This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2162.
Dating someone much older?
Is it accepted in American culture?
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In this episode, a listener asks us about the term May-December relationship.
What exactly does this mean?
And what do Americans think about relationships with a big age gap?
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Hey there, Michelle.
How's everything going today?
How you doing?
Good.
I'm glad to be here.
How are you am great, i am great.
Do you have a question for me?
Today are we talking about relationships?
Yes, this is an interesting episode topic.
Um, i'm excited for this.
Uh lindsay, have you ever been in a may december relationship?
Oh, that's a really intro.
First of all, when you asked that, i said what does that mean?
Yeah um, i've been close to it.
I i mean currently, you know, my spouse is seven and a half years younger than me.
That's not quite technically a May to December relationship, but getting there, getting there.
What about you, Michelle?
Have you ever been in a May to December relationship?
No, I haven't.
I've tended to just date people like within a couple of years.
Now, Dan is actually only 11 days older than I am.
Oh, okay.
So we're pretty much so, but it's always fun.
Those 11 days, I like to say how much younger I am and that I'm with an older man.
That is fun.
I love that.
We're going to get into this concept today, Michelle of May-December relationship, because a listener asked us a question.
But first, where are we going?
Where should our listeners go?
Okay, so check out episode 2137.
That was this Friday or next Friday, how to clarify calendar dates in English.
So that was a fun one, I remember.
I know that was an important episode, Michelle, because what are we trying to do?
We're going for connection. then we need to make plans to build human connections.
So it really matters to clarify this Friday, next Friday, this coming Friday.
Guys, go check out that episode.
You'll learn all of that.
And while you're at it, hit the follow button on All Ears English so that you don't miss a single episode.
Right, Michelle?
Definitely.
Please do that.
And also one more thing before we get into it.
At the end of the episode, we will be having a Spotify key podcast. poll.
So we like to interact with you guys.
Yes.
Ask questions.
So wait until the end of the episode and we will be introducing this poll.
We want to hear from you.
I love it.
Michelle, would you be so kind as to read the listener question from Vivian from Taiwan?
Let's do it.
So kind.
Yes.
Okay.
Hello, Lindsay and Michelle.
I'm Vivian from Taiwan.
Three years ago I started listening to All Ears English and since then I became a die-hard fan of yours.
I love that.
Thank you, Vivian.
Yes.
I want to ask a question.
There's a new movie called May December coming out.
At first, I was curious about how the title came into place.
After collecting some information, I found out that it has something to do with the May-December relationship.
This phrase is very new to me.
I wonder if the May-December relationship is well accepted in the U.S. or not.
Besides, could you please share more phrases like this?
Thanks in advance.
Best regards, Vivian.
Oh, interesting.
Okay.
Well, first of all, had you heard of this term before Vivian emailed us?
No.
Never.
And you know what?
Yeah.
So then apparently, I mean, this is quite a movie.
This is about a very large may december relationship.
I'm not going to get into it okay, but about about a, a problematic one okay, um right, but we're talking about um, just a regular may december relationship.
So This is a relationship with a wide age gap, which is one of our key words for today right, Lindsay?
Yeah, we're going to talk about how to use the word gap in different ways to describe differences, right?
That is what we're going to really come out of today's episode, plus a little pop culture around this movie and just kind of other talking about yeah, talking about relationships and what we know in the American culture.
Yeah.
So technically, what is the definition then of a May-December relationship?
Michelle um so I what what it seems to me is that it's um like 10 years or more where did I say that okay did we say that yeah yeah I think we googled it so 10 years or more just with a lar a relationship where the age gap is pretty significant a decade is pretty significant don't you think yeah I mean Lindsay do you know anyone who has a wide age gap in their relationship Yeah, I have two good friends, two good friends who have about a 24-year gap in their relationship.
And they've been together for, I think, five or six years now.
Quite a while.
They'll probably be together forever.
And so I've seen it work.
It absolutely works with them.
So it's just so personal.
It's so different, depending on the couple and the people in the relationship, the maturity of each person.
I mean, yeah, well, that's that's definitely true.
I mean, some people are a little more mature so they might get along in a relationship better with someone who is a little bit older.
So it really it really depends.
But yeah, for me, my grandparents I think they were maybe 13 years apart and an uncle also pretty more than 10 years.
So I definitely know people who have had these relationships, very good relationships.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
But, um, and also a lot of celebrity relationships have these age gaps.
I mean, I think that like, what was it?
Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.
That was a big one.
Are they still together?
I don't even know, but I can't keep up with some celebrity relations.
Oh no, no, no.
They're not together.
I had to think about it, but no, they're not.
Right.
Yeah.
Oh, but you know, one who is still together.
I only know this because I recently they popped up on something for me is Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart.
They've been together for a long time.
Oh, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas.
So there are ones that work.
Celine Dion had a wide age gap with her husband.
I love Celine Dion.
She's also a great singer as well.
I love that.
Okay.
So what else do we want to say about this?
What about within the US, Michelle?
What is the cultural thinking in American culture around this kind of May-December relationship?
Let's say anything with 10 years or more.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it depends on the age, like if it's too young.
I mean, certainly that has to be a legal relationship, right?
Obviously.
Yeah.
But I mean, I think now it's a little bit different at the age I am now.
But if I were to have like, let's say, I had a friend who was now going out with, like a friend who's my age, like mid 30s, like going out with a 22 year old um, i might be like that's a little bit interesting.
But again, it's not for me to judge.
I think that these can work.
I mean, do you think that in the us these relationships are frowned upon, or or what do you think?
I think the older each party is, the better Um it, because things tend to even out as we get older.
I just want to be clear to our listeners.
We are talking about in this scenario where both parties are over the age of 18.
Okay.
Just to be a hundred percent clear.
Yes guys, I'm going to be clear here.
Just to be explicit um, over the age of 18, and preferably over the age of 22 or 20 mid twenties.
Right.
We, so that's why I'm saying like legally, obviously, but then once know if the younger party in the relationship is like 40 and the older party is 50 let's say that's going to work better than if the younger party is 25 and the older party is 35. in my experience and my knowledge of just the way people mature i think true because i guess the 25 year old might have some more wild oats to see to us so what is that expression so your wild oats yeah well yeah so i think the more experience each person has it is probably better but listen like everybody's different i have a friend who and i mean her husband is i want to say i want to say he is at least 15 years older than her i mean they have a child they're you know they're yeah seem to have a really good marriage so um you can definitely have a strong uh relationship with uh may december relationship that's what we're calling it i mean Like I said, Dan and I are 11 days apart.
So for what?
It's not what makes our relationship, but sometimes it's kind of fun because we have all of the same references and we can, you know, renew all the same songs, all the same TV shows.
Yeah.
So that's kind of fun.
But in the same way, then we're not like learning, you know, there's like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah, that's interesting.
That's true.
It's the references thing.
It's the feeling of like we grew up at the same time.
The same things were happening.
That builds connection.
So obviously, if you don't have that, you have to have something much stronger to base your connection on.
And I just remembered, another one of my very close friends is also in, I think, a 15-year gap or age gap in his relationship.
So yeah, there definitely are people that I know, that are close to me, that have these big gaps, for whatever reason.
Um, and it works for them.
You know, in my friend's case he's got two kids and another one coming next year probably.
And just, it works.
But in terms of, like American culture Michelle, would you say broadly speaking accepted, not accepted.
What do we think?
Oh, if I have to choose one, is it accepted?
You know, I, I mean, I think it is like broadly.
I think it is.
Yeah.
I think we're pretty open minded around, you know, it depends on personality, your family.
But I think generally American culture accepts age gaps in relationships, I would say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You do sometimes see much older men with much younger like I'm thinking of Hugh Hefner.
Like you know, you do sometimes see that kind of a thing and you- You roll your eyes a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But who am I to say?
Listen, I don't know.
But you can have a strong relationship with an age gap.
Guys, we did find an article from Brides.com, which was do May-December relationships actually work?
This was by Gabrielle Savoy.
It was updated.
I don't know when it was actually published, but it was updated on May 1st, 2022.
Just a couple points.
I mean, there is a.
They spoke to a social worker, Rochelle Khanna, who said the best is a one to five year difference.
So, yeah, interesting.
But again, like that doesn't like I.
When I think of I guess because my grandparents had a May-December relationship and they had such a good marriage, I don't think much of it.
Do you know what I mean?
Totally, yeah.
I think it's too simple for a social worker or psychologist to say this is the right formula, because human beings are not simple.
There's so many things that could connect you to someone way beyond age, you know?
So it's just not that simple.
Yeah.
I thought of another word we could teach.
Okay.
An old soul.
Yes.
I actually had thought about that at the top of the episode.
Let's teach our listeners that real quick and then we'll take a break and then we'll come back and talk about a pole and maybe a few other vocabulary expressions.
Michelle, what do you think?
Sounds good.
Yeah.
So what's an old soul?
All right.
So this is good.
A lot of people will use this to talk about themselves, where they basically they're just more mature people for their age than people their age right.
Maybe they, in their mind, they feel like they were born maybe 10 years earlier or 20 years earlier, or 30 years earlier or 100 years.
I don't know.
They just don't necessarily feel like they belong in their era.
Does that make sense? so i yeah i have a friend who's she's like obsessed with everything 70s um music everything and i think she says that she feels like she was brought in like born in the wrong era do you ever feel that about yourself not really i i reminisce and i feel kind of nostalgic for the 80s and the 90s just because it feels like it was a simpler time without technology without facebook without all these things but i think a lot of us feel that way you know yeah so i don't i don't think i'm an old soul i think i'm about right i mean That's funny.
So, okay.
All right, Michelle, where should we go next for our listeners?
What can our listeners take away?
What should we teach our listeners?
We talked about that word gap.
What do we want our listeners to come away with?
Yes, exactly.
So other terms, we were talking about an age gap, right?
We threw that out a lot today.
So you could say oh like, there's a big age gap between my partner and I.
Yeah, there's a big age gap, and then another one that would tie in with this conversation guys, is a generational gap, or even i think you could say generation gap too would probably be fine.
So what does this mean?
Michelle this?
How is this different from age gap?
I think it's more about, like the.
It's not so much about the number age, it's more about the time.
Right yeah, between it's it's very close.
What do you think?
100 percent?
Uh, I think because generations are cultures, right?
Now we have the millennial generation is a very different culture from the Gen X generation.
I'm right in the middle.
I'm 81.
So I'm a cusper.
But we're very different generations with honestly kind of different values towards work, towards technology.
And then if one person is Gen X and one is millennial, you are going to have a generation gap, right?
You'll also have an age gap.
But what are you talking about age or generations?
Different conversation.
Yeah.
Right.
And then we have one more gap.
We're going to talk about a values gap.
What's a values gap?
So, I mean, this kind of goes along with generations.
Generations have different values.
It could be that simple.
So you may also you may have all three of these, but maybe you just want to talk about one of them.
You know, maybe the millennial generation values autonomy.
And I'm just making this up hypotheses here right, and maybe the gen x generation values stability.
Okay, these two aren't necessarily the same thing.
We can't always find both in a job, so there's a values gap.
All right, interesting stuff.
Yeah exactly, we talk about that a lot nowadays with the values gap between you know the, i guess, gen x and not gen x, and like after the, after the global health crisis and everything like that.
So and how work has changed.
So there's a lot there.
I think it's especially because now on Instagram, I'm always seeing all these memes coming up where the same actor, just an influencer, will imitate each generation.
Oh, really?
Yeah, like how millennial generation comes back from Christmas break, like the Monday morning after you know they're coming in with their big water bottle, and versus like how Gen X does it and how boomers do it.
And, you know, it's hilarious.
It's.
You know, we're obviously exaggerating these differences and having fun with it, but these are funny, funny memes.
So you have to send that to me.
That sounds like fun.
They're so funny.
Okay.
So where are we taking this today?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, before we go, well, I, I do have one last question.
Um, what about friendships?
Um, do you like, are most of your friends like, would you say, most of your friends are the same age as you, older or younger, or is that a whole mix?
Actually most of my friends are older and i have had a big age gaps in my friendship.
So i have a good friend who's in his 50s um, another good friend in his late 40s, another friend who was in my wedding, she's in her late 40s.
So actually my friends trend older.
Yeah yeah, quite a bit older, Interesting.
I would say I'm it's funny because I think my friends are right now either my age or older.
Yeah.
One of my I mean, some might just a year older, a couple months older or whatever.
I do have friends who are 15 years older than I am and like one of my best friends.
And but I don't really have too many younger friends.
But as I get older, I feel like my friends will be younger.
Well, it comes back to another clip i saw where the guy's like as soon as you hit 40, you realize you're always the oldest person in the room.
But before we go guys, we do have that spotify poll.
So uh, on spotify.
Please answer this.
Yes, we want to know.
Have you ever been in a May-December relationship?
Very interesting.
Let us know.
I'm curious what our listeners have to say.
I'm definitely also, please comment, you know, what is it like in your culture?
I mean, are they accepted?
Are they not accepted?
Definitely so much interesting stuff over here.
So definitely please comment and answer that poll.
Yeah, guys, let us know.
I'm excited.
Take that poll so we can know.
And we are definitely going to be announcing this poll somewhere in the next few months.
Back on All Ears English.
So good conversation topic for our listeners today.
Right, Michelle?
Start this conversation with a friend if you want.
Use these terms, generation gap, age gap, all very useful for connections.
Yes, this is this is fun.
It is definitely a fun conversation topic.
So go ahead and, you know, bring it up with someone.
See the differences and opinions and things like that.
Yeah, good stuff.
All right, Michelle, I'll talk to you very soon.
Have a good day.
All right.
Bye.
You too.
Bye.
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