Age Gap Relationships

According to a survey by Confused.com, conducted in 2013, the perfect age gap in a relationship is just over four years and almost a third of people said that seven years is an ideal age gap.

However, for many people, age is just a number and they are willing to overlook a difference of more than ten years in order to find their perfect match.

So what are the pros and cons of being in an age-gap relationship?

Pros

Age doesn’t define you

If you look a lot younger, or older than they are  it makes sense to find a partner who looks similar to you in age rather than being similar in age to you in numbers.

Young at heart or old soul

As well as looking younger, or older than you really are, it is possible to have an outlook that doesn’t fit in with other people who are the same age as you are.

Being open-minded

Restricting yourself to meeting people who are only a year or two different in age to yourself will mean that you will miss out on meeting lots of great people.

By being open-minded you are opening yourself up to a wider group of people.

Cons

Different life stages

If you want different things at this stage in your life, it will lead to difficulties. For example, one partner may wish to get married, while the other has already been married and divorce and does not wish to get married again.

Other people may judge you

Anything that is different to the social norm will attract attention and questions and age-gap relationships are no exception to this rule. You might start to hear questions like “what will it be like when you are x years old and s/he is x years old?”.

Lack of shared cultural references

Growing up in the same era will mean that you will be able to reminisce about the same TV stars, musicians and sports stars. However, if you were born more than a decade apart you will have grown up with different cultural references to one another and may not understand what your partner and their friends are talking about.