According to the “half-your-age-plus-seven” rule, it’s considered socially acceptable to date anyone that is as young as half your age plus seven years. To simplify this, here’s the equation (plug-in your age for ‘x’):

(x÷2) + 7 = y

This rule shows only the lower limit of the “ideal” age range. For me it shows that the youngest dude I could date is 21 (ewww.) It doesn’t show the upper end of the range. My sister and I debated about how to go about finding the upper end. My solution is to use the above equation to solve for the “mystery age” by instead plugging in your age for y and solving for x. Here is the simplified equation for this:

x = 2 y – 14

Finding my upper limit gave me 42 (I didn’t make the rule.) That’s fine and dandy (despite the fact that I wouldn’t date someone who was 42.)

To further illustrate this, I created a graph. It’s linear, so it was a cinch. Instructions for the graph are as follows:
To find the lower limit: (your_age, lower_limit)
Your age is on the x-axis and your lucky date’s age is on the y-axis.
To find the upper limit: (upper_limit, lower_limit)
Your age is on the y-axis and your lucky date’s age is on the x-axis.

Alternatively, you could just do the math. :P

Image credit: Melanie Shebel

Image credit: Melanie Shebel

One interesting thing I found is that as you age, your range is wider. So there’s hope for all the singletons –>> as you get older the number of fish in the sea increase. (That’s actually not 100% accurate… hmm… okay, it’s more like getting a bonus increase on your trout stamp every year.) So maybe Mr. Right isn’t Mr. Right Now.