Introduction

Abstract

When I first began this research in 2007 I was interested in investigating romantic couplings. Confronted by the huge bulk of research on these relationships, however, I decided to focus on a specific sort of romantic union: that characterised by age differences. While some qualitative research had been conducted on homosexual, age-dissimilar couplings at the time (Leahy 2002; Yuill 2004), virtually nothing had been published on heterosexual relationships (Leahy 1994). Accordingly, I decided to focus on male-female relations.