Age gap of spouses matters.
According to a study, the ideal age gap between spouses should be 4 to 5 years, now by ideal it means that, if there is a difference of 4 to 5 years between a married couple, marriage and companionship is said to be more stable, though it might not be the same in all the cases, but this data is based on generalized survey. The larger the gap, the bigger the problems, with a bigger gap comes a lot of adjusting and understanding issues. If the age gap is more than 8 to 10 years, one might face compatibility issues as your partner will have different level of maturity and experience than yours.
However, nowadays it is also said and believed that age is just a number, age doesn’t matter when there is compatibility, love, mental understanding and maturity. In the older generations it was said to believe that a man must be older than a woman to be in a relationship like marriage or even dating, there has been some logic behind it too, that is, women tend to get mature a couple of years before their age, hence the reason why women are preferred to be younger than men.
Most of our older generations had gaps of around 10 to 15 years between spouses but those were different times, where people were more accepting and the idea of the marriage was all about “Till death do us apart”, people, especially women were more compromising, adjusting and devoting. But now things have changed through every aspect, people are less adjusting and more understanding of their own needs and comfort, so anything or any person that they think they don’t belong to, they immediately leave. Also, people are more aware and of their needs, especially women. People are breaking stereotypes and actually following the phrase “Age is just a number”, as long as there is love, compatibility and understanding, age doesn’t matter at all, men are getting more attracted towards women elder than them and are opting to marry them, we have a lot of celebrity examples, like Michael Douglas and Catherine Jones, Tom Cruise and Katy Holmes and many more other celebrities who have married women older than them.
Though there are a few factors that people bring in to consideration when getting in to a serious relationship like marriage, where age gap can play an important role, like family planning, different fitness goals, health issues and other unique interest that might matter to the couple or any one of the gender from the relationship, what matters the most is what makes a couple content and if all the decisions are consensual, as long as the couple is on the same page as each other, nothing or no one else matters.
Earlier, it was believed that there should be a certain age gap of 3 to 5 years and women should be younger than man, however these days, most of the people of both genders, get married to their own friends of almost the same age, which leads to more personality clashes due to same level of maturity, egos, likes and dislikes, however if there is a certain age gap, the level of maturity differs hence one is able to understand or let go of most of the negative stuff in their younger partner.
Gap of more than 8 to 10 years have lead to more disagreements, fights and ended up in divorce, according to a recent study, where as marriages with the age gap of 4 to 5 years seem to work better, but that cannot be generalized as different people have had different experiences, for some, the age gap of 8 to 10 years have turned out to be pretty well too and the ones with the gap of 4 to 5 years, have ended up in divorce, so, it depends on what works out for whom and how physically and mentally compatible a couple is.
Men choose women younger than them for the most basic reason, that is, family planning. When getting married a man has to keep the reproduction issues in mind too, as it is a generalized stigma that women face fertility issues after the age of 35 to 40 years and conception gets difficult for them, so men mostly prefer women in their 20s to avoid any such issues.
Age gap also matters from the sexual aspect, A woman is said to have a higher sexual drive between the age of 25 to 35, however for a man it peaks after 35. For a woman, they get menopause anytime after 45 years of their life and after that their sexual drive starts weaning off in most of the case, but again not all the cases are same, every woman is different from one another and so is their biology, same is the case with men, every man has different types of body and health elements. But this is one main reason why man prefer woman of younger age.
However, when you get married, you began to realize that other factors might contribute to one’s married life, but every couple have their own experiences, stories, whether success or failures, but they have their own fair share of rules to follow or not to follow, so there is no certain recipe for a successful marriage, to each their own. For some, the age gap of 8 to 10 years have turned out to be a part of success for some it has miserably failed, same goes for the couples who are of the same age and the ones who have gap of 4 to 5 years. What matters the most is what works out for you, what makes you happy as a couple. Love, devotion, compatibility, and understanding is what matters the most and that’s not just in marriage but any relationship out there. It’s always a two way street and the two people have to work equally towards the contribution in a happy and healthy relationship.
