Friday, July 23, 2004
Age Differences
At dinner tonight, someone brought up how much age differences between members of a couple bother her. She thinks it's "gross" if an older man is married to or dating a younger woman and vice versa. Disparities of more than twelve years really bother her. She's OK with anything less.
The Mrs. is six and a half years younger than I. Usually, I don't even notice it. About the only time I do is when she talks about toys or television from her adolescence and I realize I was in college when the things she recalls were popular.
The aversion to big age differences between a man and his wife is a modern phenomenon, I suspect. Think about Jane Austen. Emma is in her late teens or, at most, very early twenties when she marries Mr. Knightley who resides somewhere in the neighborhood of 40.
I don’t see this as a moral issue, but an issue of prudence. So long as both parties are adults, I see no moral problem, but whether getting involved with someone significantly older or younger is wise has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. That said, I'd be a little suspicious of a guy in his fifties who routinely dated dewy-eyed twenty-somethings. Marriage and family, I would guess, would not be what he's looking for. I could be wrong, though.
What do you think? How big an age difference is too big? Does it matter? At what point, if ever, does it get "gross"?
The Mrs. is six and a half years younger than I. Usually, I don't even notice it. About the only time I do is when she talks about toys or television from her adolescence and I realize I was in college when the things she recalls were popular.
The aversion to big age differences between a man and his wife is a modern phenomenon, I suspect. Think about Jane Austen. Emma is in her late teens or, at most, very early twenties when she marries Mr. Knightley who resides somewhere in the neighborhood of 40.
I don’t see this as a moral issue, but an issue of prudence. So long as both parties are adults, I see no moral problem, but whether getting involved with someone significantly older or younger is wise has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. That said, I'd be a little suspicious of a guy in his fifties who routinely dated dewy-eyed twenty-somethings. Marriage and family, I would guess, would not be what he's looking for. I could be wrong, though.
What do you think? How big an age difference is too big? Does it matter? At what point, if ever, does it get "gross"?
// posted by Dean @ Friday, July 23, 2004 
