Is there really a case for marrying an older man?
The latest essay from The Cut, "The Case for Marrying an Older Man," has set the internet ablaze. But is there actually a case for young women to marry older men?
I very rarely think to myself, You know what? Maybe a lobotomy wouldn’t be so bad. But after reading the latest, buzz-generating essay from The Cut, I yearn for the peace I had beforehand, and can only assume that a lobotomy would get me there.
Entitled The Case for Marrying an Older Man, writer Grazie Sophia Christie maps out her logic for — you guessed it — marrying an older man.
While I admire The Cut’s willingness to publish stories from a variety of opinions and lifestyles that touch on relevant topics, I desperately wish this essay came with a disclaimer. Something like: Warning. You will have to take a Xanax before reading this essay. Go do it right now.
I do want to give Christie some grace because, despite writing about how she and her husband recently “agreed we’d given each other our respective best years,” describing herself at 20 as having “high breasts” and “a flush ponytail” (whatever that means), and altogether sounding like a world-weary 68-year-old reflecting on her long marriage, she’s only 27 and has been married for four years. Her husband is 10 years her senior.
This will be, admittedly, a difficult feat on my part, considering the condescending way she talks about her friends and other women who did not choose to marry an older man like she did.
For example: After deciding, while 20 and studying at Harvard, that she would rather marry young instead of tirelessly working, Christie wrote that she “could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence.”
It gets much, much worse.
I don’t want to spend my time tearing Christie down, because she’s still quite young and has seemingly spent her formative years catering to a man’s lifestyle.
Instead, I’d rather challenge her stance: Is there really a case for marrying an older man?
Are age-gap relationships more socially acceptable?
Age-gap relationships are nothing new and have been a topic of conversation for years (think Leonardo DiCaprio’s inability to date a woman older than 25).
According to a poll from Ipsos, “a large majority of Americans believe it is socially acceptable for both men and women to date someone 10+ years younger than them. However, gender imbalances exist.”
25% of men polled were more likely to have dated someone 10 or more years younger than them, in comparison to 14% of women. On the other hand, 28% of women polled had dated someone 10 or more years older than them, in comparison to 21% of men.
Here’s where those gender imbalances come in: “Six in ten (60%) Americans believe it is acceptable for a woman to date someone 10+ years younger than her, while 71% believe it is acceptable for a man to date someone 10+ years younger than him.”
65% of men “say it’s acceptable for a woman to date someone 10 or more years younger than her,” in comparison to 56% of women.
“However, there are no gender differences in perceptions of men dating younger, where 72% of men and 70% of women agree it’s socially acceptable.”
Age-gap relationships significantly decrease in satisfaction over time
But are people in age-gap relationships happier?
In 2017, a study from the IZA - Institute of Labor Economics explored satisfaction among age-gap couples.
Researchers found that within the first six to 10 years of marriage, both men and women were more satisfied with younger partners and less satisfied with older partners.
But, despite the initial satisfaction, researchers found that satisfaction among age-gap marriages (for both men and women) declines at a more rapid rate than those in marriages with spouses their age.
So, as researchers wrote, “after 6-10 years, the initial higher levels of satisfaction experienced by men married to younger wives and women married to younger husbands are erased.”
It’s also worth noting, as Grace Lordan, an associate professor of behavioral science at the London School of Economics, told BBC, “The probability of similar-aged couples divorcing is also lower.”
‘Having a younger spouse is beneficial for men but detrimental for women’
Additionally, a 2010 study published in the National Library of Medicine explores how a significant age gap between romantic partners impacts their lifespan.
Researcher Sven Drefahl found that “the risk of dying in men decreases as the age gap increases.”
“The younger the wife is compared with her spouse, the lower the mortality of the husband,” Drefahl wrote, “the older the wife is compared with her spouse, the higher the mortality of the husband.”
Drefahl also found that “similar to that of men, female mortality is higher if the wife is younger than her husband.”
He continues, “In contrast to the pattern for men, women also have an elevated risk of dying when they are older than their spouses.”
Women had the “lowest risk of dying” when they and their husbands were the same age.
Based on his findings, Drefahl concluded, “My results suggest that having a younger spouse is beneficial for men but detrimental for women.”
“In most marriages, men are older than their wives,” he wrote. “Given my results, this composition favors men. Thus, the age gap between the spouses may in part explain why marriage is more beneficial for men than for women.”
What does it all mean?
It’s a lot of research and statistical jargon to muscle through, I know, but I wanted to be thorough. Age-gap marriages in which the wife is significantly younger than the husband, while still slightly socially taboo, are seen as acceptable — certainly more so than if an older woman married a younger man.
Additionally, partners with a significant age gap do experience significant satisfaction within the first years of their relationship, but decline much faster in satisfaction after roughly a decade.
And lastly, age-gap relationships undoubtedly benefit men more than women, especially in terms of mortality.
The above research almost backs up what Christie wrote in her essay. Of course she and her husband are experiencing marital satisfaction. They’ve only been married for four years.
But this upends her theory that age-gap marriages are the answer to modern women’s problems because they don’t necessarily, in the long run, bring the satisfaction she claims they do.
Being a woman today is hard — and the solution isn’t simple
One of the most frustrating things about Christie’s essay is that, at times, she identifies the plight of women today with surprising clarity. But she loses credibility when she says that the solution to these problems is an age-gap marriage.
Christie speaks of the labor that women often put into relationships with men their age, teaching them how to do basic things and making them better men, all without getting the credit or reward.
She wrote, “A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him.”
This is a very real problem that many women face and even touches on the same vein as weaponized incompetence. But instead of holding men her age accountable and asking them to do better, her solution is to marry older men who, supposedly, already know how to do all these things.
Additionally, Christie touches on what she thinks is a pitfall of feminism: How, when women fought for equality and entered the workforce en masse, they were expected to work within the timelines, routines, and systems created by men.
“When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins.”
Navigating the world, as a woman, is exhausting. As Christie asks, “So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty?”
This is a systemic issue. We should look at how things work, as established by men, and find a better way. We should strive for something that works for everyone.
But again, Christie’s solution is a bandaid: Instead of entering the system and trying to make a change from the inside, she opts to abandon it entirely and turn to an older man, with his life figured out, as a way to live leisurely.
This almost reminds me of the trad-wife movement. A subculture of women are actively choosing to adhere to more simple, traditional gender roles, similar to those in the 1950s.
As Catherine Rottenberg, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham who has studied neoliberal feminism, told CNN in an email, this is a symptom of a much larger issue.
“If there is no reliable health care, if women are making less money than their partners due to the gender wage gap and if there is no decent child care, then women ramping off the career path and serving their husbands and children provides a Band-Aid to these larger crises — and provides this Band-Aid with ideological cover.”
If anything, Christie’s essay made me sad. It’s disheartening to see a woman who molds herself entirely to her husband’s lifestyle, habits, and preferences and sells it as the one true path to female empowerment and freedom.
Even after my research, I’m not necessarily anti-age-gap relationships. The are plenty of examples of successful relationships with significant age gaps.
But peddling marriage to an older man as the end-all-be-all solution to modern women’s problems, and not acknowledging that age-gap relationships can have a unique set of problems, is inaccurate.
And for the record, I’m not rooting for their marriage to end. Christie sounds genuinely happy. I could do without the superiority, but I can’t deny that Christie is most likely leading a much easier life than mine, and most women.
And wasn’t I, systemically, raised to think the same? That, as a woman, it was my job to make space for a man and not ask him to do the same for me?
I’m glad that I’ve since learned that folding myself around a man, in order to live with ease, isn’t conducive to a happy relationship — or even a happy life. It’s a conclusion that I hope all women will eventually come to.