The Idea of You — and the idea of age gaps
When I began to ask women whether they had an age-gap friendship during the research for my new on female friends, I was astonished to find out how many did. Good pals who I had known for many years suddenly revealed their hidden bonds with women 15, 25, 35 years older. Most told me that they had simply forgotten the age difference; it no longer mattered. Many held their age-gap friendship close to their hearts, in a secret space that was separate from anything and anyone else in their lives.
So often when it comes to age-gap friendships, we mistakenly think that the years will be too hard to bridge. So much suspicion and resentment has been whipped up by headlines reminding my generation that we’re the first group in history to be worse off than our parents – and that it’s all their fault. We’re encouraged to criticise how they vote and, God forbid, if they have a second home. They’re told we are flighty, unable to save and fritter away our money on avocado toast.
Is a 10-year age gap exploitative? It has plenty of opportunity to be, as does a same-age relationship in which a man controls the finances while a woman cares for children and does unpaid domestic labor while her options for independence dwindle.
The Cuts essay about age gap relationships has gone viral
I heard that sentiment over and over, particularly around sex – how much easier it is to explain what’s going on, or not going on, between your sheets to someone who has been there. With age-gaps friendships, there are no defined rules, so you’re setting your own boundaries as you go along. That opens you up to being challenged at times, but it also leaves space to be heard in a way that other friendships sometimes don’t. Under those conditions, it can be easier to broach things you might feel nervous to discuss with your peers.
I am less interested in these arguments (bicker away, friends) than in what they elide. These are debates that seem to concern power, but are often incapable of addressing patriarchy, in a moment when patriarchy is having a real comeback. These are debates that nod at men’s economic and political advantages, but reduce those advantages to matters of life experience, as if those same structural inequalities do not also harm women in same-age heterosexual relationships or—if they do—as if those harms are so minor that they’re best viewed under the magnifying glass of an age-gap couple where the disparities may be more pronounced. We’re mincing birthdates and engaging in borderline-phrenological brain science in search of some magic number in which all inequalities are voided, all risks mitigated, all structural violences voided.
The best-case scenario offered by these high-gloss depictions of wealthy marriage is something like perpetual childhood. The worse, and far likelier case, is economic dependence while doing the less-visible and less-monetizable work of raising children and keeping house. The right relies on female workers’ real grievances to launder this likelier scenario through images of leisure.
For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.
That Viral Essay Wasnt About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.
othing gets the group chat going . Whether it’s a balding politician wheeling out his second 25-year-old girlfriend of the year, or a divorced mother of two canoodling with a man half her age, people with partners significantly younger or older than them are a perpetual conversation starter.
Age Gap Relationships: The Case for Marrying an Older Man
My point is that we love to talk about an age gap, as the internet reminded us this weekend when a went viral. Written by Grazie Sophia Christie, 27, for The Cut, the piece has polarised online opinion. Fifty per cent of readers have hailed Christie as a new-age feminist icon, while the other – arguably significantly louder – half have decried her as a terrible writer and malignant narcissist who has set women’s rights back by several decades.
Theres a reason this piece about age-gap relationships went viral
But I don’t think any of this is why the . It went viral because there’s something about a younger woman having agency in an age-gap relationship with a man that completely subverts the prevailing social and cultural narrative about this dynamic. When a younger woman dates an older man, the stereotypes tell us there is exploitation at play – the kind that might serve the woman, but ultimately favours the man. This doesn’t seem to be the case in Christie’s essay; in fact, the husband is barely mentioned, leaving the reader knowing almost nothing about him aside from his nationality.
Not for nothing, but the 4 year age gap is honestly perfect
Don’t get me wrong – people adore this book, and will inevitably , too. But it has brought to light the same whispers of judgement and gossip that circulated its publication back in 2017. And it’s not difficult to find real-life examples to parallel such whispers – just look at how many articles have been written about the 24-year age gap between and his wife, Sam Taylor-Johnson.
34K subscribers in the AgeGapRelationship community
That’s not to say that men get off lightly in this scenario. There are entire charts drawn up about , detailing the 49-year-old’s habit of almost exclusively dating women under the age of 25 for the last two decades. But the level of judgement against men in age-gap relationships tends to be more favourable than that against women. One scenario typically elicits jokes and laughter, while the other fosters questions about lifestyle choices and children alongside a characterisation of manipulation and coercion.