Large gaps exist, but they are not the typical arrangement
The 7% result sits beside a much larger close-age group: more than a third of couples were within one year. A ten-year gap is visible in the population without being the norm.
The count comes from opposite-sex couples living together in the 2025 Current Population Survey ASEC comparison.
The direction of the gap is uneven
Census estimated 5.1 million couples where the male partner was at least ten years older and about 1.3 million where the female partner was at least ten years older.
Those counts describe co-residential couples. They do not include every non-cohabiting dating relationship and do not explain why a particular couple formed.
Prevalence cannot answer whether a gap works
A Census table does not measure satisfaction, power, finances, health, or relationship duration. It therefore cannot settle whether a given age difference is good or bad.
The useful conclusion is narrower: ten-year differences are a minority pattern, and gaps with an older male partner are more common in the measured opposite-sex couples.