Male/Female Relationship Age Difference Chart

Relationship Age Gap Chart from SIRM (Click image for a larger view)

“For guys, it’s half your age plus 7. That’s the standard rule; everyone knows that.”
-One of my female friends (sorry, I can’t remember who!)

After many years of research about 45 minutes, the Selvarajah Institute for Relationship Management* has released the above diagram depicting the “standard” relationship age range as well as other bonus relationship types.

Lower Limit: y = (1/2)x + 7 (Apparently a standard)
Upper Limit: y = 1.5x – 7 (I made this one up)

Where y is the female’s age and x is the male’s age. The dashed red line indicates the legal (> 18 years old) limit.

Safe Area

Denoted by the blue area, because blue is my favorite color. This is the area that falls within the established upper and lower limits. Note that as one gets older, the acceptable area becomes larger for both males and females. The good news is: as a male, when you’re 75 you can date a woman who’s between the ages of 45 and 106. This also means that if your relationship currently falls into one of the other areas, it’ll probably standardize itself in a few years, so there’s nothing to worry about!

Cougar Area

Denoted by the pink/purple shading, inspired by the cougars’ 80s lipstick (no, I’m not speaking from personal experience…*cough* *cough*). This area begins when women turn 33 and ends when men turn 33. One can’t really be considered a cougar preying on young men unless they’re 33+ and if the male is 33+, then he can’t really be considered prey. Sample cougar relationship: F-38 M-23

Sugar Daddy Area

Denoted by the money green shading, for obvious reasons. Like the cougar area, the sugar daddy area begins when men turn 33 and ends when women turn 33. Similar reasoning as the cougar range is used. Sample sugar daddy relationship: M-45 F-23

Grey Area

Denoted by the grey shading, because it’s…well…the grey area. This is the area where a relationship doesn’t quite fall into the cougar/sugar daddy/illegal range, but is not in the standard range either. Sample grey area relationships: M-27 F-19 , F-28 M-21. These grey area relationships tend to standardize over time.

Conclusion

Any relationship that falls outside a shaded area is either illegal or creepy. Sample illegal relationships: F-38 M-15, M-38 F-15; sample creepy relationships: F-58 M-19, M-65 F-23

I was inspired to create this chart a few weeks ago because it had been a long time since I had done colorful graphs in Excel and I was curious to see what 1/2x+7 would look like after my friend told me about the “standard” rule. Once I saw that was just a simple/boring line, I added the extra stuff. This was also an easy way for me to explain functions to my youngest sister…ok, ok, I had a little too much time on my hands! As always, I’m very interested in your thoughts/feedback. There are more “relationship” diagrams to come…where does your relationship fit into all this?

UPDATE: I received an interesting email about this theory

*No, this is not a real entity…yet. I would like to thank my coworker F for helping come up with the name SIRM. I also feel the need to mention that taking relationship advice from me is probably a really bad idea.