‘Age Is Just a Number’: How Couples Challenged Chronological Age and Minimised Their Age Differences

Abstract

It was extremely common for my interviewees to make comments such as these. Survey respondents, too, made similar claims. For instance, when respondents were asked if they would consider a relationship with someone older than them, 45 per cent of those who answered ‘yes’ made comments along the lines of ‘age doesn’t matter’. When asked if they would date someone younger, 36 per cent of those who said ‘yes’ made comparable comments. Yet although a bold statement like ‘age is just a number’ and ‘age doesn’t matter’ was often people’s first response to my questions, once interviewees began to speak specifically about their own or others’ relationships, understandings emerged that contradicted these claims. For instance, when they referred to their or their partners’ ages, they did not suggest that the concept of ‘age’ was meaningless, but, rather, that ‘chronological age’ — that is, ‘the number of years lived’ by a person (Fairhurst 1998: 272) — was irrele vant in their case. Interviewees saw non-chronological, individually variable factors as having a far greater influence on their ages. Their ‘real age’, they argued, was younger or more mature than that implied by straightforward chronology. This was why age-dissimilar relationships were seen as suitable, even desirable, for them. Yet interviewees considered chronology to be an accurate measure of age for the vast majority of other people.

I … think that age is just a number, and it doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot. (Anna, 37, female-older relationship)

Age doesn’t matter. We’ve learnt so much about the human brain, I suppose, that we’re aware that people in their latter years can still produce original thoughts, original ideas, [and] act on them. There’s no barriers anymore, based on age. That’s it I think. So that there’s no barrier in relationships based on age. (Juliette, 76, female-older relationship)