My partner is a week shy of being exactly 5 years older than me, I’m 35, she’s 40. Most of the time we’re basically the same person and that 5 year gap is basically nothing. We were both in pretty comparable stages in our lives when we got together ten years ago, there wasn’t an imbalanced power dynamic from her being older than me.

But sometimes something comes up where that gap falls in just the right spot that something foundational to her childhood I was just too young for and for a brief second she cringes real hard and is just like “God dammit you’re just a baby!”