What does Islam say about the ideal age difference between a husband and wife?
Question: People pay a lot of attention to the difference in age between a husband and a wife. Would you please show me the recommended amount of this difference according to Islam and what the other qualities are that must be paid attention to before the agreement of marriage?
The answer: We have not found any verdict in Islam concerning this matter. When we study the lives of the leaders of Islam, we find that the difference in the ages of the spouses is in different extents. Sometimes a wife is older and sometimes a husband is older. Lady Khadija, the mother of Lady Fatima (a.s.), was married to the Prophet (S) while she was fifteen years older than him, whereas Imam Ali (a.s.) was married to Lady Fatima (a.s.) while he was ten years older than her.
The same is said about the other faithful men and women in the history of Islam. We have not read that they paid much attention, in their marriages, to the matter of age, but rather, they paid attention to other important qualities (of the other spouse) according to the following order:
1. religiousness and faith
2. good morals
3. good family
These are the qualities according to which the believers are considered equivalent to each other. The Prophet (S) says, ‘The believers are equivalent to each other.13’
From these three main qualities, the following qualities ramify:
1. intelligence, knowledge, and social manners
2. intellectual and cultural equivalence
3. physical health and freedom from hereditary diseases
4. sufficient income to at least cover the necessary expenses
5. acceptable outward beauty but not at the expense of moral beauty
6. proportionality of bodies as customary
It is customary nowadays that spouses should be nearer in age according to the idea that cultural equivalence results from studying in the modern schools, which means that both are somehow close in age. Equivalence is not achieved when a young woman is a graduate of a secondary school while the young man has been a graduate of a university for ten years, which makes the difference in age between them over seventeen years. Therefore, there is no cultural and intellectual equivalence and accordingly marriage with this extent of difference in ages is not advisable.
Custom has another conception in this field that differences in age form a ground for marital disagreements because interests and hobbies of different generations always cause clashes.
A third conception says that differences in age make one of the spouses maturer than the other due to experiences and this is another cause that leads to conflicts in opinions and situations, which makes spouses disagree with each other.
Another traditional conception is that the difference in age means that the older spouse may die long before the other, and especially if the wife is still young, she will become a widow after the death of her husband and may remain alone.
We agree with these four customary conceptions, but not absolutely. There are many exceptional cases in which the marital life is of utmost happiness and pleasure in spite of the age difference between the spouses.
What is important in equivalence is the educational equivalence and mental maturity, which leads to good behavior, kindness, humbleness, and rapport.
If the main qualities we have mentioned are found in a husband and a wife, they will live happily; otherwise, there will be no happiness even if the spouses are of the same age.