What might impetuous youth have in common with cranky old age?  Possibly consanguinity.  A grandfatherly, granddaughterly relationship sounds reasonable, given the differential in age say, between a 23-year-old woman and a 69-year old man.  Made all the more acute since the 23-year-old woman's actual grandmother is 68, and the 69-year-old man is not her grandfather but her husband.

(Canadian Senator, 69 years of age, celebrates one-year marriage to 23-year-old wife in court, as she is arraigned for threatening him on a flight from Ottawa to Saskatchewan, allegedly endangering the flight and behaving erratically, spouting a rant of violently rude epithets.)

In traditional societies where patriarchy prevails it was customary for marriages to be arranged through intra- and inter-family consultation.  A 'good' marriage was sought both for the male and the female.  In those same societies it wasn't entirely unusual for pre-pubescent children, sometimes infants, to be 'betrothed', through societal covenants, then joined in marriage when the girl became thirteen.

It was also not uncommon for very young girls to be given in marriage to considerably older men.  So that a thirteen-year-old girl would be transferred from her parents' care to the marriage bed of a man in his 60s.  The result would most often be a master-slave relationship, although it was considered to be a marriage of traditional values.

Very often arranged marriages worked out very well.  If and when the two partners turned out to be compatible and valued one another, the stranger might well turn out to be a valued life-long partner bringing happiness to both members.  When there was oppression and misery in the marriage it represented a human tragedy.

There is much to be said for 'love marriages', for two people of like background, age and values to come together in a combination of companionship and physical ardour.  When those marriages work out - and they do not always - the result can be a lifelong relationship of incomparable satisfaction.  And most often, a family of parents raising children in a supportive, loving environment.

Human nature is so complex and unexpected that what works for some does not for others. But the combination of an aged partner to a youthful one remains a formula for failure.  The generations are so disparate, the emphasis on high-value priorities unmatched, the experiences and expectations finding no meeting place.