
The above comment is typical. As it is, men between 22 and 30—nearly two-thirds of the male dating pool—focus almost exclusively on women younger than themselves. I'll be investigating this phenomenon today, with gusto and charts. Ultimately, I'll argue that they would be well-served to expand their search upwards, to women in their thirties and forties.
Because it has been a successful way to introduce previous posts, I wanted to put real faces on this demographic before I delve into a bunch of numbers. Pictured below are some single users in their mid-thirties or early forties, taken from the first couple pages of my own local match search. Nothing I'll talk about today pertains necessarily to any one of them, but I wanted to put forward some people to go with the statistical discussion.
Dating Preferences & Age
It's no secret that dating changes radically as you get older. As you can see below, the number of online daters peaks at 24, drops sharply at around 30, and then gradually tapers off, as the remaining singletons either find mates or withdraw themselves from contention:

The bar chart here shows how the woman to man ratio changes over time. As you can see, it's basically flat. In a better world, this would imply that older people don't necessarily have a harder time finding decent mates than younger ones, as the composition of the dating pool holds relatively steady from age to age. Put another way: a 45 year-old woman shouldn't in theory have a harder time finding a date than a 20 year-old, because the female-to-male ratios at those ages are equal (roughly 11:9).
Of course, we all know that 45 year-olds do have a much harder time, because the male fixation on youth distorts the dating pool. Look at how men have set their age preferences on OkCupid:

As you can see, a man, as he gets older, searches for relatively younger and younger women. Meanwhile his upper acceptable limit hovers only a token amount above his own age. a man, as he gets older, searches for relatively younger and younger womenThe median 31 year-old guy, for example, sets his allowable match age range from 22 to 35—nine years younger, but only four years older, than himself. This skewed mindset worsens with age; the median 42 year-old will accept a woman up to fifteen years younger, but no more than three years older.
A man's bias toward younger women becomes even more evident when we overlay his stated preferences with his actual messaging habits.
This next graph is what's called a heat map. It shows messaging concentrations by age; for each vertical age bracket, the greenest areas have the most messages, the reddest have the fewest, and the yellow have the average.

As you can see, men tend to focus on the youngest women in their already skewed preference pool, and, what's more, they spend athe median 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging teenage girls as he does women his own age significant amount of energy pursuing women even younger than their stated minimum. No matter what he's telling himself on his setting page, a 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging 18 and 19 year-olds as he does women his own age. On the other hand, women only a few years older are largely neglected.
So you can see how differently women think about dating and age, here are the corresponding charts for them:

Except in their early to mid-twenties, when they apparently want nothing to do with younger guys (i.e. guys who are still in school?), women show an admirable openness to both reasonably younger and reasonably older men. Notice also how a woman's actual messaging activity, shown in the heat map below, is roughly centered on her own age (as illustrated by the dotted "age parity" line).

This second chart also contains something very peculiar that we didn't see at all in men. Notice the vertical stripes at ages 20 and 29. These color discontinuities indicate dramatic changes in a woman's dating mentality: when a women turns 20 she decides it's okay to message significantly older men (i.e. the upper reaches of the chart suddenly become less red). At 29, a woman becomes even more open to older men and, in addition, stops writing the youngest ones. The typical 28 year-old women sends a small but significant number of messages to men too young to drink. The typical 29 year-old sends practically none.
In any event, here's what happens when we synthesize all the above data. By tallying the number of people interested in each age group and gender, we can get a dynamic picture of the dating pools. I've made a little javascript widget to illustrate what's going on.
a by-age distribution of men who would date an 18 year-old woman


I was tempted to title this The Tides Of Longing. Move the slider to the right, toward middle age, and you can watch the pool of dating possibilities gather, crest, then drain away. Metaphors aside, we can evaluate the potential matches for a given age/gender by summing the area under the curve (AP Calculus, ftw!) I made these calculations in the chart below, and we can see that women have more pursuers than men until age 26, but thereafter a man can expect many more potential dates than a woman of the same age. At the graph's outer edge, at age 48, men are nearly twice as sought-after as women. Here's the data:

A woman's desirability peaks at 21, which, ironically enough is the age that men just begin their "prime," i.e. become more desirable than average. Following that dotted line out, statistically speaking, a woman's desirability
peaks at 21you can see that a woman of 31 is already "past her prime," while a man doesn't become so until 36. As we mentioned above, after age 26, a man has more potential matches than his female counterparts, which is a drastic reversal of the proportion in young adulthood, when women are much more sought-after. Because men's dating preferences skew so young, and women's are age-equitable, men peak later, and have a longer plateau of desirability, than women.
So that's the lay of the land, and now I'd like to say why I think it could be different. In the next three sections of this post, I will show that an older woman's attitudes, both about sex and life, are just as good if not better than her younger counterparts', and hopefully I'll convince more guys to venture north of their current age-limits:

Sex
Articles touting a woman's mid-thirties "sexual peak" have stalked the pages of Cosmo since time immemorial, but these articles typically cite clinical testosterone/estrogen/progesterone studies and attempt to make the leap to "sexual peak" from there—if they bother to cite any data at all. I, on the other hand, can make my claim by looking at a woman's stated preferences:



This is a nationwide "age progression" of American women, a normalized heat map similar to the ones you saw above, but with an added geographical component. By moving the slider you can watch how attitudes become more sex-positive as the population gets older.
This older-women-are-more-sexual pattern repeats across almost every proposition. Here are a few more data sets just as sparklines (computed, like the map above, for our sample set of 100,000 women). Again, these are just a handful of examples; whether we ask about bondage or kissing, women are the most sexual in their thirties.
Researching this post, I also came upon an interesting complementary pair of graphs illustrating sexual dominance preferences. Younger men want to be dominated. Older women are generally interested in doing just that.

In addition their lack of physical inhibitions, older women have much healthier attitudes in two other areas of sexual concern: STD testing and contraception.






Attitude
There are two operative stereotypes of older single women: the sad-sack (à la Bridget Jones) and the "cougar" (à la Samantha from Sex In The City) and both, like all stereotypes, are reductionist and stupid and I've tried to avoid them. I hesitated beginning my case for older women with something about their sexuality, like I did in Exhibit A, because that territory borders right on cougar country. But the evidence there was too compelling to ignore.
On the other hand, I found no basis whatsoever for Ms. Zellweger's version of the thirty-something single woman. The data indicate that they are in fact way better adjusted than their younger counterparts. For example:


It might be hard to eyeball, because the bottom graph isn't steeply sloped, but women in their thirties are 4.0% more likely to be happy than their younger counterparts. As anyone who's been in a relationship with someone who lacks them can attest, self-sufficiency and confidence are awesome qualities in a match.
The graph below shows a similar trend, until a poignant drop at the end.

Either something very sad happens to a woman at 40, or something incredibly awesome happens at 39. Hard to tell. And I also want to say, guys, that just because a woman is older, she's not necessarily on the fast-track to marriage:

Looks
The final thing I want to address is looks, because I think that is guys' most fundamental worry about dating someone older. There's no doubt that younger people are are more physically attractive—indeed in many ways beauty and youth are inextricable. That's why most of the models you see in magazines are teenagers, and turn-back-the-clock surgeries like face-lifts are so popular. There's no getting around this fact, and I don't want to hide it:

But, combing through the data, I intuitively felt like this graph didn't tell the whole story. So I dug deeper, and found something interesting. If you separate out the absolute best-looking women, almost all of whom are very young, and also remove the people you won't realistically want to date (the worst-looking women), you find that everyone else's attractiveness doesn't change much with age:

In other words, given that nobody is drop-dead gorgeous or drop-dead hideous, your average 25 year-old is roughly as good-looking as your average 35 year-old. for the vast majority of men, dating the absolute hottest girls isn't realisticYes, throwing out the prettiest of the pretty young things is a clumsy handicap to put on an age-by-age comparison. But at the same time, for the vast majority of men, the best-looking women are simply out of reach, so it's actually accurate to exclude them as possibilities. In fact, unrealistic male expectations inspired this article, so we want to do everything we can to correct for them.
Many of you are probably scoffing at the idea that many 35 year-olds are as attractive as many 25 year-olds, but there are social factors at work that you might not consider as you go through life making judgments. Most importantly: nationwide, thirtysomethings are much more likely to be married and therefore much more likely to have stopped optimizing their attractiveness. So the typical 35 year-old woman you see out in the world isn't representative of the single 35 year-olds who are still dating and looking good.
Anyhow, that just about concludes my case. Ultimately, you be the judge. Here are single women in their mid-twenties and women in their mid-thirties, all in the 70th percentile of attractiveness, side by side. The older women are on the left, in case you can't tell.






Of course, you could also do your own search and see for yourself. Thanks for reading.
Excuse me… but where are the stats for gay and lesbian matches?
This is actually rather offensive on one of the supposedly most lgbt friendly dating sites out there to be forgotten once again.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m 48 and I simply get bombarded with messages from younger men on a variety of different single dating websites. I find it absolutely shocking the number of men in their 30s and 20s who ask me out on dates. Myself, I rarely ever initiate messages to men, but when I do I message men in their 40s. The surprising thing is they rarely respond, but I’m flooded with messages from young men. Since the young men are the ones pursuing me, I’m dating young men 2-3 nights a week and I’m having a great time! So for some of the 40 something women out there all this business about not getting young men’s unsolicited attention is completely ludicrous.
To me, you mangled your whole argument by not including data for women over 40. Hello!
I can’t stand most women my age, because of their levels of immaturity. I like older women for this reason and that I do find them more sexually attractive. However, I agree with the graphs and get the feeling that 23 is too young for most women – that’s unfortunate.
I am a 33-year-old woman and I LOVE your article! Thank you for all this wonderful research! I hope all men read it
from: MandyTheGator on OKCupid
Whoa! Nice work! Very interesting findings and results, thanks for sharing.
To start things off, I’m a bit confused as to what the “zone of greatness” is supposed to indicate. Are these women I should be messaging because they are potential long term partners (e.g. eventually a wife) or because they are women who are looking for a young guy to just meet and have a good time with? I think you would be hard pressed to say that a guy in his mid-twenties (such as myself) should be messaging women who are in their mid-to-late thirties as serious potential candidates as long term partners. Granted you do see some relationships form and do quite well, but one thing I have noticed is that most of the women that I have met that are only a couple years (e.g. two to three) old than me tend to find it a bit “weird” to be dating a “younger guy” so that leads me to the obvious question as to what the reply rate is when guys message women who are more than, say, five years older than themselves.
Also, when it comes to men, I would be very curious to see if there is a correlation between the age of a man, if they have had children or not, and the average age of women that they message. The reasoning behind this should be fairly obvious as I have a feeling that men tend to look for younger women as they get older, if they don’t have kids, because we know that older women are less likely to bare healthy children.
In fact if you factor in the average age of menopause being somewhere around 51 years old and the range between somewhere between 40 and 55 then some of the trends with what you are seeing from men in their 40’s makes sense as it could be men that are consciously or subconsciously hedging their bets by trying to meet women that are a bit younger in hopes that they could still have children together.
Finally, you failed to touch on another reason why men might be messaging women that younger and you present the data that allows for the possibility. Namely, men are messaging women that are younger simply because they know that younger women tend to be open to the idea of a relationship with a man that is a couple years older than herself. In the graph for both the men and women the average age of the oldest match tends to say fairly constant to the given gender (e.g. men tend to allow for 4-5 years older and women tend to allow for 6-7 years older) and while it is hard to tell from the messaging sending graph. It does appear to indicate that men seem to be aware of this and are sending their messages to women that are in that range.
It’s a bit of a step drawing conclusions about the sexual and relationship preferences of the population of women as a whole based on those that joined OKCupid. While the data may show that older women have less hangups about sexuality, or desire higher levels of sexual activity, this is just older women on OKCupid compared to younger women on the site. Older women in the population as a whole might be more prudish, the data here has nothing to say either way.
Older women date younger women because they want to have kids, but not right away. I know because I have actually asked them.
Oops, I meant to say:
Older men date younger women because they want to have kids, but not right away. I know because I have answered ads describing me except for the age and asked men why they have that cutoff and that’s what they told me.
I don’t want kids so it’s fine with me. But people are afraid to talk about it.
I love how all these older guys are quite happy to consider themselves biologically healthy enough to have a kid. It ain’t just the woman here folks… Guys, you too age and contribute to the risk of having a disabled kid.
Go after someone your own age and adopt. Much safer.
If you ever need any help with the data or feel like teaching someone who loves your work. There is just about nothing I find more fascinating than love and statistics .
Email me.
Thanks.
Hmm, seems like there’s a lot of comments here from people who don’t like the conclusion you got to, so they’ve made vague allegations that the statistics are misleading, or that they can give any answer you want. Here, let’s try an example; I flipped a coin and it came up heads 53 times, and tails 47 times. Now try and use it to prove “whatever you want”. Example: use it to prove that the Earth is flat.
While it’s true that one can mislead in some cases by selectively using statistics (c.f. How to Lie with Statistics) none of these really set off my BS meter. Sure, if this were a scientific blog, you might want to dump the raw data, so that people could examine it in detail, but the critics don’t seem to want to put any effort into it.
I think in this case they simply didn’t like the conclusions, so they attack the source – I count at least one ad hominem above – but in this case, none of the complaints above actually made any specific accusations – they just made vague assertions about statistics being meaningless.
Sorry, most of the natural sciences work on empiricism now. If statistics weren’t meaningful, or if you could draw any conclusion you wanted from them, there would be no way to compare the accuracy or predictive power of two different theories describing natural phenomena – measurements of which are inherently imperfect. So, by definition, there would be no way to improve at any of those tasks. In other words; any change would be by chance only, and just as likely to lead to regress. And despite that handicap, things manage to keep getting smaller, faster, and cheaper.
It’s worth noting that prior to the rise of empiricism, things were decided on the basis of a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation without testing against the real world. And if you think about it, that’s exactly the problem I described earlier; change was just as likely to cause regress as progress. Ancient Greeks believed that the stars and planets were on crystal spheres that rotated around the Earth, because it appealed to intuition and a sense of order.
Seriously folks, if you’re going to attack a well-argued point of view, at least come up with some substance in your criticism. Example: state that the mean and standard deviation don’t describe some particular distribution because it’s not normal. Or learn enough about the subject to know what that means.
Well, here are some of your own statistics that illustrate why the “more men should pursue older women” argument is wrong. I’m a man in my mid-20s. As we can see from your graph above, women in their mid-20s to early-30s are almost completely unwilling to date younger men. You say this is “more equitable”? No. According to your graphs, women’s age preferences are just skewed upward slightly, while men’s are skewed downward slightly. We can clearly see that men are open to a much greater range of ages. I would actually call this more equitable.
You don’t need to sell me on the desirability of older women. As a 26-year-old, I often meet women in the 28 to 32 range who are very desirable, pursue them, and am rejected because I’m “too young.” Conversely, I’m often being pursued by relatively undesirable 22- to 24-year-olds who are tripping over themselves to jump in bed with me.
For the women who are trying to convince themselves they look better in their 30s, 40s, or even their 50s than they did in their 20s, no, you don’t. The exceptions are women who have lost a bunch of weight, gotten plastic surgery, or who now spend a lot more time and/or do a better job of dolling themselves up when they go out (better presentation).
For the rest of the women reading this, the delusion has to stop. Those wrinkles, sagging boobs, less supple skin, etc. actually puts a huge dent in your overall attractiveness. Accept it and move on.
This is absolutely what one would expect. No surprises. What he fails to mention is that a woman enters her peak fertility 15 years before her peak sexuality, and many men want to have children. Our genes are programmed to tell us that women are ready to have children at age 15, and 25 is “past prime” from a biological perspective. Only in the last 60 years have women chosen to have their first child later than 25, while men can have children well into their 70s.
My opinion is that your conclusions are far too biased and limited to Western culture, not to mention that I don’t believe your sample size is representative of Western culture as a whole.
I wonder if the younger generation of women are becoming more prudish or if hormones are just firing off at a later date. Too bad you can’t pull data from 30-40 years ago.
I think it has something to do with the hormones, though, because younger women in the SF bay area, in the opposite end of the bible belt spectrum, refused to answer the question of how often they’d ideally have sex as if they were embarrassed by their lack of a libido.
this is a really fascinating post. I do find that there’s this point, which the graph seems to pinpoint as in their early 20s, where all women seem to care about is how aggressive/assertive the guy is and that’s all that really matters. Probably because they lack confidence to do things themselves. They could be nice, they could be jerks, but that’s all secondary to “older than me, louder than me, more aggressive than me, has more interests and friends than me” etc etc.
Once you start looking at women 30 and above, it becomes a lot more about your demeanor, being nice, respectful, etc etc.
I’m a mid-twenties guy, and as far as I am concerned, I have always found older women to be attractive. I am currently 27 and the age range I find myself attracted to the most is the 35-45 range. Women in their 30s have always been more attractive to me than women younger than myself.
Christian,
I have to assume that your article/blog is making blanket statements and generalities
based on the statistics you used to postulate your theory….my experience has been almost exclusively the opposite.
I am 56 and have been ‘hit’ on so much by younger and much, much younger men (20’s and 30’s) that it has led me to wonder if there is an OKC “Men’s room” and someone wrote my name on the wall with “For a Good Time IM her!” included underneath!
It’s like freaking ‘Open Season”!
One, more gentlemanly 48 year old taught me the word “sexting”. It’s when a guy IM’s you and the flow of talk gets steadily more and more sexual to the point that you don’t even have to wonder what’s going on, on their side of the computer.
‘Guys! This boring! Get a virtual blow-up doll and a room, please”.
It is also a form of sex without mutual consent.
My photos are not lewd nor insinuating any promise and my profile was written to discourage anything but serious inquiry…however friendly it may sound.
has this been anyone else’s experience?
me, myself, have always liked older women and i know alot of men around my age do so i dont know where your getting this information and btw im only 22 and i message older women all the time as well as younger ones so for me its pretty much who i think i can get along with
I think older women can be FAR more sexy and interesting than most women my age and younger. If only the older ladies were up for dating me. Most I find on OKC are pretty ageist and want nothing to do with me.
i like older women
I found this data to be interesting. I’m 37, It’s reassuring that women my age like to take more control in sex, like it more often and put less value on external looks. Gives a guy like me hope :))
Dear Friends,
First off, I absolutely LOVE your INTERACTIVE graphs and hope they are used in the teaching of mathematics.
Secondly, a friend of mine who is involved in the Catholic (but open to all faiths) organization called “Engaged Encounter,” tells me that the average woman gets engaged at age 20 (man, 22) and marry 5 years later at ages 25 (female) and 27 (male)–the average engagement lasting 5 years.
So, I surmise that there is a “window of opportunity,” between ages 15 through 25, for serious involvement leading to marriage. Again, I am assuming the couple meets and begins dating in High School or College, and they marry when they have graduated and have stable employment.
Again, all of this is anecdotal, and my numbers have come from my friend, and I do not know if this is published information from “Engaged Encounter.”
Interestingly, “Engaged Encounter,” does not admit to having put a dent in the divorce rate . . . their graduates divorce at the same rate as non-“Engaged Encounter” graduates (the general public).
Keep up the great work, OKCupid, and I appreciate the dialogue from everyone.
Aside from the data, I really found the men’s resonses fascinating…
As a 31 year old woman who hasn’t had much dating experience, I routinely get IMs and messages from men that are 7-10 years younger than me. While as first I found this odd, when I asked several of them why they were messaging a woman “so much older” than them, the answer has been quite consistent. They are looking for the maturity which so often comes with age.
Thank you to all of the “younger” men who’ve read this article and commented. It’s helpful for me to be able to decipher this phenomenon!
And boys, don’t give up when at first you don’t succeed with older women…just give us time to get used to the idea!
This entire article is backwards. Guys my age (28) don’t message older women as much not because we’re not interested – it’s because we know they aren’t.
Generally speaking – women in their late thirties have no interest in guys a decade younger (except if they have a very stable very well paying career, which most of us don’t). I know this from real life, not from the internet. Sad but true!
The whole basis for the mismatched preferences appears to be the number of messages men send to women of various ages.
It seems more important to note that the PREFERENCES of men and women are consistent. Men like women who are younger, and women like men who are older.
There is not reason why someone shouldn’t send a bunch of first-shot messages to whomever they find most attractive, even if they are less likely to pay off, as long as the rest of the range is not ignored. And it seems like it is not. Men are sending a fair amount of messages to women who are about 4 years older, and that seems like older women are not looking for men who are any more than 4 years younger than they are. So what if the barely-visible green peak is tilted slightly?
I feel like I just time-traveled back to the misogynistic 50s. Didn’t the idea of selling women go out of style some time ago? I didn’t make myself suffer through the entirety of this article, but the retarded part that I did read is offensive to me. Why do you need to sell “older” women? I’m 37 and I’m certainly not waiting around for some prematurely balding, paunchy, weak-chinned 28 year old to pick me.
A more interesting article might be about how most available men are boring and unattractive. Maybe you could put a percentage on that, like, 95%. Also, an article that mentions how very few women (of any age) find middle-aged men attractive would just be fascinating.
Anyway, I doubt that many 25 year-old women want to hook up with 40 year-old men–with their Cialis, STDs, and narcissistic oedipal issues.
To Nutz:
So you think ALL women in their 30s automatically look haggard and wrinkly the minute they end their 29th year? You got to be kidding me, and you most likely have no clue how some women can be 30something and still look much younger, even Without plastic surgery. I’m 33 and don’t have any surgery, no botox, and still get carded. Not all women look old in their 30s. Besides, 30 is still relatively young. Wrinkles don’t automatically appear when someone hits 30. Alot also depends on how a woman has taken care of herself, protected from the sun, healthy diet, exercise, etc.
I also know women in their 40s with still no wrinkles or sags, and no surgery yet.
I’m not saying that I will look better at 40 than I did at 25, but I sure don’t expect to be a wrinkled saggy prune at that age. I don’t think alot of men can tell a woman’s age these days anyway.
But if you only want to date a 20 yr old, then what happens when you find the love of your life when she’s 20, will you automatically dump her at 30? Such a short time span for a woman’s life, don’t you think?
Pedant:
If you say that the 35 yr old who may be as attractive as the 25 yr old will be attractive for ’10 yrs less years’, then basically you are not looking to fall in love with the woman. Everyone is going to get old eventually. Even if you marry the 25 yr old, eventually she will be 45, 55, etc. Even if you got an extra 10 yrs of ‘youthful looks’, from her, does that translate to an extra 10 yrs of happiness? What if she turns out to be a bad person or a bore? Or doesn’t really like you much but just used you? If you only base happiness on how good your potential wife looks, then it’s not real love, sorry. Besides, are you that awesome looking yourself that you feel you ‘deserve’ to have a wife that can look great for the maximum amount of years you can, for your viewing pleasure?
I am a 29 year old woman who gets messages from guys in the age range of 21-39. I dont think that age has anything to do with it. Its all about attraction to the person and personality as far as what is written on the profile.
What interest me the most and isn’t mentioned in the article is the male casual sexual partner from the female viewpoint.
From a male, as in a single one, perspective, a sexual partner criteria would be that a female would permit me to keep sexual tensions during the intercourse, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t care if the women would be a model, a hero, troubled, sick, a bigot or simply hate my gut. As simple as playing card with her on a bench while waiting, not even talking ; you don’t need much talking when the point is (only) sexual promiscuity and you only need to show interest in it.
Would I care what’s on a prostitute mind ? I care as much on a casual sexual partner one.
Thanks for writing such a thought provoking article- it certainly seems to have stimulated some debate.
In the broader theatre I wonder of the data is similar in , say, Thailand , Mozambique or the Middle East where worldviews differ from those is the “West” (possibly due to different religious sensibilities / sensitivities).
Well done.
I’ve dated a 45 year old college professor, and we had a good time at a Thai restaurant, she was Master’s educated as am I and very well versed in the world. She owns her own business being a tour guide in NYC which I found interesting, but the date got weird when we discussed events, and she would always say back in the 1980s, such and such happened. I’m fine with that, but the tonality of the whole thing, was like she was rubbing the age issue in my face. I’m perfectly fine with dating older woman but keep in my don’t rub it in my face when we go out on a date. Seriously, that’s disrespectful. But that really hasn’t disheartened me yet. Dating is all a numbers game, you just have to keep trying, hell, I was stood up 17 times last year by CrazyBlindDaters, a sister site of OkCupid, but that really hasn’t phased me considering after a bit of research I found out the cell phone providers were blocking the text message relays that the site used for us to communicate. So when I setup a date, I put a bit of identifying info in it so they can pick me out of the crowd. But all in all, I would totally date older woman, I find experience and intelligence to be quite sexy, plus the zest for life is amazing.
note that the stats for use of on-line dating services coincide with generational differences in familiarity in use of the technology. (i.e. which translates to ease of use, and various prerequisite understanding and learned skill-sets) Your research is quite informative, and intriguing. I thank you very much for going to all the hours of labor and sharing it with us.
Seems to me though, there is an equal, and almost opposite attraction instilled amongst younger women, for older men which of course begins during their school years, and is sustained to some degree until mid-late middle age.
I was with a woman over a decade older than myself for over 10 years.
I would now prefer to see women my own age, but there are so few available–as shown by your demographics, and precious few at all who will even acknowledge an initial message w/any courtesy, nor even give me time, in ANY age group.
(e.g. commenter “Older Woman” above! She’s quite sure, apparently that the feminine population is relatively innocuous in the contraction & transmission of s.t.d.s and suffers only inconsequentially from the ‘Electra’ complex? or perhaps she’s just venting some personal bitterness as we ALL do, regardless of gender. ; )
There is one other factor which might surprise all too many women here:
If you see someone you like, and you initiate contact, rather than waiting, watching and hoping. You may well find yourself surprised at just how flexible a large proportion of men actually are.
I’d like to see the graph on comparative frequency of initiated contact between the sexes. I’m sure most women would not be so pleased with their flexibility on that front, as so many of us ‘frequently ignored’ guys are already so thoroughly familiar that they are discouraged beyond even bothering to sign on in the first place. Come on, this is the internet–over-grown boys will be mamma’s boys in-perpetuity, if they’re allowed to win the day’s lionesses’ share of attention in responses from women.
& I don’t see how the current balances will be tipped in womens’ favor until a considerably larger percentage of the female populous is willing to take on the responsibility inherent in feminism, of proactively favoring men of their choice–rather than reactively favoring only men who show their interest first. Until then we all suffer equally from the 2nd (+now 3rd) generational fall out of an apparent lack of faith in sexual equality . . . or at least socially reciprocal equity.
One last note:
Men who send ludicrously lewd messages as initial contact SHOULD ALWAYS BE REPORTED. . . . that is if YOU really want it to stop? It makes the guys who genuinely care, feel genuinely ill as well–both by proxy and prejudicial association.
I assure you.
Thank again, so much for your insightful time and attention, Christian!
It is very much appreciated, I also assure you, very personably.
Enjoy,
and ‘peace be with you’.
~ J.C.
I like younger men. I just don’t like it when they’re too much younger because then we have very little to talk about. That isn’t prejudice; that’s the fact that I’m an emotionally and intellectually and spiritually developed human being and most 20 year old boys really aren’t. I know, because I used to be 20. I remember very, very well. I’m down with meeting people in their twenties and early thirties (and older, of course), but really if there’s no connection there, it doesn’t matter how old or young they are or what they look like because there won’t be any possibility for anything significant anyway.
the older a woman is, the more likely she is to be divorced with kids. some guys (a lot of guys) probably would rather not date someone who is a custodial single parent. so maybe they message younger women who don’t have kids yet?
I wonder if it would be possible to also take into account response rate.
My general experience has has been that younger ’22-26′ and older ’36+’ tend to respond fairly often and fairly positively, but I get minimal or downright negative responses from women in the 27-35 range to the point I will just skip over profiles in that range now.
All’s I can say is, the men who approach me on OKCupid and in real life are getting younger. And younger. They seem more open, more curious, enthusiastic and entirely unfazed by age differences. My male pals say I’m benefitting from a MILF boom (except I don’t have any kids). Wot, suddenly trendy? Can’t figure this out.
Your blogposts and threads are fab reading, everyone!
Nutz, wow, what a way to put it. It is not quite like that. Well, my friend, I am 53 going on 54 and I am 5’10 136lbs, slender great boobs, and can stand up to any 35 yr old who is in shape. I see women in their 20s, who make me look amazing. I walk 15 mls a week, eat well and have no wrinkles. I still use my hair long, because I can, I still have a young appearance. I am able to wear very hip jeans and mini dresses. I am a fashionista, as my stepdaughters call me.
I met my husband at 49 and we have the greatest sex life. As for older men going after young women, it has always been that way. I never dated younger men, they came after me when I was in the dating game, but I wanted my equal. Most men my age are old, so I know why the “cougars” do what you do. Good for them. In fact I use to put my age lower, so as not to attract old men, because I had nothing in common with them. I am a young minded person, I dance, I ski, I hike and adventurous. I met my husband, who is 1 yr younger, he looks older than me, but in great shape. He completed a triathlon a few years ago. If you take care of yourself, you can compete with any age. We can’t look 20 or 30 again, and that’s okay, but I look great – 53 going on 35
I am 45, but I look much younger. I am definitely open to dating younger men as long as we are compatible and they are open to a long-term relationship, are mature, and don’t feel the need to pass on more of their genes than they already may have. I have had a lot of younger men contact me on OKC, but mainly through IM and they definitely didn’t seem to be looking for anything more than casual sex or sexting.
My preference is to date a guy close to my age who looks a lot younger and has a very youthful outlook on life or a guy who is younger. My upper age limit is set at three years older than me because most of my serious relationships were with men 5.5 to 8.5 years older than me and there were definite libido compatibility problems! Some women hit our sexual prime in our 40s, not our 30s. My younger age limit is set to 30 which follows the age/2 +7 theory.
I have been on a date with a guy recently who was 26, but it did make me feel uncomfortable when he asked what year I moved here to start college and when I told him, he said, “that’s the year I was born.” So all you younger guys out there who do want to date older women, please don’t say something that stupid!
Its true, women all of a sudden become Uber sexy once they hit their mid 30’s and continue to be Uber sexy in their mid 40’s….
The odd thing is, most of my 30 – 40 yo female friends seem to be going after younger guys and most of them have gone Poly….. And im just a one woman man….so it gets hard to find a 30 plus woman who wants a long term relationship…
I just felt the need to comment on this: (from Older Woman, above)
“A more interesting article might be about how most available men are boring and unattractive. Maybe you could put a percentage on that, like, 95%.”
Really? It’s not possible you have incredibly high standards? Saying that 19 out of 20 men are BOTH boring and unattractive seems a tad ridiculous.
Cheers
“Taken from the first couple pages”
What are couple pages?
Do you by chance mean “couple OF pages”?
I think you missed a crucial point here… Most women between, say, the ages of 32-40 are preoccupied with finding a marry-able partner with whom to have children, their proverbial ‘biological clock ticking away’… Many men in the 27-37 year old range– especially in today’s society– who don’t want to get married or have children yet, intuitively know this about women in that age group, and thus exclude them from their search parameters. This makes some sense for both sides, as women with this natural mindset don’t want to waste time with men who don’t want commitment and children.
While these findings may have some truth to it, I think it contains more flaws and I generally don’t take statistics very seriously.
I am a 35 year old male. It baffles me that someone would even consider a 30 something woman to be “older.” On this site, I have talked with women in their mid-twenties to women in their early 40s. Maybe a better question would be this: why on earth would a woman in her thirties want to date a young buck 10-12 years younger than themselves? When I was 25, I didn’t date women in their 30s because they were just that “women,” and it intimidated me because I was used to “girls.” Also, at 25 I wanted to bed everything that walked and was not interested in settling down.
Also, I am highly aware of the double standard surrounding age and aging, etc… Having said that, a 25 year old girl who “is” serious about a relationship might have better luck with a 35 year old (for argument sake) who has gotten “skirt chasing” out of his system and is also looking for something serious. If guys in their early to mid 20s are anything like I was at that age, they’re probably looking for cheap thrills.
Now, guys in their 30s who won’t date women their own age or older and “only” go for 20-somethings, I’d say they are the ones who have issues and are missing out on some real gems. I also think they are in the minority. Lastly, I’ll take a woman over a girl anyday.
Bobby
This ties into an idea that I’ve been thinking about for a while for a story….
What would a society look like where *everyone* dated/married outside of their age group?
As a young man in your late teens, you would hook up with an older woman in her late 30s or 40s. In your relationship, she would take the leading role and teach you everything you need to know about women. You have no kids (although she does from a previous marriage) and you devote your time to professional and personal growth.
After 20 or 30 years, she may die or you may divorce. You will now be in your late 30s or 40s yourself. You now hook up again with a younger woman in her late teens/early twenties. This time, you are the leader and teach her everything she needs to know about men. In this phase of your life, you are professionally successful and can now devote the time to raising a family. In time, you may die or divorce and your wife is ready to begin the cycle anew with a younger man.
In such a system, there are no inexperienced couples. You are starting a family when the woman is at peak fertility and when the man is at peak earning power. Your legacy lives on after you, not only in your children but in your partner.
In some ways, this model makes even more sense for same sex couples.
Bobby,
I think maybe the men or people who think a 30 something woman is ‘older’ or wrinkly/haggard is thinking of women THEY have probably encountered personally and happen to look that way. Or maybe someone very young who thinks 30 is ancient.
I just know that all my friends in their 30s, like me, still pass for 20s in most cases. It’s amazing how many guys can’t guess women’s ages easily, and a woman who is single in her 30s, can in fact look younger than those the same age married with children who may have let go a bit of their appearance. Still, I know many women in their 30s with a child or two in the city who still look hot and in shape. It all depends on their motivation to look their best and their attitude.
Anyway, this day in age, women tend to look younger and take care of themselves better than women of past generations. So 30 is hardly old. Besides, women are living till 80+ now. So that means we are only suitable partners for a few yrs of our lives, then from 30on, we have 50+ yrs of old age??That would suck and really is not realistic.
Of course, there is a limit to how young one can look. But I’ve had many experiences where I see men cannot tell the difference between someone 27 or 34, these women can all look sexy and difficult to tell their ages just by looking at them.