Leonardo DiCaprio, who will be celebrating his 48th birthday in November, has been in a relationship with actress and model Camila Morrone for the past 4 years. While the couple kept their relationship private, people noticed that they started dating back in 2018 and they officially announced it in 2020. DiCaprio was 43 then and Morrone was just 21 and when the model turned 25 in June, people almost expected a break-up and it actually happened.
The reason why this break-up caused such a strong reaction on the internet is because people have long noticed that the actor never dates anyone over the age of 25. Actually, the median age of his girlfriends over the years is 22 and they just find it weird.
Let’s look at his dating history. At the beginning of his career, DiCaprio was linked with Bridget Hall and at the time they split, they both were still teenagers, although DiCaprio was 19 and Hall was 16 years old.
Then, DiCaprio had a relationship with model Naomi Campbell. This time, his girlfriend was older than him but they split when she was 24 and he was 20. At 22 years old, the actor ended his relationship with Kristen Zang who was the same age as him. DiCaprio then shortly dated Eva Herzigová and they broke up at the ages 23 and 24 respectively.
These relationships don't seem that suspicious because DiCaprio dated women who were still in his age group, but from there people started to notice that even though the actor was getting older, he was stuck on women who were younger than him and the oldest that he dated was 25.
In 2005, when DiCaprio was 30, he split from 24-year-old Gisele Bündchen who he dated for 5 years. He then got together with supermodel Bar Refaeli and dated her for 6 years as well, ending the relationship when the woman was 25. He briefly dated Blake Lively when she was 23 and had a 10-month-long relationship with 23-year-old Victoria’s Secret model Erin Heatherto.
At the age of 40, DiCaprio dated another model. She was 22-year-old Toni Garrn and the relationship lasted for about a year. In 2016, he had yet another few-months relationship with Kelly Rohrbach and the couple broke up when the actor was 41 and the model was 25.
During 2016 and 2017, he dated model Nina Agdal and they broke up in May, after she turned 25 years old in March. Before starting his relationship with Camila Morrone, DiCaprio was coupled with 23-year-old Lorena Rae even though the actor denied anything happening between them.
In the beginning, it was kind of a joke that the actor wouldn’t date women over 25 years old and would break up with them at the age when their brains are fully developed. But when it happened again with Morrone and when among all of his relationships, the oldest woman he dated was 25 years old, it just seems wrong how not only is there an age limit but also how the age gap is increasing.
There are a few theories of why it might be happening. It may be linked with his first scandal that he experienced and it happened when he was 25, so psychotherapist Noel McDermott says, “Leo may feel like the trauma of the event meant he should only date someone of the age he was when this happened.”
He may think that younger women are easier to manipulate and please with gifts. They are still impressionable and can be molded into something they wouldn’t become on their own. It’s easy to speculate but we may never know the true reason or it could be just coincidence but it’s hard not to notice a pattern.
Bored Panda reached out to relationship expert Jaime Bronstein, LCSW and she gave a couple of reasons why older man are stuck with dating younger women. She says that one of the reasons may be that "Some women of child-bearing age are enticing to men. Typically they are looked at as more vibrant, fun, and youthful. Even if the man already has children and is not planning on having children with a younger woman, the fact that she could have a child is attractive."
The relationship expert continues to explain, "A younger woman can help an older man to feel more youthful. Younger women tend to have less stress because they have had fewer life experiences and responsibilities; they lack maturity but are also less serious, which is attractive to some older men. Men find these qualities in younger women refreshing, as some older women with all of the beautiful qualities they have (wisdom because of more life experience) can tend to be more cynical and jaded because of their life experiences."
But these kinds of relationship with quite a wide age gap can become problematic because "Younger women's brains are different from older women's brains, which could potentially cause issues in the relationship. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for making the right and wrong decisions, isn't fully developed until the age of twenty-five. Issues can occur in Leonardo DiCaprio's dating and relationship life when there is a large age discrepancy between him and the girls he dates below the age of 25 because they literally are not biologically as mature as Leonardo. They are literally on two vastly different levels."
However, if both sides agree that they don't want a deep emotional connection, then there shouldn't be a problem, "A lot of men don't care about the emotional and psychological connection. They only want a physical connection; in that case, a May-September relationship can be long-lasting if both parties are ok with a surface-level relationship."
Jaime Bronstein mentions David Foster and Katharine McPhee and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones as examples because in her opinion, these "are two couples that are genuinely in love and share mutual respect and admiration for one another. Their relationships are deep and meaningful."
Although it may seem weird for some people, there are some advantages of having a bigger age difference in a couple and there are circumstances when a young woman actually wants to date an older man. Jaime Bronstein explains that one of those reasons may be financial, "Older men tend to be more financially stable and can care for and provide for a younger woman."
It could be a trauma response, "If a younger woman doesn't have a positive relationship with her father or has an absent father, she may look to date an older man subconsciously as a father figure."
Some young women prefer older men because they act more mature, "Women who are younger but happen to be emotionally and psychologically mature may seek out an older man for a more mature relationship versus dealing with men in their twenties who don't know how to have a relationship, and some don't know how to treat women with respect. Many younger women complain about how the guys in their twenties act more like boys than men, and they want a real man!"
We were curious to know if the relationship expert thinks that Leonardo DiCaprio dating women who are 25 or younger could be a coincidence and she believes that it isn't, "Leonardo DiCaprio dates younger women because he can. He gets to stay "forever young" and not grow up if the woman he dates is much younger than him!"
Jaime Bronstein doesn't like to judge other people for their relationship choices as after all she just want couples to be happy, but as a person who has a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in psychology, she shares her educated guess about the famous actor, "Leonardo DiCaprio might have the 'Peter Pan syndrome,' meaning he doesn't want to grow up. Although he biologically ages, he still looks at himself as a young man. There is nothing wrong with having a youthful, light-hearted, and young spirit. However, when it gets in the way of a man truly evolving and maturing in life, psychologically, that could present a problem because there is a discrepancy between the reality of their age and how they operate in life."
Do you find Leonardo DiCaprio dating younger women problematic? Do you think he is purposefully breaking up with women before they turn 26? Is a big age difference concerning in a couple in general? Let us know your opinions in the comments.
