If love is time­less and age should not de­fine a per­son, should con­sent­ing adults be judged on their age pref­er­ences con­cern­ing ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships?

Love has no set de­f­i­n­i­tion, yet so­ci­ety seems hell-bent on cre­at­ing crazy stan­dards and ex­pec­ta­tions that peo­ple are con­stant­ly pres­sured to fol­low. Our minds are some­times trained to be lim­it­ed when it comes to mat­ters con­cern­ing age dif­fer­ence and what is ac­cept­ed. I am not talk­ing of child mar­riages and any sort of union be­tween un­der­age in­di­vid­u­als, but this ar­ti­cle puts fo­cus on adult re­la­tion­ships and its lim­i­ta­tions. Women are told to mar­ry a man old­er than they are but not “too” old and men are told to mar­ry younger women. How­ev­er, just like all oth­er as­pects in life, mind­set and re­la­tion­ship dy­nam­ics are chang­ing and we can see age be­com­ing less of an is­sue in mod­ern re­la­tion­ships.

Two adults with shared likes, shared in­ter­ests and shared goals should be al­lowed to date if at­trac­tion is present. Its sur­re­al that a woman will refuse to date a man that is two years younger than she is due to fear of what her friends and fam­i­ly will think. I know peo­ple are fear­ful that a younger man rep­re­sents im­ma­tu­ri­ty or an old­er fe­male rep­re­sents com­mit­ment, but this is just a stereo­type. Age does not equal ma­tu­ri­ty, what it pro­vides is ex­pe­ri­ence. If peo­ple make the de­ci­sion to learn from their ex­pe­ri­ences, well, that is a whole dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

I know both men and women who are in their for­ties and are still im­ma­ture thinkers. A 40-year-old man can have the mind­set of a 20-year-old and vice ver­sa. I know of old­er women who gos­sip more than younger women and younger women who are way more re­spon­si­ble than their moth­ers. I’ve seen young men who grasp the im­por­tance of mar­riage faster than some grand­fa­thers and then there are peo­ple who ma­ture at the ex­pect­ed age and it just works out quite eas­i­ly for them. Every­one’s jour­ney is dif­fer­ent.

There is no mag­ic wand that will trans­form you in­to a ma­ture per­son at age 30. If you are in a re­la­tion­ship with some­one and there is a huge age dif­fer­ence be­tween the two of you, the ques­tions that need to be asked should cir­cle around is­sues such as fam­i­ly plan­ning, re­tire­ment etcetera. These con­ver­sa­tions are key and re­al­ly should not be avoid­ed sim­ply be­cause ma­jor red flags and deal break­ers for this type of union re­volves around those top­ics. De­cide on those fac­tors be­fore you make any big steps in your re­la­tion­ship. As a mat­ter of fact that’s nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion for ANY re­la­tion­ship, so don’t skip out on it.

A love-based re­la­tion­ship be­tween two adults is deep­er than dif­fer­ences in age, colour, back­ground and re­li­gion. If you want it to work, it can and it will. Every­one has re­la­tion­ship pref­er­ences and that’s per­fect­ly fine, but this should not be lim­it­ed be­cause of fear of what so­ci­ety will think. Are you go­ing to let the love of your life get away be­cause she is five years old­er than you? Or let the man of your dreams slip away be­cause he is 40 and you are 30? No, what re­al­ly mat­ters is if you are both on the same wave­length in your think­ing, with shared goals and in each oth­er’s hearts for the moral­ly right rea­sons and in­ten­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Mark Twain, “Age is a case of mind over mat­ter; if you don’t mind it, it doesn’t mat­ter!”