*** The author defines an “age gap relationship” as a consensual relationship, with an age gap of 10 years or more.
In lines like “I’ll get older but your lover’s stay my age” and “Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong / Don’t you think nineteen’s too young,” Taylor Swift rips apart her former boyfriends who she dated at the young ages of 19 and 21. Her infamous exes, Jake Gyllenhaal and John Mayer, have become the poster boys for dating young women who were too young, according to public opinion.
Yet, younger celebrities are still publicly dating significantly older partners. Currently, Billie Eilish (21) is dating Jesse Rutherford (31), while Kaia Gerber (21) is dating Austin Butler (31). The age gaps in these consensual relationships are not that extreme, but they’re big enough differences that social media has taken notice.
If I’m being honest, I would date Austin Butler if given the chance. Fake Elvis and all.
Does that make me a bad person? A bad feminist? A bad Taylor Swift fan?
Ipsos, a global market research company, conducted polling on American perception of age gap relationships. The majority of Americans surveyed believe it is socially acceptable to engage in age gap relationships with 39 percent admitting to have been a part of one themselves. However, Ipsos’s study found “gender imbalances” in their data. 60 percent of Americans believe it is socially acceptable for a woman to date someone younger than her while 71 percent of Americans believe it is socially acceptable for a man to date someone younger than him. Men tend to get off easier in the court of public opinion for dating younger women, while women face a harder path when dating younger men.
These statistics don’t correlate with Twitter’s aggressive anti-age-gap crusade. When have Billie Eilish and Kaia Gerber written piercing ballads about how their older partners wronged them? If they break up, is it automatically because of their age gaps?
BBC author Katie Bishop admits in “Age Gaps: The Relationship Taboo That Won’t Die,” that “recent social justice movements have increased scrutiny of power dynamics in mixed-age relationships …. young people could be becoming more disapproving of mixed-age love than ever before.” This “distaste” for age gap relationships might even be evolutionary as Dr. Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist and co-founder of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic in London, says the phenomenon might be “stemming from the biological instinct to find a partner to reproduce with.”
Evolutionary instinct is not the only reason for this distaste. Age-gap relationships can sometimes teeter into the category of grooming. The Campaign Against Adult Grooming (CAAG) defines grooming as “when an individual (groomer), or group of people (“Grooming gangs”), builds an emotional connection with someone they’ve targeted to earn trust with the purpose of exploitation for their own motives: sexual abuse, financial, power kicks, even trafficking.” These kinds of relationships are toxic and harmful. However, consensual age gap relationships and toxic grooming relationships are often tied together, creating an absolute negative connotation for all relationships with significant age gaps.
Bishop highlights how increasing economic equality between men and women decreases the need for age gap relationships, as women are becoming more financially independent and no longer searching for economic security in a relationship. Historically, this economic security was found in older men. The modern age presents a very different reality for both men and women, fundamentally changing what constitutes a “healthy” romantic relationship.
A fundamental change in a perception as big as love and dating will never be without its debate and contradicting fickleness. Lana del Rey romanticizes characters such as Lolita, fantasizing about spending summers in the Hamptons with a much older and sophisticated man. Twitter cheers on Leonardo DiCaprio for being able to date a much younger woman, while simultaneously dragging him for being a disgusting cradle robber. French President Macron was elected to office despite the 24 year old age of he and his wife, but that could just be the French-ness of it all.
Just like any relationship, each experience is different. While there can be damaging effects to age gap relationships, a difference is age does not determine the health of a relationship. At the end of the day, shouldn’t a person’s happiness be the most important thing?
I think back to the line: “Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong / Don’t you think nineteen’s too young?” I am eight years old and sitting in my childhood bedroom, screaming a song about a broken hearted girl who was betrayed by a much older man. I had never experienced romance — not even a first crush — but I felt Taylor Swift’s pain like it was my own. John Mayer’s age might have been the reason the relationship was so traumatizing for Taylor Swift. But he might just be a real scumbag, too. Both and neither could be true.