Well, there's evidence from real psych studies that on average it's better for a relationship if the woman is younger than the man, and practical experience seems to bear that out in the real world. Most of my girlfriends over time have been ~2-5 years younger than me (talking mostly when I was in my 20's). My most recent girlfriend was roughly a 10 year gap (23 vs 33 at the start). That one was really borderline in the after-analysis.
We had enough in common that it worked very well for the first 6 months or so, but then we moved in together and things went slowly downhill, and looking back on the reasons why, it was mostly about the age difference. It wasn't necessarily raw maturity, just things like differences in where you're at in life: what goals you're after, what kind of news about the world interests you, what level of cynicism you have about certain things, what your priorities are, level of experience with relationship issues, etc.
All in all it lasted about 2 years although I'd say after the first 1.5 years the last bit was wasted time, just sticking together out of habit for a bit. Based on coming out of that experience, at 35 now, I think my new bar would be an absolute minimum of 28, but hopefully someone 30+.
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