Cha Cha Real Smooth, which is out in the UK on Friday, is an earnest drama about an aimless 22-year-old university graduate who falls for an enigmatic thirtysomething mother, played by Dakota Johnson. It is a subject that Johnson is familiar with, being in a much-scrutinised relationship with Coldplay singer Chris Martin, who is 13 years her senior. “I had a lot of life really young, so I think I feel older,” she has said.
Elsewhere in culture, age gaps have been explored in the coming-of-age drama Palm Trees and Power Lines; the BBC’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, which follows university student Frances and her tryst with the older, married Nick; Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, in which Emma Thompson plays a fiftysomething widow who hires a much younger sex worker; and Lena Dunham’s new film, Sharp Stick, about an intergenerational workplace romance. On ITV2’s Love Island, 19-year-old Gemma Owen’s pairing with Davide Sanclimenti, 27, has led some viewers to complain.
Discourse around age gaps often uses the post-#MeToo language of power dynamics and coercion to paint a picture of predatory older partners – replete with the usual stereotypes (toyboy, gold-digger, creep). Away from public scrutiny, it is easier for real age-gap couples to overcome preconceptions and explore their connection.
Kelly Turnpike, a 33-year-old marketer from London, is dating a 52-year-old man, which is her first relationship in 10 years. She says other people’s attitudes do not concern her. “He is an absolute dream and makes me feel like I’m the most important creature on the planet,” she says. “I’m convinced he is my soulmate.” But if it doesn’t work out she would look for another older man who was similarly “accomplished, financially made, charming, caring, and has conviction in his romantic decisions”.
Mona Elouly, 30, met her partner, Liam Roberts, 47, at a tech industry event in London. They went on a few dates, but the topic of age never came up. “I thought he was in his late 30s and he thought I was 30. But he was 40 and I was 23,” she says. When they learned each other’s ages they decided to pause things. “We ended up meeting again,” she says, “and decided there was something real.”
Although she took things slowly, Elouly says that some friends and family initially presumed she was being taken advantage of, or that Roberts financially supported her. “My cousin heard my mum talking like this and said, ‘Since Mona was a child, she has always done whatever she wants’ – no older man can force me to do anything.” Seven years later, they are as happy as ever. “Most of the arguments against age-gap relationships are about having kids, and neither of us wants them,” she says.
From the beginning, Elouly made sure she was cautious of the power dynamics and her personal boundaries – for example with money. “For most of our relationship I insisted on everything being split 50/50. But with him being, first, a man, second, older, and third, white [she is of North African heritage], of course he earns more money than I do,” she says. “We’ve now settled for a more equitable setup [based on their pay], which he’s happy to do, because he knows it’s important for me to feel like an equal. I know some women will be saying, ‘Let him pay’, but those are my principles.”
How common is it for couples to have such a wide age gap? According to Brienna Perelli-Harris, a professor in demography at the University of Southampton, analysis of marriage records shows a “consistent trend across Europe, that husbands are on average three years older than their wives.” Marriage data doesn’t paint the full picture when so many couples are unmarried, however in 2019, the Office for National Statistics found that about 60% of the population in England and Wales were living as part of a couple – the majority were married but about one in five were cohabiting and unmarried. “My guess would be that, with the increase of divorce, a common place for age gaps to occur would be among couples who’ve previously been married,” says Perelli-Harris.
Studies support this. In 2014, a data analysis of couples around the world by Facebook found that, as people got older, the average age difference between couples increased, perhaps because people progressing through their careers were more likely to meet partners of all ages compared with those dating in school or university. A landmark study in 2005 analysed a century of marriage data in England and Wales and found that the average age gap, which was two to three years, had barely changed in this time and crucially, there was no evidence that social convention had a bearing on the prevalence of age-gap relationships. As for pinning down what public attitudes are to age-gap couples: “I’ve not seen any attitudinal research that asks people their opinions about this,” says Perelli-Harris.
Although the general trend across all heterosexual relationships has been older men and younger women, there are many couples where the woman is older. In fact, the 2005 study found that, where bachelors married divorced women, the bachelors tended to be younger, even if only by a few years.
IT technician Robin Pike, 48, met his partner, Charlotte, 73, nearly 27 years ago when Pike arrived in London wanting to rent a property that Charlotte was managing. He rang to tell her he was the on the way and he knew where he was going but she insisted on telling him the route. “So we had our first disagreement before actually meeting,” he says. The couple become platonic friends: “It didn’t really occur to either of us that there could be anything. Then, one day, suddenly we were kissing.”
Pike says that their age gap was no problem for them. “I am a thrifty, socialist, atheistic British vegetarian, and she is a profligate, conservative spiritual, Chinese meat-lover. So at the time the age difference didn’t seem conspicuous among all the other differences.”
How did others receive the pair? “I don’t think it was ever a problem,” he says. If they met people, say through Charlotte’s interest in antiques, their differences were seen as exciting: it set them apart from other couples. “She had a very handsome young man on her arm, whereas I was with the most elegant belle of any ball,” says Pike. “I would say it’s more socially acceptable for a younger man to be with an older woman, than the other way around,” he says.
Although they were “just doing what felt right at the time, rather than trying to conform to any particular expectations”, Pike says he did worry at points. “I thought: ‘How will life be in 25 or 30 years in the future? Will I still be attracted to her? But when I look at her now she looks very much the same as when I met her.”
The limited studies carried out into age-gap relationships suggest greater prevalence among LGBTQ+ couples. One Canadian dataset found that 18% of people in female same-sex relationships have an age gap of 10 years or more compared with 8% of people in mixed-sex relationships. Of same-sex marriages in France in 2017, more than a quarter were between partners with an age gap of 10 years or more. The 2014 Facebook study found that partners in same-sex relationships have higher age gaps than their heterosexual counterparts. This isn’t to say that gay couples aren’t stigmatised for this – last year MP Luke Pollard was subjected to a torrent of abuse for posting a picture with his younger boyfriend.
For Russell Newton, 46, and his partner, Jakub Kalny, 28, in Salford, the age gap has caused no problems. The pair met through a dating app while Kalny, who is from the Czech Republic, was working in the UK. Knowing there was a chance that Kalny might return home, the pair didn’t want to start a relationship, but their connection was undeniable. Now they’re about to settle into their new home, and Kalny has even had his dog flown over.
“I think his sister was a bit surprised when she asked me how old I am,” Kalny says. “But in a laughing, fun way.” Other than that they cannot recall any comments or raised eyebrows.
“Maybe it’s because I look older,” says Kalny. “I’m bald and I have a few wrinkles now.”
But Newton says it has more to do with their clear compatibility: “He is a lot more mature than guys I have dated or known in the past. My mum was 13 years younger than my dad and you didn’t notice it in them either.”
Have dating apps given age undue importance? Newton believes this could be the case. “I’ve read these profiles where they’re very specific, like, ‘I only want to meet somebody between the ages of 23 and 27’, and I think, ‘Right. Good luck with that, because when you are single maybe you’ll need to change your filter setting’. To me age has nothing to do with maturity or whether you get on with somebody.”
But Steph Jameson, 30, says that there is good reason to be cautious about some age-gap relationships. “I have male friends in their early 30s who sleep with or date women in their early 20s, and I find that strange. What do you have in common? Fine, you’re both adults, but it doesn’t seem right,” she says. A YouGov poll found that half of British men would sleep with a 21-year-old-woman, though far fewer would be willing to enter into a relationship. In contrast, 15% of British women would sleep with a 21-year-old man.
Jameson’s last boyfriend was 10 years older than her. She met him as a teenager and fell in love. They would talk about music and books, and she felt he was “brilliant”. Nothing of a sexual nature happened until 11 years later, when they began a relationship that lasted roughly a year. Looking back, Jameson feels there was “something weird” about it all. She has reflected on other “purely physical” relationships she had in her 20s with men in their 40s and wonders how much of that was her chasing what she had with her ex-partner.
She can’t help but think that’s why age-gap relationships with younger adults aren’t quite the same, because the potential to shape a person’s entire life is much stronger. “I will always love him. But I am angry at the power that he wielded. I did not have any power and I became addicted to relationships where I didn’t have any power,” she says.
Dee Holmes is a counsellor with relationship support charity Relate. She doesn’t believe that age-gap couples are any more or less likely to face difficulties long-term, and says that sometimes the increased self-awareness can put them in good stead. She recalls working with a couple where the woman was approaching menopause and “sex was falling off the agenda”, though it was very important to her 36-year-old partner. “When they got together there were a lot of raised eyebrows, and so they knew there would be hurdles and were almost more prepared, with a ‘we’re not going to let this break us’ attitude,” she says.
Holmes says it’s important to remember that “there usually is a dominant person in a relationship – it’s not going to be equal all of the time. I often use wine as an example: if one of you likes red and one of you likes white, a compromise isn’t always drinking rosé. It means sometimes you drink red and sometimes white.”
Above all, Holmes notices that problems arise when couples are in different life stages. She says: “25 and 45 might not be so different when you’re both working but when one retires it can create a clash. Perhaps the retired one doesn’t feel like they get enough attention.” And she can see the problems at the younger end, too. “If it’s a 26-year-old and an 18-year-old, that 26-year-old might always take the lead because of their experience. That could be helpful, but it could also set a benchmark for a controlling relationship.”
Pike says that this difference in life stages has certainly “become more of an issue” between him and Charlotte as they have aged. When they met, Charlotte had grownup children, which worked for the younger Pike, who had no interest in becoming a father or stepfather – a decision he now says he regrets. As “health problems inevitably arise” he says he’s learned that “however close you are, you will always be at different stages … and in spite of love, it will always be a barrier.”
Did they ever consider splitting up as these problems started to develop? “No, we deeply need each other. Being apart hurts.”
Some names have been changed
