“If the grades don’t touch, we don’t touch.” That’s a common piece of wisdom I’ve heard from my older sister and many of my older friends. Most high schoolers have probably heard this before, but is this limit reasonable? At first, I thought it was a bit strict, but the more I think about it, the more I feel I agree with it. But where exactly does the hard cutoff lie, and are there exceptions?

I asked some friends from each grade level to weigh in on the issue. Most said they would only date someone separated from them by a year, but when pressed about larger differences, around half conceded that a two-year age gap could be acceptable. There are many factors at play in the high school dating scene, but perhaps the most important thing to note is that while grade is a good benchmark, it is not the same as age, and neither one equates to maturity.

A few hypothetical case studies may help to illustrate this point. Remember that people can be held back or accelerated by a year in school, so grade level does not tell the full story. For example, a senior and a sophomore may sound questionable, but suppose the senior had skipped a grade and is sixteen years old, and the sophomore’s birthday falls early in the school year. Is it still unacceptable for them to date since two grades separate them and therefore in different stages of life socially and academically, or is it reasonable given that they are both sixteen? And consider the other extreme; the sixteen-year-old senior probably should not date a senior who has been held back several times and could be nineteen years old within months.

Then there’s the matter of making a judgment based on age. It may seem safer to set boundaries based on age, but problems can still arise from that. A two-year age gap might not sound like a lot, but at our age, it is a noticeable distinction. One will enter high school while the other already has a driver’s license, and by the time the younger one has their license, the other will be ready to graduate and become a legal adult. Then comes the awkward period where only one of the pair is an adult, and they have to simply hope the relationship doesn’t go sour lest they be arrested for misconduct. However, a fourteen and sixteen-year-old could mean very different things in terms of actual age. The former could be nearing their next birthday while the latter has just had theirs. That would make them just over a year apart. On the flip side, though, the younger of the pair could be freshly fourteen while the other is coming up on a birthday, making them nearly three years older. That’s why these things are hard to judge without all of the details.

There are other things to consider, including gender. An older guy with a younger girl is more common than the reverse, but seems to be judged more harshly, which could be because ninety-nine percent of child predators are men (although that might not be extremely important in the case of smaller gaps). I can’t blame my female friends for wanting to date older guys, though, because biological females tend to mentally and emotionally develop faster than males. (Translation: Most boys our age are dumb.) I will caution them, however, to consider why these boys don’t want to or, perhaps more worryingly, cannot date people their own age. Personally, I wouldn’t date someone more than a grade or two calendar years away from me. Thinking about it, though, I don’t think I’d date someone two years or even one year younger than me. (It’s a classic “turn and shake hands with the person on your left” situation. If everyone wants to date someone older, who does that leave to date people younger than them?) It’s up to you who you date, but give it some thought before you commit.