Interestingly, a study of age difference relationships indicated that cases in which the wife was older than the husband showed a higher than usual proportion of good fits, as did those in which the husband was eight years or older. higher. However, these same marriages also showed the highest proportion of poor adjustments.
The happiest group of husbands were found to have wives twelve or more years younger, but the happiest wives were four to ten years older than their husbands. However, the happiest couples were those in which the husband was three to five years older. So find out. Here are some helpful principles:
1. If the man is the same age or slightly older than the girl, there will be no special age suitability issue.
2. If the girl is a little older there will be no special problem unless one or the other feels sensitive about it. The only question then will be, “How do you feel about it?”
3. As people get older, age differences become less important. Other things being equal, there will be less difference between a woman of fifty and a man of seventy, than between a girl of twenty and a man of forty.
4. When one is relatively young and the other up to twelve years older, the couple should carefully review the following issues:
In these age difference relationships, there may be real differences in your interest in physical activities. If the man is the oldest, this may not be too important. A man of thirty-five can play golf or even tennis as well, and swim as well, as a girl of twenty.
In fact, their age difference may make them more evenly matched. A bigger age gap relationship issue will be the stage your interests are at.
Younger people often want to have fun at dances, parties, night clubs, and similar activities. As people get older, these activities become much less engaging and can become boring if done too much.
If the man is considerably older and he and his wife do what he wants, she may miss out on a phase of her experience that, rightly or wrongly, she may always regret. If they make her what she likes best, he will be dragged through the same experiences twice, perhaps after he is eager to move on to something else.
A compromise can work. On the other hand, it can result in a type of social life that is not satisfactory for either of you. A deeper phase of the same problem concerns one’s attitude towards life. To those with less experience, age gap relationship problems seem much simpler than they really are.
Young people are very likely to feel that the older generation must be a rascal or a fool, or they would have abolished war, poverty, industrial strife and mosquitoes long ago.
Older people, on the other hand, often find the enthusiasms of youth amusing. They can tolerate them in their children, but they don’t want them in a spouse. If the age difference is so great that the wife thinks of her husband as an old geezer, and the husband thinks of her wife as just a child who spends too much effort and time on things that don’t matter, the situation doesn’t matter. It is favorable for a couple. successful marriage.
However, just because age gap relationships are risky doesn’t necessarily mean they shouldn’t be attempted. A twenty-five-year-old woman who was to marry a man twice her age stated emphatically that she would rather marry a first-class man of fifty than a third-class man of thirty.
There could be other advantages to such a union. The girl who marries an older man is more likely to know what she is getting. In any case, the most important consideration is not age, but maturity.
Younger people who are more mature than most of their contemporaries may find an older partner more agreeable. However, as in any age gap relationship, the preference for a much older partner must be carefully examined.
The danger is that the older person is psychologically a surrogate parent, rather than a partner.