Great thread. That has always puzzled me in the extreme too, the contention that grown-ass adults can have nothing in common with even a pretty small age gap. As a refutation, I had more in common with my 70-someting-year-old great aunt when I was in my early teens than anyone else. That’s because we both read books, were curious about the world, weren’t wildly racist and thought in the same ways. (Alas, she understandably rarely visited North Florida but was one of the few in my family who actually liked me.)
And that sort of congruity across different ages is common in my experience outside of the context of family as well. For instance, I had tons more in common with the twenty-year-old intern I was mentoring at an old job when I was 42 than any of my same-age peers. Again, we had similar proclivities, we both were really into reading, and both had absurdist senses of humor. And we liked the same music. I could go on.
Romantically speaking, on net it’s almost certainly better off for both men and women to at least once or twice be in age gap relationships. You often can learn a thing or two and if you don’t, so what? Just not limiting yourself to a small dating pool is a huge benefit. Your person might turn out not to be born at the same exact moment you were.
This whole discourse is frickin’ demented.
