Maturity Differences. What's Appropriate?

 I remember ending a friendship, and it was for (not all, but this was a big deal to me) what I'll be discussing in this post. 

   I think a question that commonly floats around is what's the good age gap for couples til it's weird? When dating, you will fall in love with their personality, them as a person, but sometimes their age is what is the determining factor. What's appropriate for your age? 

 I, as a person, had realized I had liked/ been attracted mostly to people a year younger than me, and I was older. My partner and I are a year and a month apart. 16 and 17 at the moment. My reasoning for dating people a year younger personally is the fact that I was held back a year in the 1st grade, so many years ago, and so I've been with their age group for a long time. Just made the most sense for me. Plus ngl I think my actual year if I hadn't been held back, is mean lol, but that's getting off track, point is everyone does have their reasons. 

However, there's a point it does get weird. I had this friend whom I'll call Rex. They had gotten out of a relationship (well, cheated on their past partner) with someone their age and cheated with a person who was 4 years younger than them.  As of today, I think there are 17 and 13 (the Rex person is going on 18, and their bf is going on 14). I'd hope you guys see how the age gap itself is quite concerning. When me and this Rex person stopped being friends was when they were freshly 16, and their partner was still 12. That's a big diffrence in maturity and surely not appropriate. They are at completely different spots in life at that moment. They online dated, and it wasn't a real-life relationship, but they met up in person (they lived states away from each other). I remember once the partner's sister called Rex a predator, and they had thought it was funny. The thing is also their relationship was also very well..toxic and inappropriate. They would buy them things and so on, which is normal in a relationship, but I think it was more of the G word, more than out of a love kinda way. We stopped being friends because of multiple things, but their relationship with this child really freaked me out, and I thought it was awful. Many of our other friends cut ties with them, too, and told them it was not okay. According to one of our mutruls, they had said their partner was younger than 12, and Rex lied to us to make it seem a bit better, and they were 11 (at the time, making it a 5-year age gap), but I'm saying four year as thats what Rex told me and same with the child, but I do believe our mutural. (BTW WE ALL WERE IRL FRIENDS SO IT WASN'T ONLINE JUST REX N THERE BF)

  4/5 age gaps don't seem awful when it comes to adult legal relationships, but I think it can be strange for an 18-year-old to be with a 26-30+ year old. However, the age gap stuff is far more of a big deal in preteens/teens' relationships. As for the friend Rex, I mean that person was still in MIDDLE SCHOOL. We all change and improve over time, obviously, but the stages of life are usually similar. For most middle schoolers/freshmen, like 13 and 14, most rebellious, 7th grade being the worst, etc, then as you get older, I think I've seen (and including myself and my experiences) calmed down over time and now focusing on things like our GPA, what we are doing after school, our firsts (kisses, and other things if yk what I mean). I mean, the two are worrying about completely different things. I mean that type of age gap is like a sibling age gap, and the older one is caring for them and such in a wholesome way, not romancing them. I strongly believe that if the grades don't touch, neither should you. If y'all are in separate parts of the school or buildings..DEFINITELY not.

What is your guys' opinion? I think the biggest gap for a couple that are in their teen years should be 2 years max, but still think it should only really be 1, but the biggest 2.  I think 3 and four is pushing it and is inappropriate.