Age Gap - Does It Still Matter?

People wholeheartedly believe that age is just a number. In a poll, conducted between 2/10/14 and 12/2/14, Meetville.com (dating app to find the right person) posed the question: “Is age an important factor in people you date?”

Those polled numbered 194,848, with a majority (55%) of people assuming that partners’ compatibility is way more important than age gap.

Vinita Mehta, clinical psychologist and journalist, states that many older men prefer dating younger women: “This is in keeping with Parental Investment Theory, which maintains that men are attracted to women who advertise signs of fertility — that is, youth. Conversely, women are drawn to older men since they typically have greater resources.”

There exists a notion of “ideal” age gap which society considers acceptable and contributing to family happiness. It’s also called “The Dating Equation”: “It’s okay to be interested in someone half your age plus seven years.”

But according to statistics, in order to have a long-lasting and harmonious marriage, people should choose a partner from the same age-territory: “A one-year discrepancy in a couple's ages, the study found, makes them 3 percent more likely to divorce (when compared to their same-aged counterparts); a 5-year difference, however, makes them 18 percent more likely to split up. And a 10-year difference makes them 39 percent more likely.”

Alex Cusper, Meetville service analyst, points out that the “ideal” age gap is the one partners feel comfortable about. Although generational differences can be a challenge, the only thing that really matters is the compatibility and maturity level of the both.

Meetville, a leading mobile dating service, regularly conducts research among its users. Millions of people from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia answer hundreds of questions every month. You can find the results of the poll here. If you are interested in research on a particular topic, please contact us. Any reprint of the material should be followed by clickable links to the survey.