My parents were 11 years apart (she the younger of the two). That would be such a dealbreaker for me.
The stigma of meeting somebody outside of your own "grade" has increased pretty severely over the decades. I would say that the age of consent issue has exacerbated this since people don't want to be perceived as a pedophile even though a couple of years difference is not really significant. So as the stigma increases you get people who refuse to look outside of their grade and end up finding nobody at all.
This article goes hand in hand with the "People are increasingly lonely" because 17 year olds are worried about dating 15 year olds.
This may be true for married couples who started dating when they were teenagers. Since you brought it up, I'd be curious to see what proportion of the couples in the study fall into that category. I have a hunch that it's a pretty small percentage, though.
While it's true that there is some stigma against (e.g.) a college freshman or sophomore dating someone who's still in high school, I don't think many people in their right mind would object to a 2-, 3- or even 4-year age gap once both partners are at least 20.
EDIT to add: I don't think 17-year-olds being afraid to date 15-year-olds even registers on the top ten reasons "why people are increasingly lonely." Your take comes across as very high school-centric.
My wife is 9.5 years older than me. We met 10 years ago when I was 24 and she was 34, moved in together 6 years ago when I was 28, and got married a little over 2 years ago. I've never dated anyone my age or younger, I've always tended to date (at least for longer than a night to a few weeks) women that were at least a few years older. I have never felt any sort of stigma against it, quite the opposite actually. 2 of my best friends ended up with women 10 years younger than them, and for that matter very few people I know are with someone within a year of them, typically there's a discrepancy of about 5-6 years, and these are all people ranging from late 20s to 50s. Heck, one of my really good buddies is 55 and has been with his 72yo wife for over 20 years. I'm guessing this is a younger generation thing, cause it seems odd to me to that age really matters once you're past your early 20s.
My husband is 16 years older than me. I've been told frequently it's weird or worse. We were both adults when we met, so I just accept whatever people want to say. I'm going to stay with him so it doesn't matter if they find it weird.
I caught some flak because my husband is 8 years younger. I reminded my family that they let my mom get married off at 14, and nobody brings it up anymore. Tennessee (USA), if you're wondering.
Seems pretty normal to me.
In fact, my partner is older than me by several years. We’re a CIS couple.
Kind of skimmed, but I didn't notice any mention of same sex couples / marriages. I wonder if there's any major difference or if the data is similar.
Would like to see the same data, just without Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky please.
My partner and I are 42 days apart. There is something very nice about having the same timeframe of experience.
We grew up experiencing the same events but slightly different because we were in different parts of the same country.
I dated someone many years younger once and it was so awkward, they were so far behind of where I was in life that I didn't even want to pursue it after a month of dating.