consider appropriate for five different levels of relationship: marriage, serious relationship, falling in love, casual sex, and sexual fantasies. They restricted their survey to people who fell within a year of five age groups: 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60, and asked a similar number of men (70) and women (67). They found that women’s preferences were fairly consistent over time: Throughout their lives, women tended to prefer men who were around their own age, with a range from a few years younger to a few years older—even in fantasy-land. For men, though, the difference between their own age and what they considered an acceptable minimum increased as they got older, with the most dramatic drop around age 40: “Men of 40, 50, 60 all seemed to show an interest in partners for sexual fantasies and casual affairs that extended down into the mid to late 20s.” The lower the level of involvement, the lower the minimum age.

---

Dumb rule. All about the connection.

quote:

---

Dumb rule. All about the connection.

---

Agreed. Far too many exceptions for it to have much legitimacy. The only ruling aspect over dating companions is the fact that life experiences early on that build you up to who youre going to be come with very closely aged individuals. That's what tends to make the age thing true. Also, in that link I just posted, who says those women were telling the truth? Those women could have easily just been saying only what they figured to be the decent thing to say. Who knows what they think to themselves. Men are far less shy about it.

Hahaha 11 year gap and 18th anniversary

quote:

---

My uncle married a woman 17 years older than him

---

How old was he when he married her?

After a certain age, I don't think its a big issue.