Why are some relationships a flex but not others? May-December romances are as old as time but once every couple of months, a celebrity couple will go official in the public eye and remind us all that sometimes love is less about fuzzy feelings and more about the cold-hard indictments it hands out to all the parties participating.
Not all age-gap relationships are created equal
When NFL football coach BIll Belichick, 73, ends up with 24-year old cheerleader-turned-publicist Jordan Hudson, it’s a flex (regardless of how you feel about either one of them or their joint venture). But when Cher (79) or Madonna (67) ends up with a guy half their age (39 and 29, respectively), it means something totally different.
And here’s how you know it’s different: Kathy Griffin recently confessed that she dated a 23-year old when she was 65. But think about it: The only reason we know this is because she wrote an article for The Cut about it after they broke up. When they were actually together, she was not parading him around red carpets (cue Belichick/Hudson) or professional sporting events. And that’s because December-May says very different things about the men than the women who end up in them.
Aging: A battle of the sexes
Age-gap relationships are always asymmetrical across the sexes because men’s mate value tends to go up with age, usually because with age comes money, status, and other goodies. Women’s tolerance—some would argue, preference—for older men remains remarkably stable throughout the lifespan. Studies confirm this phenomenon, although it is higher among young women; the older they get, they do also tend to be more open-minded towards younger guys.
In contrast, women’s so-called mate value—evolutionarily, at least—can be hurt by age because men’s preference for young women also remains remarkably stable throughout their lives. If anything, it only gets stronger as they get older. Hence, it’s why every beauty treatment and plastic surgery is designed to make you look younger, and there’s not a procedure in the world aimed at making you look older.
Boy Math vs. Girl Math
The evolutionary logic, then, it this: You reach peak “mate value” when you’re an older guy or a younger girl. Given these trends, it remains unsurprising whenever those two groups find each other. If you are an older man, getting a much younger woman can signal to the world that indeed, you made it, like all the statistics suggest. But that also means that young men and older women may also be suited, because neither are technically at their “peak value,” according to evolutionary theory. But then that also means it’s nothing to brag about when you get one; what it signals isn’t a flex.
Still, the single greatest thing about being human today is that you can ignore what your biological programming tells you and do what you want. Personally, I’m rooting for all these fools for love and hope that Bill, Cher, and Kathy all end up happily ever after. Let’s just not pretend that all these relationships signal the same thing.