Nothing raises a pair of eyebrows more than a couple with a large age gap. In fact, age gaps have been among popular discourse since the dawn of time. “Age is just a number” they say, but is it really? Is age just an arbitrary social concept like race or sexuality? When asked, most adults say they prefer to be with someone closer to their age. But “closer to your age” as an adult looks much different than it does when you’re a teenager or in your early 20s.
When I was 14, my best friend in high school was dating a senior. Granted, she was a year older, but he was 18 and she didn’t even have her learner’s permit yet. “A two year age gap isn’t bad Sheila,” she would tell me, but I knew there was something weird about their relationship when she had to look up the dating laws in Maryland before going out with him. Now, if someone born in 2002 told me they were dating someone born in 1999 I wouldn’t think much of it. Is a three to four year age gap too much? Surely a freshman in college dating a ninth grader is wrong, but why is it not frowned upon when an 18-year-old starts dating a 22-year-old? There is this notion in Western society that the minute an individual turns 18, they are no longer that immature child they were the day before. That they are now able to date people who were 25 the year they were born and there’s nothing wrong with it.
When asking my peers what their age limitations were in relationships, I began thinking of what my own were. As a 20-year-old, I could see myself dating a 22 perhaps even 23-year-old, but I would not feel right dating anyone younger than 19. Perhaps the reason I feel comfortable dating someone two years older than me but not two years younger is because I look at the journey that comes with the age. An 18-year-old freshman in college is just starting to navigate adulthood and independence, and they have four years ahead of them to experiment, anything they want is possible. As a junior in college, currently studying for the LSAT and preparing for law school applications, what do I have in common with the former? Obviously, maturity level does not drastically change from the ages of 18 to 19, but it’s the principle that makes it feel wrong. However, I see no issue with dating a 20-year-old when I am 22, and the reasoning for that could be because age becomes more arbitrary as we grow older.
Former member of Fifth Harmony, Lauren Jauregui, broke the internet in 2017 when she and her then-boyfriend Ty Dolla $ign went public. With their 11 year age gap, they were all over social media, not for their difference in age, but for their runway photos. I could not wrap my head around why no one seemed to see anything weird about a 20-year-old dating someone a decade older than her. But because she was over the age of 18, society deemed it acceptable. My parents are a great example of this. They got married when my mom was 28 and my dad 39. I find a bit more solace with my parents’ situation, mostly because my mother was well into adulthood when she met my father and not someone who was a teenager just the year prior.
When asking my friends, there were a similar range of answers as most of them agreed they wouldn’t date someone younger than 19 or 20, but said that they had no preference in terms of how much older they would be. In fact, seven decades’ worth of data shows that men are more likely than women to date someone younger than themselves.
I noticed that, up until last year, all the people I had dated had been the exact same age as me. I was never the type of person who sought after older guys and part of this is because I enjoyed being the same age as my significant others. This opportunity gave us the chance to grow together and navigate our different life milestones with one another.
I believe that the lines between age gaps tend to blur and fade as we get older, and healthy relationships like my parents’ can form and flourish. But we have to grow and experience our adulthood at our own pace in order to reach that level of mental and emotional maturity. So yes, age is just a number, but it’s what that number comes with that truly matters.
