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What’s age got to do with love? It’s time to grow up
Silver fox, cougar, cradle-robber, May-December. Let’s give the tropes a rest and focus on love instead
It’s the stuff of movies. Their eyes meet across the room. Sparks fly. A conversation ensues. Then, he casually mentions his age: He’s eight years younger than she is. She sighs, pats his head, and continues drinking her martini. She doesn’t save his number.
Except, the plot is changing. In September 2023, dating app Bumble polled 26,800 users around the world on their dating habits and found that cross-generational relationships, aka gen-blend relationships, are on the rise. Some 63% of respondents believe that age isn’t a defining factor in dating; 59% of women admit they are open to dating someone younger. Plus, 35% of women confess that they are less judgmental about age-gap relationships. My, we’ve grown up!
It’s a welcome change from even a generation ago, when older men were described as silver foxes and older women, uncharitably, as cougars. It was fine when we learned that there’s 17 years between George and Amal Clooney, 11 years between Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, and 12 for Jay-Z and Beyonce. But when it came to Nick Jonas and the 10-years-older Priyanka Chopra, boy, did people have opinions. It was almost as bad as when Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher started dating. Moore was immediately branded a cougar because she was 15 years older than Kutcher.
Movies about older men are seen as just romantic comedies – that’s the dream, apparently. But if a pairing has a younger man, it tends to become the whole story. Jennifer Lopez played a woman who landed in trouble for having an affair with her young neighbour in The Boy Next Door (2015). Samantha (Kim Cattrall) from Sex and The City (1998-2004) was shamed through all six seasons for being attracted to younger men, and taking pride in it.
Could it be that people are just tired of the trope today? That they’ve watched Leonardo DiCaprio date woman after woman under the age of 25, even though he’s nearly 50? That seeing older women living just-as-successful lives as their male counterparts have caused those sad-aunty jokes to fall flat? Perhaps women no longer want to feel guilty about their own pleasure.
Someone tell the men. Because Bumble’s data only reveals that women don’t mind dating younger men. It says nothing of how the average single man feels about an older woman partner. Either way, with age gaps of 10 to 15 years or more, brace for a relationship that comes with several misconceptions, says Pune-based counsellor Harshita Chaudhri. “Just because someone is older doesn’t mean they’ll be the more mature partner,” she says Chaudhri, “and the younger partner may not necessarily be the flighty one.”
How often you’ve travelled around the sun matters less than the kinds of experiences you’ve had. Emotional and financial stability, political leanings and one’s own expectations from couplehood shape a relationship much than an age gap or a shared love for late-night Netflix does. And approval matters. “Approval from friends and family can help sustain a relationship,” says Chaudhri. “Disapproval can make it harder for us to feel invested in our relationships.”
Perhaps it’s not the chronological ages of a couple that matter but the mental maturity of everyone around them. If it’s legal and consensual, who dates whom isn’t anyone’s business. Leave the giggling and gossip (and the cringey age-gap listicles) back in the 1990s. Stop asking people how old they were then their partner was 16. One’s age is hardly one’s defining quality. Unless one partner, regardless of age, is starting to look like a hostage!
