Leber: 33-year-old man, 18 year-old-girl, will it work?

You can't blame me for being concerned.

When a friend described his new lady friend as "kinda young," followed by the words "scandalousness" and "oh dear, this sounds bad," I was worried. Really worried. And when he finally revealed that the young woman is 18 years of age, I was momentarily relieved. Momentarily.

"At least you're just a dirty old man and not a pedophile," I informed him. It was nice to know I wouldn't have to send postcards to Prisoner No. 4675914.

But then we returned to the issue at hand. "It's not as bad as I was anticipating," I said, "but a teenager?"

What is my 33-year-old friend doing dating a college freshman? Sure, I believe him when he says she's a lovely person and more mature than he was at that age (that's not a hard sell), but 18? As I once overhead someone say of a similar circumstance, "she's just so ... barely legal."

I don't know, am I crazy? Look, I'll admit to being kind of ageist when it comes to love. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably among the more innocuous of the bad -ists: racist, sexist, homophobic - well, that's not an -ist, that's an -ic, but you get my meaning.

It seems like a really big age gap given the specific numbers in question. If he had told me he were involved with a woman of 47, I'd probably have congratulated him. There are some hot cougars out there. And I know people who have been part of May-December couples, happily so. So I do get the whole "age is just a number" thing.

Then again, there's the part of me that thinks there's something to be said for tackling the life stages together. Of course, I'm speaking as someone who's always been involved with people right around the same age as me, with one brief exception. So I have a certain bias. It's OK, I can admit it.

And it's very true that the older you both get, the more the age gap closes. I have found this to be the case in friendship: I have friends who are close in age to my parents, and friends who were my baby-sitting charges 15 years ago. I can imagine the same principle could apply to romance. Maybe? Oh, dear, I can't help but think everyone should at least be able to legally buy a beer. At least.

A friend once told me of a rule to consider when assessing appropriateness of age difference in a dating relationship: Half your age plus seven (and let's assume no one is violating any laws; I hear prison is rather unpleasant). So a 33-year-old should seek a mate no younger than 23.5. And a 62-year-old should max his search at 38, which I suppose fares well for all you silver foxes out there. It's not gospel, certainly, but it's not a bad rule of thumb.

Here's another not bad rule of thumb, by the way: When I post a query on Twitter asking people to share their thoughts on whether age matters in romance, an appropriate response is not "you seem old enough."

Yes, that actually happened.

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