Obviously, in this age bracket, younger woman – older man is enormously more acceptable. A 45-year-old woman automatically deprives a younger man of children. A 45-year-old man deprives a younger woman of nothing.
If, on the other hand, he’s 50 and she’s 65, that’s perfectly fine, especially since women live longer anyway.
I looked at the comments to the tweet and the overpowering need of many people to say “it’s none of my business” is even more interesting a phenomenon than age difference. It reminds me of an old Soviet joke about two friends having an animated discussion in the street. A stranger stops next to them, listens for a few minutes, exclaims, “Fuck you both!” and leaves. I guess now such people migrated to social media.
Clarissa's Blog 
“A 45-year-old man deprives a younger woman of nothing”
I think this is only true if she’s a low-libido person or for whatever reason doesn’t particularly care about sex with him.
My female friend from grad school dated a man in his late 50s when she was in her early 40s. They broke up after a couple of years and the main reason was that he, pushing 60, wasn’t a great match in the sack for a 40-yo woman with a healthy drive.
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That’s a good point. This is why 50yo men with flagging libido go for 20yo girls who simply haven’t developed a mature sex drive yet and won’t demand what these men no longer can give.
A 30yo woman, of course, is way too grown to be tricked like this.
Of course, I’m not saying all 50yo men have flagging libidos. With a very healthy lifestyle and propitious genes, 50 is nothing.
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I think the survey is strangely worded. Its just odd to ask if the relationship is “acceptable”. What would be unacceptable about a non-coerced relationship between a 30 year old and a 45 year? I could see saying that a relationship between an 18 old and a 35 year old was unacceptable in that it verges on predatory and the distance between those two life stages is just so extreme. But two middle aged people? It elicits a bit of a shrug.
If perhaps the survey had said something like “which is a better match?” or “which match do you predict will be more stable and happy?”, than there would be fewer people saying “none of my business”. But the wording is so unappealing that it invites that sort of feedback.
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“odd to ask if the relationship is “acceptable””
Very. In fact the wording “What is more acceptable to you” to me means “Which kind of relationship would you rather be in?” which is weird since a bunch of people answering are presumably already in longterm relationships and asking them to reimagine themselves as single and on the prowl is not….. gracious….. and why would people even respond?
Non-coerced relationships between other people who I do not know are none of my business (nor do I want them to be) so why would I answer?
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That does introduce the question of how much the results are skewed by the sort of people who, like you, will simply pass on answering the survey because it’s icky.
Results are a sampling of only the sort of people who love to contemplate/judge others’ intimate relationships?
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There aren’t any actual people involved. It’s a general question, and people like to answer because it allows them to gauge what matters to them.
I wouldn’t answer or participate if there was an actual couple (for example some celebrity photo) because I don’t care about celebrities. But I do care about my own response to a wide variety of things.
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Ah, personally, the only gauge I have for thinking a relationship (assuming everybody’s legal age and all compos mentis and stuff) is “appropriate” or not is… knowing the parties involved personally. Just need far more information than age is all. As you pointed out: does either of them want kids? Do they belong to mutually exclusive religions? Are they being honest with each other? Is either of them divorced and if so what were the circumstances? If they’ve both been single until now, why? Do they enjoy similar lifestyles? Do they have similar spending habits? Do they have compatible personal ethics? One of the few places where age is going to hit hard here is that the older you get, the harder it’ll be to adjust your own self to living with another human being, so not being spring chickens it’ll be more important that they already share similar… habits, tastes, values etc. And that’s assuming they just met. If they’re 45 and 30 but met when they were 35 and 20 and have been getting along swimmingly for ten years already, it’s not at all the same question. But you can’t get at any of that with just an age.
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I would see the 18-35 relationship as a lot more acceptable because there’s still a fertility window in it. My sister has been married for over 20 years with this age difference and she was 19 when they met. Of course, if he were infertile at that age for whatever reason, I’d think he was an absolute bastard.
I don’t think people are being truly honest. Is there really anybody who wouldn’t see it as catastrophic if their 30yo son or brother would get serious with a menopausal woman?
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It would be fine if the fellow in question had a good reason for not wanting to produce genetic offspring. That’s not too old to adopt or take in foster children, if they’re the sort of people who can handle it.
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“odd to ask if the relationship is “acceptable”
I think “appropriate” would have been a better choice. Still subject to the individuals involved and their life priorities but not as…. weirdly judgy as “acceptable”.
Women tend to have stronger parental drives than men so the default of a younger woman/older man is probably going to be more common and more likely to be satisfying to the parties involved. If either party is sterile and both are okay with that then it doesnt’ much matter.
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This is fun: when your “engagement” numbers are lacking, pose a Modest Proposal or state a Modest Question so you can pump them back up again without doing any serious lifting.
The one answer you’ve all failed to address involves class.
So did it seriously matter to anyone with standing when Roger Scruton married someone considerably younger?
(As in he was in his forties and she was in her early twenties?)
Did anyone seriously care when AA Gill finally hooked up with The Blonde?
Only to the “chattering classes” outside of their class, but of course!
And so the relevant answer is that if you’re beyond those classes, you don’t give a toss what they have to say because they have no standing in your life.
Hence I could also not give a toss what this Caitlin person thinks about my relationship.
Imagine that the older is … yeah, you can guess that number already, it’s not as if that’s a huge mystery.
Now imagine that the younger is … between twenty-five and thirty.
Libido is a funny thing, it refers to more than just this need to bang and bang and bang … you do know that, right?
And so someone who has enough of this kind of energy that he went into architecture in order to create things?
It’s that kind of thing where people wonder how Pablo Picasso could have been so powerful a person … unless, of course, you’ve actually met the man.
That feeling isn’t entirely Edifice Envy that you’re feeling, it’s something else, BTW. 🙂
So do this: find that picture of AA Gill and The Blonde on a sailboat from back when they first got together.
The way she looks at him says everything that needs to be said about whether they should have been together.
All of the arguments as to why they shouldn’t have been together are essentially a form of class envy.
So what is more acceptable to you, drive-by class warfare by notional psychologists pretending to be conducting surveys about age gaps in order to pump their “engagement” numbers, or noting that these people typically don’t have any standing to comment on the relationships that bother them so much?
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