Age difference in relationships: how many years of difference between partners is still acceptable?

How does age difference affect your relationship?!

In society, couples whose age difference is quite high receive many looks. Even unpleasant nicknames. At the same time, it is possible to see more and more couples who do not consider themselves to be in the traditional mold of a relationship. They found their version of the ideal. Even with more or even ten years of age difference. Licensed Clinical Social Worker Tara Denneny LCSW is in the article for Psychology Today studied different views of this kind of attitudes and responses.

Evolution

When it comes to sexuality and relationships, it is important to consider their evolutionary function: the preservation of the species. From this point of view, it is not surprising that men usually prefer women of reproductive age. In a 2012 article published in Human Nature, evolutionary psychologists Sascha Schwarz and Manfred Hassebrauck wrote: “The ability to reproduce is not the same throughout the lifespan.

After menopause, women can no longer bear children. In contrast to women, men are not directly biologically limited in their reproductive abilities." According to the aforementioned psychologists, women invest more in offspring (time, education, pregnancy) than men. Therefore, for committed relationships, they are looking for partners who will be willing to invest in them and their offspring. The mentioned research describes well the relationships in which the men are generally older than the partners, since younger women are more suitable for reproduction, and older men have more resources that they can invest in family and children.

'Acceptable' age for dating

Of course, in this field, things are relative, a matter for each individual. But one of the studies, for example, showed that men, on average, look for relationships with women who are younger than them by 10 years or up to 4.5 years older. Women, on the other hand, are looking for relationships with up to eight years older and five years younger men. According to the authors, women are less likely to enter into relationships with older men as they age because longevity favors women, not men. In Germany, for example, the average life expectancy of women is five years longer than that of men.

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Happiness in a relationship

Perhaps the most important question revolves around the happiness people experience in age-gap relationships. This is also quite relative, but here too science offers clues as to the combinations that seem to work best. A study published in the Journal of Population Economics found that both men and women are happier with younger, not older, spouses. But this advantage of 'happiness' can be quite short-lived.

The study authors wrote: “Marital satisfaction declines with the length of marriage for men and women in disparate-aged couples compared to those in similar-aged couples. These declines erase the initial higher levels of marital satisfaction experienced by men married to younger wives and women married to younger husbands."

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