The Age Gap Take That Everyone Will Hate
A lot of age gap shaming seeks to enforce a social contract--and it's not only women who do it.
Somehow, somewhere, I earned the reputation of a “bitter old feminist” who “hates age gaps.”
This isn’t true, as you’re about to find out, but I think I know why people assume it’s true. I don’t think adults should sleep with people under the age of consent, nor should the age of consent be lowered, nor we need to “destigmatize” attraction to those under the age of consent (hugely controversial in 2026, I learned). I’ve repeatedly said that large age gap relationships in any direction weren’t the historical norm among monogamous societies for most of Western history, nor are they the norm now, nor are they the desired outcome for most young people. But that’s just factually true. Even going back to England in the 1500s, most marriages were between a woman in her mid-twenties and a man a couple years older. This pattern of a 2-4 year age gap at first marriage has remained remarkably consistent in the Western world for centuries, despite all the weird historical fiction about old-timey marriages being between a forty-five-year-old man and a sixteen-year-old girl.
The truth is, I’m actually fine with legal age gap relationships. Say, between a twenty-five-year-old and thirty-seven-year-old. Even a thirty-seven-year-old and a sixty-five-year-old, as weird and unappealing as that sounds to me. I do not believe that people with big age gaps “have nothing to talk about” given that my mom and I can talk for three hours straight despite having no new information to share.
I just don’t think these pairings that common, especially when it comes to anything serious—and if marriage comes into the picture, they are associated with an increased risk of divorce. But morally speaking, are two consenting adults doing anything wrong simply by entering into an age gap relationship? No.
And yet, some people are mad about them. Most of us are used to the women who get mad about age gap relationships between a young woman and older man. Haven’t we all heard people say, time and time again, that Leonardo DiCaprio only dates young women because “older women don’t want him?” Yeah, I’m sure older women have been fighting off Leonardo DiCaprio for decades. Anyway.
But despite the stereotype, this kneejerk reaction (and the underlying motivation) is not unique to older women, nor is it unique to women at all. In fact, almost every demographic, except for people actively seeking out age gap relationships, has a remarkably similar reason for shaming them.
