Mind The (Age) Gap: Students’ Experience Dating Older

Names have been changed.

With all the designer brands, Californian accents, and random film shoots, St Andrews can sometimes feel a lot like Hollywood. The St Andrews dating scene, however, might make you think of Leonardo Dicaprio for very different reasons. Like the sexy star of a certain maritime blockbuster, some residents of this town have a predilection for dating those younger than them.

The practice is so prevalent, and so comment-worthy, that it’s been given a name: ‘sharking.’ 

Sharking feels like a taboo subject. When I was planning this article, I wasn’t sure if I could get anyone in an age-gap relationship to talk to me — but I wanted to try. I was curious: where do age-gappers think the line is? Can age-gapping be predatory, or is it just sustainable fishing? Arranging the interviews was nerve-wracking. What would I say if they asked me why I wanted to pry? I felt as intrusive as a postgrad at Opening Ball. 

David, my first interviewee, met his partner at a bar in St Andrews. He was an undergrad; she’s already graduated, worked for a couple of years, and is now back for a postgrad. She’s 27; David is about five years younger. “To me, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal,” David said. “[But] most of my friends were quite shocked […] The second you go outside that three, four [year] age range, all of a sudden it seems strange.”

Jeremy met his partner at a Christmas party. There’s a four-year gap between them: Jeremy, an undergrad, has just turned 21; his partner is a Master’s student. “I don’t notice a massive difference,” Jeremy said. “She can rent a car after her next birthday, that’s exciting.”

Unlike David, Jeremy didn’t think his friends found his relationship that odd. The fact that his friend group is already a mix of undergrads and postgrads might explain that; the fact that he didn’t meet her when he was a first-year probably helped too. “With freshers, people do raise an eyebrow — maybe rightfully so,” Jeremy said. 

Even if the age gap between a fresher and third-year is technically the same as between a second-year and a fourth-year, Jeremy still thought the former was far more taboo. Speaking with freshers tells you why that is, Jeremy told me, “It’s like, ‘You are a child’ — like they’re fresh out of school.”

Freshers dating their academic parents was especially “jarring,” Jeremy added. “It’s slightly unnerving, the sharking — which is sort of a bit, right? But then people actually do the bit.” He didn’t think dating within academic families was much of a thing, though. “People do get with their academic parents […] but I don’t think people date [them].” 

Unlike Jeremy, David thought inter-familial dating was definitely a thing. “It becomes a big issue if the academic parent sets out with the intention of turning their family into a proxy dating pool,” he said. If, however, academic parents spontaneously “clicked” with their children, David thought that was a different ball game: “I’ve seen it work.”

David and Jeremy’s advice for other age gappers? “I’d say, Don’t worry about it,” Jeremy told me. “Maybe not for the freshers, but most people are in a similar place […] Just have fun.” 

Besides the “standard” advice — “be as empathetic as possible; always understand where the other person’s coming from” — David thought other age-gappers needed to understand that their outlooks might sometimes differ to their partner’s. “As an undergraduate, I’m looking at changes to student loans […] whereas my partner is looking at things like changes to interest rates because they’re looking to try and buy a house.”

That difference of perspective can be valuable for David. When he stresses about graduate jobs, for instance, he finds it reassuring to talk to his partner, who’s been through the same process in “recent memory.” Because she’d come out of the job market unscathed, he listens when she tells him, “Don’t lose your head.” If that message had come from an undergrad, David told me, “I don’t think I would take it that seriously.”

The fact that his partner has spent time in the ‘real’ world too, living in proper cities and working full time, is a plus for David — he finds St Andrews very “insular”. That she didn’t grow up with social media quite as much as he did also helped. “It’s nice to break out of echo chambers [...] I’ll message them [when I’m] stuck in the library again today, and I’ll get photos back: ‘Oh, I grew this in the garden’, or, ‘I went for a nice walk here.’ And it’s nice to know that calm and peace awaits at the other side of your current exam season.”  

For his part, Jeremy didn’t notice a “massive” difference in how ‘online’ his partner was. “Though a few days ago,” he added, “I realised that the cry-laugh emojis that she was sending were unironic.” For him, the most noticeable perk to dating someone older was how they talked face-to-face. “We’re very good at communicating to each other […] if it was two people my age, I don’t know if I would do that as well.”

One of the reasons Jeremy and his partner worked so well, he thought, was because she was just a Master’s student. For Jeremy, in the same way freshers are basically children, PhD students are basically grownups. “There is a different level of maturity […] that’s like a job that they’re doing.” 

Jeremy’s partner is graduating from her Master’s and currently applying for a PhD. But will that make her more of a grown up? He thought for a moment, then revised his opinions on the adult-ness of doctorate students. Not all PhD students are impossible to relate to, he told me. “There are some that are in the pub all the time, in Aikman’s Bar and Bistro — where I reside — and they seem like very good fun and not capital-G grownups.”

Illustration: Sandra Palazuelos