“Sometimes, you forget that you like someone when you love them.” Kaia Gerber’s candid reflection on her dating history lands with the kind of quiet truth that makes you pause. At 24, the model and actress has already navigated a string of high-profile relationships-many with men significantly older than her-and she’s now peeling back the curtain on what those experiences really taught her.
Speaking on the *Therapuss* podcast with Jake Shane, Gerber said that for years, she fell into a pattern of molding herself to fit her partner’s world. “I used to be the opposite way where I would completely just change my personality, really, my values for someone,” she said. “I always dated people that were older than me, and so I was very willing to give up everything.” For her, this sacrifice felt like love. “I was like, ‘I can show you I love you by completely, giving up my life for you,’ which is actually not how you build respect and trust and is not good in the long run.”
That long run, she said, often was followed by a painful shift. As she started to bring a little bit more of her real self into the relationship, partners sometimes resisted. “Then you start to bring a little bit more of who you really are into the relationship. And they’re like, ‘No, I like that person before.’” While she said, “It’s my fault,” she added with a knowing pause, “Well, it’s also their fault.”
Her introspections mirror what relationship psychologists have long documented: in significant age-gap romances, the power dynamics can profoundly-often unconsciously-inform how each person shows up. In studies of mixed-age couples, gaps in life stage, social connections, and long-term priorities can exacerbate the impulse to adjust-usually falling more on the younger partner. These adjustments feel at first like compromise, but over time, they risk eroding self-identity.
But Gerber’s own dating history-Austin Butler (10 years older), Pete Davidson (7 years older), Jacob Elordi (4 years older)-echoes a common Hollywood pattern, while her current relationship with actor Lewis Pullman, 32, feels altogether different. The two were friends before romance sparked, a foundation she now treasures. “I really feel like if you have the opportunity to date a friend, do it because, it just is so much better,” she said. “I would never want to fight with my friends. I never want to be mad at my friends. I respect my friends. It just is a whole other thing.”
That mutual respect, experts say, can be game-changing. When couples start as friends, they often skip the performative phase of dating and get straight into authenticity. It’s a dynamic that can help balance out any age difference, making the relationship less about fitting into someone else’s world and more about building a shared one.
Other celebrities have navigated this terrain with their own views. Heidi Klum-who’s married to a man 16 years her junior-once said, “You have to just live a happy life without worrying too much about what people think, because worrying is only going to give you more wrinkles.” Sam Taylor-Johnson, married to Aaron Taylor-Johnson despite a 23-year gap, said, “After 14 years you just think, surely by now it doesn’t really matter?” And yet, as Kristin Cavallari learned when she dated someone 13 years younger, differences in stages of life can eventually become impossible to ignore: “I started to feel the age a bit just with life experience… Those are crucial years. Those are formative years.”
For Gerber, the lesson seems to be about balance-holding onto her individuality while still nurturing intimacy. Her relationship with Pullman, which she describes as “healing,” has even earned the approval of her famously close-knit family. Friends have dubbed him the group’s “boyfriend,” a sign of how seamlessly he’s integrated into her life. The takeaway is as much about self-worth as romance. Age gaps in relationships aren’t inherently doomed-many thrive-but as the psychological insights suggest, they work best when both partners are willing to meet in the middle, without one person erasing themselves in the process. Gerber’s journey from self-sacrifice to self-respect is a reminder that love should never require you to disappear.
