Age Gaps in Relationships

The idealistic society looks at age gaps in relationships as a rather important aspect for enduring relationships. A number of societies strongly encourage and believe in relationships with ideal age differences. The “older-husband-younger-wife” relationships are more commonly acceptable than relationships where the woman is way older than the man. Although some may find the focus on age gaps in relationships somewhat inane, it is in fact one of the important factors that affects the outcome of relations.

A case in point is the “same age” relationship; more often than not, having the same age as the other is good for friendships but not best for long-term marital commitment. Same age couples tend to have the same level of thinking and at times cannot comprehend with each other’s point of view as they see things in the same angles; as a result there are more miscommunications than understanding.

Nevertheless, age gaps in relationships are no longer considered a big issue in today’s much more liberal society, taking into consideration the acceptance of common divorce and remarriages, although affecting the purity of marriage, has scraped off the naïve thinking of “perfect age relationships”. The new standards of living together, single motherhood, same sex relationships, and others, have opened freedom to relationship restrictions, as well as the liberty of getting into a relationship with big age gaps in both men and women.

Even though the reality that age gaps in relationships make a big difference, a lot of people still choose to get into these types of commitments and their relationships work in a different way, especially for older women and younger men relationships. According to different studies big age gaps affect the quality of spousal bonds with weakened significance therefore adding more tension to the relationship. Since big age difference is one aspect that influences the success of marriage, an appropriate age gap between two people is advisable.

As with age gap statistics, it has been established that marital relationships where husbands are way older than their wives, are more possibly to fall apart than those relationships of couples with similar age or that of which wives are older than husbands. The ideal age gap that has proven to work best is when the man is five years older than the woman; the gap doesn’t put much dissimilarity in their age, thus with their outlooks and thoughts.

Before getting into relationships with age gaps, there are three things to take note of: be old enough to have life’s experiences, hence adequately mature to understand life and its necessities; neither of the persons involve have a dilemma with age gap; and lastly, there should be a connection between the couple that make them right for each other.