If statistics are a guide, then the perceived tabloid pop TV notion that "age gaps" are an issue is wrong.
It`s mostly our own responses and ideas that matter in this. And these often are caught still in adolescent fantasies. Hence the sales of pop supermarket magazines and "shrink wrap" “men’s"` magazines.
Interestingly, the anthropology shows proportionately better, longer lasting marriages where a couple has a wider age "gap". (Singer 07, Job 02, Mead...?)
Humans get together for many reasons. Most basic is sex and copulation without after thought or love.
If a couple has strength of character and genuine love, shared interests and aspirations, then no amount of shallow `peer pressure` or social ‘approval’ matters. Surely this applies no matter whether the woman is older or the man is older. In the same way, nor can it really matter about racial or cultural or religious differences.
Of course, it is always "easier" to go along with the mob and not "stir waves".
Sadly, it is sometimes more the case that a man or a woman wears his or her
partner "as an accessory", a "handbag". This happens when we are unsure of our own selection process and like to see our "soulmate" reflected in the eyes of our friends and our family, to have the "approval" of friends and family... Even to the point where we like to know that others might be "jealous" of us because of the outward appearance, the attractiveness, of our partner.
This is at best a juvenile lack of character, and at worst it is a recipe for eventual destruction.
After all, it`s the two people who make up a “couple" who must "approve" one another, surely?
And yes, you or I or the Ku Klux Klan might "not like it". But we’re NOT the couple in love.
Besides, while we are happy to study and quote "Romeo and Juliet", do we ever consider that Romeo and Juliet had a much bigger age difference than is now popularly thought. This was not anywhere near an issue as were the appalling prejudices of economic and social difference.
Morally this is a question only for the couple involved. And if they are in love, then
why not be glad for them, not judgmental.
- W `
