We Say We’re “Concerned” About Age-Gap Couples. Are We Really?

While former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick may be used to coverage about his storied NFL career, it’s not football that’s making headlines these days. The newly minted UNC coach is scoring coverage for his relationship with girlfriend Jordon Hudson, who is 48 years his junior.

Belichick, 73, and Hudson, 24, reportedly met during a 2021 flight, but didn’t begin dating — or making headlines — until 2023. The couple’s age gap has sparked big feelings online, running the gamut from outright hatred to lighthearted fun, all of which have been heavily documented by national outlets, social media accounts, and Reddit threads.

No one understands this scrutiny more than influencer couple Emily Stomatuk and Michael Justin, who began sharing their lives online, only to face backlash over their 19-year age gap when their relationship went viral.

So, why are people, myself included, obsessed with relationships they aren’t even in?

I’m just going to say it: These relationships we observe go beyond internet fodder. It has become a Rorschach test, revealing more about our collective assumptions than about the couple themselves — and perhaps a reflection of the norms we’ve absorbed and the boundaries we quietly enforce.

John Im, a licensed therapist with Curry Psychology Group in Newport Beach, California, tells Scary Mommy that how we respond to age-gap relationships is actually quite revealing of how deeply we’ve internalized what feels right or wrong based on societal norms.

“Age-gap relationships force us to confront rules and norms we’ve all been taught about what is an appropriate relationship,” Im explains. “They bring into the spotlight something we typically keep private and constrained by social norms. There’s also something both compelling and triggering about seeing people challenge relationship norms so openly, especially when most of us have significant internalized constraints about who we’re supposed to choose.”

Im says that in addition to curiosity, there are often layers of judgment that include genuine concerns about power dynamics, gendered stereotypes (i.e., women with older men seem opportunistic, men with younger women seem predatory), and often unacknowledged resentment from people who’ve sacrificed their own desires to adhere to socially acceptable norms.

“When you’ve passed up relationships or constrained your romantic choices to maintain respectability, seeing others openly violate those norms without consequence can trigger a form of moral outrage rooted in personal cost,” Im explains. “We also tend to rationalize our discomfort in socially acceptable language, framing it as concern about exploitation or maturity, when it may partly reflect our own frustration at having adhered to rules these couples are disregarding. I can see how this reaction can certainly involve a protective instinct, but we need to also be honest about when that genuine concern crosses into denying someone’s self-determination.”

Im says that women in age-gap relationships often face compounded judgment, both for violating age norms and for making inappropriate choices as women.

“Part of psychological maturity is being willing to examine what’s actually driving our reactions, whether that be genuine ethical concern, cultural conditioning, or unacknowledged resentment about the personal cost to our socially normed choices,” he says.

So, does being judgmental about these kinds of relationships say more about us than the couple? Simply put: yes.

“The intensity of our reaction and judgment often reflects our own relationship to these norms, particularly if we’ve constrained our choices to maintain that respectability,” Im says. “When we judge public figures from a distance without accountability, it becomes a safe outlet for uncomfortable questions and thoughts about our own sacrifices.”

Im says that social psychology shows we’re far more likely to judge harshly when there’s psychological distance and no personal connection, and this tendency intensifies when we perceive someone as fundamentally different from ourselves. Whether we see them as different in appearance, background, beliefs, lifestyle, or yes, even in their choice of a partner, we are simply less likely to extend the same level of empathy or understanding to their circumstances.

Which begs the question: To what extent are our reactions to age-gap relationships shaped not just by the dynamics themselves, but by the psychological distance the media affords us with public figures? We're presented with intimate details of their lives, but are free to render judgments without ever having to look them in the eye.

“The reflection point ends up becoming whether we’re truly concerned about this specific couple’s well-being,” Im says,“or if they are an easy target for our displaced feelings about conformity and the costs we’ve had to pay.”