What’s The Ideal Age Gap In A Relationship?
The question of the age difference between a man and a woman in a relationship is as subjective as the subjective criteria for selecting your partner. After all, if you love a person, what difference does it make how much younger or older you are?
Nevertheless, in addition to social prerequisites to marry a person equal in age to you, there are purely everyday ones: you should be interesting and understandable with him. So, there is still an optimal difference. This question was asked by scientists from Emory University, who tried to identify the smallest percentage of gaps in couples with different age differences.
Of course, the conclusion of scientists cannot be called a postulate that has no chance of a refutation. Moreover, we observe such refutations regularly, not only in life, but also among celebrities. George Clooney is 17 years older than his wife Amal Clooney, Ryan Reynolds was born 11 years earlier than his wife Blake Lively, and the age difference is 12 years between the famous Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
There are many such examples, and each of them has different success results. The data proposed by scientists are limited in their selection and are aimed at identifying a certain tendency in relations rather than approving the final law on the age gap between partners.
What’s The Ideal Age Gap In A Relationship?
So, according to a study by scientists from Emory University, couples with a difference of 1 year have only a three percent chance of divorce. If the age gap reaches 5 years, then the probability of divorce increases to 18%. A 10-year age difference between spouses promises a 39 percent chance of divorce, and a 20-year age gap has a fatal predicted percentage of divorces of 95%.
The researchers compiled their analysis on the example of a study of 3,000 married couples. As can be seen from the result: the higher the age difference between the partners, the greater the chance that they will disperse.
Thus, it might seem that the age difference between a man and a woman in a relationship of one year is ideal. But this does not mean that couples with a similar difference do not experience divorces more often than indicated in the above study.
Hugo Mialon, one of the authors of the experiment, indicates that the correlation of these indicators (age difference and frequency of divorces) does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. “Most likely, many of the couples studied had other reasons for divorce, not related to their age difference,” says Mialon about the results of his study.
What’s The Ideal Age Gap In A Relationship?
Having co-founded the OkCupid dating service, after analyzing the behavior of the site’s users, she adds that women tend to look for partners a year or two older than themselves. While men prefer to get acquainted with 20-year-old girls, regardless of their own age.
But these data do not contradict the results of a study by scientists from Emory, since it is obvious that on a dating site, the duration of relationships for men is not a priority.
In any case, the success of a relationship depends primarily on several basic components: shared values and beliefs, healthy communication and ability to resolve conflicts, trust, closeness and ability to support mutual goals.
None of these factors depends to a large extent on the difference in age, although it is worth recognizing that too strong an age difference, as a rule, implies a divergence of views on life between partners, and, accordingly, affects the duration of the relationship.
Whatever the results of the research, it is worth remembering that age is not necessarily an indicator of success or failure in a relationship – there are a number of other factors that must be taken into account.
Ultimately, the big age difference between you and your girlfriend does not doom your relationship at all – it just means that both of you may have to make more efforts to maintain mutual understanding. And this is normal – any relationship requires some effort.
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