While I don’t think it’s important to adhere to an arbitrary formula when considering age in a potential relationship (interestingly, when I met Kevin our age difference was exactly this ratio), I think it can be a good rule of thumb to help you consider if your relationship is appropriate.(A 37 year old dating a 25 year old is different from a 30 year old dating an 18 year old.) I often tell people that Kevin and I met at the perfect time.

The problems we were talking through — for example, what if someday our sex drives didn’t match up? We were just going to be more proactive about them.
The bigger question was whether or not God was drawing us together.
Also consider how you get along with the person’s friends, because these people will also be part of your life.
Johanna said she found it a bit awkward to connect with her boyfriend, Paul’s, friends, even though he was only three years younger. I felt removed from their age and current life stage,” she says.
I guess it was because I’d heard two or three stories of the woman being seven years older, so I’d sort of decided that was the outer limit of age difference acceptability. (And I would hit 31 a month before his next birthday.) Feeling defeated, I sat at the small wooden table in Starbucks, where I was meeting Kevin for the first time since my startling discovery. In case you’re wondering, I married that guy eight months later.
I don’t know why this one year made such a difference to me.
At one point, he even confided that it had been his dream to have a wife and family since he was a young teen.
I realized that Kevin was an “old soul,” and we were ready for the same things.
He explains that during his years at a Bible college, he gave his desire for a spouse over to the Lord and asked Him to determine who his wife would be.
After God prompted Travis to say the exact words Leah had been praying for, the answer seemed obvious.
“Things may be good now, but think 10 years down the road,” he says. ” Wooten’s own father was 17 years older than his mother.