If you’ve been on the internet long enough, you know that online outrage runs in cycles. One subject that pops up again and again? Age gap relationships. It’s a topic that’s often debated all over the internet, but each time it reemerges the conversation is strikingly similar. Someone will post about two people of different ages—usually more than five years apart—decrying their age gap as predatory. The post hits, others jump in to defend age gaps, more people pile on—yadda yadda yadda.
There was a time when the conversation around age gaps in relationships focused on someone like, say, Leo DiCaprio, who tends to date women 25 years old and younger even as he aged through his 40’s. Scrutinizing the age gap between a 44 year old celebrity and his 21 year old girlfriend is probably valid; a 23 year age gap (not to mention global fame and extreme wealth) almost necessarily means there’s likely a power imbalance in the relationship. Now, though, posters are calling each other out for age gaps of five or seven years—or, just for thirsting over 21 year old Robert Irwin in his new underwear campaign.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a specific formula to determine if an age gap relationship is problematic or not. The issue is complicated even further by our predilection for daddies. We can’t stop salivating over older men—Christopher Meloni and Pedro Pascal are two of many—but in the same breath we’re harshly critical of these age gaps and the supposed problematic dynamics they create. You can lust over the daddy, you can even fuck him, but you aren’t allowed to enter into a relationship with him.
A big part of the changing landscape of sexual mores—specifically online—stems from Gen Z. In recent years, many Gen Z voices on the internet have been loudly anti-sex. They’ve been dubbed puriteens, and though some disagree that Gen Z is actually less sex positive, there certainly do seem to be a lot of Gen Z critics online that are quick to call anyone advocating for age gaps groomers or pedophiles. The issue there is that’s…almost always quantifiably untrue, and in fact muddies the water around those words, weakening them and pulling attention away from actual groomers and pedophiles.
“I think younger people may be more susceptible to manipulation and are therefore more afraid of it,” certified sex and relationship psychotherapist Gigi Engle told the Huffington Post. “The reality is, age-gap relationships have been happening since humans have existed, and it is absolutely not some one-size-fits-all. In the vast majority of relationships like this, nothing untoward is happening.”
This is not to say that age gaps don’t deserve some examination, but condemning them point blank is a slippery slope. Before you know it you’re doxxing a stranger on the internet because he commented something horny on a picture of a 21 year old underwear model.
The solution here, if there is one, is precisely what the internet hates the most: nuance. Compassion. Taking a moment to reflect, and to realize you may not have a grasp on the context of the situation, or that—even worse—others’ experience may be unfathomably different from your own.
