Demi and Ashton are doing it. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Douglas have been doing it. Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thorton did it. Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake are almost doing it, but not quite, because their age difference is eight years instead of over fifteen, which is the gap required to qualify as a generation, which is the prerequisite to be considered an intergenerational romance.

The intergenerational pairing is not about dirty old men or the stuff of Jerry Springer. Rather, it is about the development of a romantic relationship or sex-partner relationship between two adults with a substantial age difference. In American society, a gap of even five years can turn heads, particularly when a woman is the older party, but this article is concerned with a more dramatic disparity, a true difference of generations. Can a relationship bridging a gap of over fifteen years work? What are the pressures placed on such a romance and are they worth braving in the face of generational, sexual, financial and especially social differences?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary characterizes a generation as a set of people born in the same period. This definition is linked to status; a generation is a group of individuals who are toddlers around the same time, students at the same time and who transition into adulthood within a vague, but assumably same period of time. Generation is also related to the production of offspring, and one generation is loosely distinguished from the next by the space between the birth of their parents and that of their own. In other words, an individual in an intergenerational relationship is dating someone old enough to be his or her parent. This definition is based on social construct: family, birth rate and social status. Thus, an intergenerational relationship by definition breaks the tacit rules of social hierarchy and opens discourses on gender, age, hierarchy and family.

Since its release in 1998, Viagra has been prescribed to approximately sixteen million men around the world. This oral medication promoting “a way for you both to get back a vital part of your relationship” is known from bar rooms to medical clinics as the drug of choice for less vigorous men looking to keep it up for younger partners. A peek at any magazine reveals either society pages sporting older men accessorized with youthful women who are not their daughters or, at the very least, an article mentioning America’s favorite age gap lovers Demi Moore (41) and Ashton Kutcher (26). The age gap relationship, in other words, is all over pop culture, much to the voyeuristic delight of mainstream America. The popularity of these images—the viagra popping older man, the botoxed older woman—is not promoted by positive reaction. Rather, it is a certain schadenfreude that keeps them in the magazines, on the reality television shows and dumped into spam emails. This inherently negative social reaction is perhaps the largest problem that real life intergenerational relationships face.

Trust, respect and attraction are the critical elements of any relationship, but social acceptance or rejection can affect even the most sound of unions. It would seem that the most powerful threat that age gap relationships face, beyond the threats faced by all relationships, is that people question their validity, insisting that it is youth fetish and ulterior motives on which they are established, not emotion and honest connection. Family, friends and strangers on the street can respond with stereotypical notions: she is in it for the money, he is in it for the sex, one is using the other, someone is the victim and the other is the perverse villain.

The dominant social response to an age gap relationship is a suspicious assumption that one or both of the partners is simply interested in sex. Like in any relationship, the sexual aspect of an intergenerational pairing can sometimes be secondary to emotional, or vice versa, but society is sometimes eager to pigeonhole it as only for the purpose of sexual gratification. Here are where the dirty old man and the sex hungry Mrs. Robinson become a part of the discourse.

Intergenerational sex and relationships are often confused with the notion that an individual attracted to a much younger person is trying to legally live a pedophilic fantasy. This confusion is another example in which the relationship is reduced to sexual stereotype. The intergenerational relationships considered here are not illegal, they are not harmful and they are not fetish, and yet they are still persecuted in the public eye. How can someone be “robbing the cradle" if the younger party has not rocked in one for over twenty years?

Internet sites offering personals and on-line support groups for hetero and homosexual pairings of generation gap couples do little to dispel these simplified sexual stereotypes. The pastel-schemed maydecember.net greets visitors with a grinning bespectacled gray-haired male in order to advertise “young and old relationships” with “years apart coming together.” The personals and chat rooms comprise a “community (providing) for those looking into relationships with ten years or more difference in ages.” Sites such as these seem to suggest a sexual preference bordering on fetish for individuals whose attractions lie only in significantly older or younger partners. The profiles accompanying grainy photographs of young men seeking old ladies and senior citizens seeking eighteen to twenty-five year old girls are very specific about their age interests. It seems good to know what one wants, but these web sites do not offer an accurate representation of intergenerational parings. Not all individuals in these relationships date exclusively beyond the age gap, but rather find themselves in a relationship where the difference in years is not a prerequisite but a coincidental reality.

Aside from social attitudes, some practical problems may face any intergenerational love affair. Health and sexual stamina are obvious issues that arise sooner or later. With time comes old age, and a partner in his or her seventies, for example, may or may not have the energy or the health to be a satisfying partner for a forty-five year old. In addition, whether one goes by chronological age or emotional age, over fifteen years is a significant span of time to have lived before one’s partner was even born. It may or may not be difficult to find common friends or interests. Of course, there stands the question of how well these relationships can age. At twenty-five, the younger member may not be concerned with the old American settle-down-and-have-a-family dream, but that disinterest may fade in the face of a partner, nearing fifty, who may not be interested, in hiking up the child bearing path, or may have already been down that road.

Not everyone sees babies in their future, and all relationships involve a share of compromise in terms of life decisions, but some may argue that committing one’s youth to an older partner is certain way of limiting options for family. While in no way does the goal of a sexual relationship need to be driven by desires to bear children for it to be valid and worthwhile, concerns over reproductive issues could be voiced, if not by one of the partners, than by many critics of the age-gap relationship.

Everybody loves a boy meets girl romance story, but at what point when boy meets older, mature woman do heads, or at least eyes, begin to roll? Heterosexual relationships in which the man is older than the woman are more common than the inverse and therefore more accepted, but this dynamic may change in a post-women’s movement world. Susan Winter and Felicia Brings, career motivational speakers and co-authors of Older Women, Younger Men: New Options for Love and Romance claim that negative reactions to pairings between older women and younger men are a result of the anxiety caused by seeing women making decisions based not on “survival needs” but their own desires. New technology in anti-aging beauty products and reproductive science, insist the authors, have managed to eliminate almost all age-related dating boundaries except the challenge put forth by social attitudes.

With the seeming increase in age gap pairings, they may be becoming seen as somewhat of a trend. Mainstream magazines such as Cosmopolitan have begun to address these pairings with openness and advocacy (“The Dirt on Dating a Younger Guy,” May 2004), applauding, albeit with a cautionary tone, the “more and more women...giving younger studs a chance.” Even Oprah is interested in the May-December romance. While these pairings may not yet be viewed as fully acceptable, they have become socially safer for a woman to pursue. Career minded women are partnering later in life and are not forced into relationships by a need for financial support. They are interested in having children later and can support themselves independently. It would seem that it is no small wonder that younger men are attracted to these powerful, confident women who look good and know what they want.

Truly, age has become less of an issue in matters of careers, looks, and health, so it seems that romance should be able to follow. Age is not always measured in years, and two people can still offer the same maturity, interests and goals despite a difference in birth dates. It is hard to argue against attraction and, as Susan Winter and Felicia Brings insist, it is foolish to limit one’s options based on age differences.

Unfortunately, any relationship that stands too far outside the conventional norm risks social criticism, but romance and sex are challenges regardless of the elements that are brought to the table. Be it background, race, class, personal issues or, in this case, age, couples must work to make their relationships, no matter what form, functional and safe. It seems pointless and small to criticize anyone who can establish a relationship based not on social standards or power structures, but on passion, connection and vibrancy. Reasons for and reactions to intergenerational pairings differ, but perhaps when all is said and done, love (and sex) conquers all, even age.