(DON’T) MIND THE GAP

Relationships are complicated. Adding a signifcant age gap to the equation adds to the complexity. Or does it? The French presidential couple has cast a light on how conventions are becoming less important. We explore the olderwoman/younger-man phenomenon

Married to an older woman… Couples who are breaking the norm

'She will have a say in what she wants to be. She will have a presence, a voice, a look. She will have it privately by my side as she always has, but she will have a public role because that’s how it goes.’ Those were French President Emmanuel Macron’s words when he spoke about the new first lady’s role. Brigitte Macron is 64; he is 39. They met when he was 15 and she was his teacher. They married in 2007, a year after her divorce, and in their decade together he has become step-grandfather to her seven grandchildren.

Many have undermined the pair, rumour-mongering about him having a gay affair and being under her maternal influence. Any couple who breaks the norms might provoke that. Yet the Macron marriage shouldn’t be so surprising – in a time where women are more independent, financially and otherwise, and have more freedom than ever before, the criteria for suitable life partners are shifting.

For generations, it has been assumed that a woman needs a man to take care of her – a man who is more educated, has a better job and makes more money. But these days most adult women are self-sufficient; they don’t have to look for that, Sandra L Caron, a professor of family relations and human sexuality at

the University of Maine, told The New York Times. She is one of the authors of a study on relationships with a ‘reversed’ age gap. The study, published in the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, reports that the couples believed their age difference mattered more to strangers than to them, and that women liked the energy the younger man brought into their lives whereas

men liked the maturity and confidence in older women. ‘Initially I thought I would find more issues,’ says Nichole R Proulx, the lead author of the study. ‘But it’s a relationship like any other, despite what society might say.’

Historically, many prominent men have chosen much younger women as wives without anyone batting an eyelid. The age gap between the Macrons, for example, is roughly the same as that between Donald and Melania Trump. Yet the reversed age gap is often met with scepticism and surprise.

We asked three couples who are living it about this love dynamic.