
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.
Great article, OKCupid! It’s so interesting to see this data plotted spatially. Geek out! What a terrific opportunity for you to have access to all this information – thanks for taking so much time to manipulate it, interpret it and put it out there for discussion.
Happy searching fellow OKCupiders! Whatever your age I hope you find other people to challenge, excite and delight you.
OkCupid,
THANK YOU for doing this study as it bears out my own thoughts and helps both men and women understand the dating curve. Men go to strip clubs and think the 18 year olds they see are really in their dating range, even though these women are beautiful and they are older average men. Really guys, get with the program! Men in their 40’s are usually less attractive than single women of the same age, who spend time and money on their appearance. Why should women settle for men who are too lazy to hit the gym and have no interest in current music etc.
did you have to write this? give us old geezers a break. the truth is, in my not very humble opinion, women are just entering their best years when the hit 35 or so.
I just turned 40 this week and I have been told without any solicitation by younger men (that is all I will consider dating) that do not look or act like I am 40.. I was married to a man that was 5 yrs older than me and it was hell.. I just ended a 7 mo relationship with a 25 yr old and it was AWESOME.. No pretenses.. He was completely into me and I him.. but things happen.. Maybe these guys that are complaining about being winked at have a cougar complex where they think they would be embarrassed or their friends would give them a hard time or maybe they’re just not interested.. If the latter is the case.. F em.. why would you want to be with someone who didn’t appreciate you totally?? and from what I have found younger men live to WORSHIP you if you are deserving and thank goodness up to this point I guess I have been..
As a much older woman (64), I disagree that most women are looking for older men. I have virtually always been attracted to, and involved with, younger men. I am currently separated from my 45-year-old husband of 19 years; he is living out of state and I have a 45-year-old boyfriend. I have had prior long-term relationships with men from 2 to 22 years younger. Men my age and older are often tired, stodgy and conservative. Younger men, at least in my experience, are more liberal, more open-minded and more willing to go to Ozzfest with me. (I’m a serious Ozzy fan.) And they have not been daunted by the fact that I usualy earned at least twice what they did. Nor have I encountered a shortage of available men. I get regular offers from men from their early 30s to mid-50s, give or take. I’m not beautiful; I’m not particularly well-preserved. I think it’s a function of attitude and the fact that I like men, I am comfortable with them and enjoy their company. I guess it shows.
I like younger guys but they have that same attitude =o/
Great article, but it kind of assumes you’re only looking for sex and a good time. If you’re a 31 year old guy who would actually like to get married and start a family with (theoretically) the woman of his dreams, this advice doesn’t work because of some pretty significant logistical concerns involving the female reproductive systems. Not to mention the fact that you create a very strange family dynamic when (for example) your 40 year old girlfriend has a 20 year old kid that you, as a 31 year old guy, actually get along with pretty well and relate to as an adult.
I also don’t want to be, for example, 35 and dealing with my wife entering menopause. There are a lot of practical considerations that you don’t really take into account here.
I totally agree with this article. I just turned 24 and many women my age and younger are still so confused about life and don’t know whey they want yet. I have found that women in their 30’s and 40’s already know what they want.
… I just have to find one that wants to have fun with me š lol
Jarrett, I started menapause at 33 years old… there is NO guarantee what age a woman WILL start it. And just so you know, when a woman DOES start menapause, her libido goes through the freeking roof… And you 30-something year old men can’t keep up…which is why we like the 20 something men…
OMFG,that had to be one of the most informative/helpful/interesting articles ive ever read!!both my brother s are dating older women and i recently was w/a slightly older woman and it all seems to add up.I’m looking forward to more like this one.
Someone’s been reading Edward R. Tufte… Nice graphs!! :o)
It has more to do then looks, kids are a factor too. First, I would love to see a graph plotting a personās age and the odds of them being a single parent. I am a 30 year old male and have no interest in raising someone elseās kids. I find as I extend my match pool up in age, there are significantly more women with kids. Its logical to think they are not immaculate conception, so my guess is the trend of guys with kids would probably grow as they get older too. Second, as a woman gets older her odds of a complication having kids grows exponentially. I am not going to sit here and have a health debate with people, I am sorry this is the case, but you canāt change biology. For a single male without kids that is looking for a wife to eventually have kids with, younger women are more of an option then older. There is however a cutoff when it comes to dating younger women. The formula I typically use is āhalf my age + 7ā being the low cutoff age.
Interesting stuff, however one of the biggest problems in OKCupids data analysis is already presented very clearly in this article itself.
There is a statistically significant difference between what people SAY they want/do and what they actually want/do. The men say they want to talk to ages Y through Z, but they’re actually hitting on 18 year olds. This is obviously not limited to men only.
One might conjecture for example that Exhibit A reflects only smart playing by potential daters. 18 year old girls have a bias that if they are sexually active they are “sluts” so they are likely to respond as wanting sex less regularly, while the older women, who are clearly less sought after, may turn on the sexual charms in order to entice a partner. It could be that despite this the actual truth lies in the middle for both.
And so on for all exhibits, people are playing the dating game, and probably most are playing it well. While the premise of this article is nice, and should be applied to a much broader range of attributes than age (in that people should really broaden their horizons) the proof is really more in the pudding than the stats. Though I appreciate all the hard work certainly.
this is interesting in so many ways. One of the most interesting confirmations is this impression I had. I’m a man who started online dating at 26. I still do so at 29. I’ve consistently been looking for women within 4 years on either side of me, with a floor of 24 (due to my dislike of the confidence things mentioned above). When I was 26, 25 year old women wouldn’t give me the time of day, nor would anyone older than that. That remained true until 28. Now at 29, I don’t bother looking anymore. All kinds of women 24 to 30 message me out of the blue all the time. This is despite not changing my profile in 2 years (between 27 and 29).
It’s not just men who skew younger. Women skew older, at least online. I’ve seen it. It’s interesting to see it backed up with some data.
I also find it interesting the the “minimum age” line for men-seeking-women almost perfectly tracks “half plus 7″. And I thought we boys would outgrow that at some point!
I WISH I had the problem of older women messaging me like the quote at the top of the page. I’ve dated a 30yr old woman before (I was 18) and now can’t even imagine going back to girls my own age. Even after we broke up, most of my female friends are a LOT older than me. It’s obvious older women are the shit. But how the hell do you actually get one!!??
Let’s not forget too that a lot of women block guys from messaging who are younger than they are….I think that would skew the data a bit
This is a great article!! I recently went back to graduate school to get my Master’s at a Big 10 school. I’m now 30 and have dated some of the undergrad football players. It’s fantastic. I have so much fun with them. They love the fact that I’m confident and smart. And it doesn’t hurt that I’m hot too (I used to be an NBA dancer) plus I don’t look a day over 25. Age is just a number. Guys that make decisions based on age are missing out!!
For the guy this who wasn’t keen on menopause, there’s a male equivalent that’s just as common and no more fun for either party called Andropause. Associated with this, the low testosterone levels and increased risk factors for men fathering children later in life make difficulties that aren’t as pronoucned as women’s but exist, nonetheless. Statistically, if you can pinpoint an age to have a child, 34 is the best for a variety of reasons, though risks increase at 35.
Anyway, in your 30s you have career stability, sexual confience, more time to work out (if you paid your dues working hard in your 20s), wisdom… are more well-traveled, well-read and mature. Things look pretty good for my 30something friends *but* we don’t find many single men our age, this is true.
Greg – As a recently divorced 45 year old woman, I am asked out quite a bit by men ages 30-35. I even recently dated a 25 year old that took the relationship much more seriously than I did. I can tell you from experience, you may not want to wait for the older women to ask you out or to message you. You have to ask them out. I am young at heart and hip in many ways, however, I date the “old-fashioned” way. Men ask me out, I don’t ask them out. Never have and never will. Also, if you don’t ask them out there are plenty of other younger guys around that will! Go for it!
I read this article when it was first posted and thought to myself, “Yeah, that seems like a good argument. I’ll expand my searches and seriously consider some women in their mid thirties.” I saw a couple that really lit my fire and went ahead and messaged them. Both replied and politely turned me down, citing my age (29). They both said something to the effect of “If only you were 4 or 5 years older, I’d really liked to have gotten to know you.”
One thing OKCupid really doesn’t take into account here is that as willing as a younger man is to date an older woman, someone in her prime, women need to also be willing to go the other way. I’ll continue to search for and message women older than myself, but it was just very funny how on the exact day I decide to branch out, I get the same rejection explanation.
Not a surprise to me! I have been pursued by significantly younger men since I was 28. The issue for WOMEN (since yr article is highly marketing toward MEN) would be the issue of younger men being interested but having an age range where the woman isn’t interested in the younger man. The cool thing about delving into yr 30’s as a WOMAN is that you stop caring about the whole marriage/life-partner thing and are more open to someone nice and fun. So many guys are bogged down with issues and at this point I’d rather be single than put up with it!
Something you (possibly intentionally) ignored: Ability to rear children
Personally I like dating older women less as they have an agenda.
On a first date I was once asked if I wanted to have kids. This woman went on to tell me her “goal” was to have a child within EXACTLY TWO YEARS. Are you insane lady? She put the value of a child over the value of finding the RIGHT LIFE PARTNER. Some people go years before they find “The One”. This lady was INSANE… she thought she could find the perfect match and have a kid within 2 years. It’s like… lady, why don’t you see if we even like each other at the end of the date first. I feel SO SORRY for any guy that fell in that trap. The big Divorce and alimony would soon be following as they didn’t bother to find out if they would be compatible first!
The “agenda” only gets worse with age as women realize their ticket has been punched and they become FRANTIC, setting unreal expectations. The things they put a guy through are nuts.
I’m here to tell you NO THANKS. No older crazy agenda-driven women for me.
I’m perfectly happy with a late 20’s (or early 30’s woman if she is exceptional) who is young enough not to have that agenda like a late 30’s or 40something, but old enough to be a responsible, developed adult who knows what she wants in life.
I myself have always found older women very interesting and attractive.
When I was 24 years old, I worked at a law firm in New york, their was an Asian American woman working their also. She was a legal secretary for one of thee attorneys working their.
This woman was in her early forties, and married, but she was very attracted to me. But at the time I thought that she was just being nice to me. She would often take me out to lunch from time to time(her treat)she also gave me her home phone number. Unfortunetly this was in the late eighties, and in those days the only people who had cell phones were lawyers, doctors, and drug dealers. So once when I called her home her husband answered the phone, after that I never called again. The talk around the office was that Flo wanted to have an afair with me. To be perfectly honest I was flattererd by her attention towards me, but at the time having an afair with a married woman was something that did not interest me at the time. But if I had the same opportunity today, I would definetely go for it.
Your Truly; Steve Lake.
Screw that noise, women won’t have anything to do with a younger guy when they’re in their 20’s. I’ve even heard women say that they refuse to date a guy who is even 1 day younger than her!!! What is this, high school? Then, when women reach their late 30s-40’s they want younger guy (Does this have anything to do with the fact that they’re dating pool has shrunkenconsiderably?) The unfortunate fact of this is that most men in their 20’s and 30’s who want an older women are looking only for the fetish-cougar sex. So the real lesson is, women should stop being so picky in their younger years, or risk end up 40, single, and having one night stands with a long line of 20 somethings~~~~
I think that you overlooked the fact that boys and girls don’t mature at the same rate. Men usually are about 8-10yrs behind maturity-wise until about age thirty when the gap closes quite quickly. Marriage can be a daunting task in your early twenties. I think that women who want a sexual/fun time relationship should shop in the twenty-something bracket and for stability shop the late twenties and up. Cougars should hunt in the twenty somethings woods until they can’t.
This article is brilliant!
Unfortunately it confirms everything I have experienced as a 38 yr old woman on okcupid – and one who looks to be in her mid 20’s (not gonna find anyone here.I should just keep on taking quizzes and buy a cat)
But what this does tell me is… I want a job just like yours Christian! I’ve looked through all your awesome stats and charts and GIS beauties. This an inspiring monument to how good a good data presentation can be!
I am dating a man 10 years younger than me. Sometimes he annoys the hell out of me but he has all the qualities in life that I want. Sometimes tho, he gets on my doggone nerved because he’s so much younger and tends to worry about things I’m SOO over. I want to move and buy a house and he’s thinking about getting a job any job and what he wants to major in. Sometimes honestly I find that tired. I already did the college thing! But I feel some of the good qualities out weigh the bad. He’s a christian and that’s specifically what I’m looking for, it’s hard to find that in a man regardless of age so when I saw that in him I went for it… I dont know about the whole menopause thing. My mom is almost 55 and still hasn’t “paused” yet. but I wouldn’t have kids at 55. ugh. I no a woman who married a younger man and accidently got pregnant at 45! Her first son is almost 30! Now he has a 3 yr old sister! It’s weird but they’re happy. My aunt is well into her 60’s and regularly dates 30-40 year old guys. She DEF looks late 30s. My problem is that I look extremely young. I’m short with a small frame and guys my age wouldn’t look twice at me simply because I look too young. I look like jail bait. (I regularly get carded at movie theaters!) I have a good job and make decent money and that makes many guys my age feel threatened! Younger guys still have that hope that they can do as well as or better than I at some point so they don’t feel so bad about it. I do however have a child but I don’t think the age of a man makes him more willing to deal with children. I find that it depends on the man, not his age. He can be 40 and not want to raise other people’s children.. so you can’t exclude age based on that. Also my child is already half raised! I don’t see how if you’re 31 an the kid is 20 that you’re raising him! more than likely he” be in college trying to live his own life and maybe it’ll make it easier for me to raise my kid because my younger boyfriend can relate how I feel to him in a way he understands, And they may develop a closer relationship and more trust because of their age! Honestly I know that men like to date younger women, but I wonder how true these results really are. NO MAN near my age wants to date me unless they’ve been introduced to me and know that I’m almost 30! They all look right over me, mostly high school guys want me! I regularly get hit on by 14 year olds! And it is true older guys so fat that I have dated are boring! The sex is never good with older guys! Most times they’re just too tired! I actually came on this site to hash out how i really feel about my boyfriend cuz he really annoys the hell out of me, but i just came to the conclusion that age isn’t really a factor. He has the qualities that I want. He listens, he makes me feel important, he cares about me, He goes to church just as much as I do and doesn’t find that weird, he’s a christian and I don’t have to explain stupid stuff to him and he doesnt judge me on my past, and doesn’t feel threatened by my job, or anything. I guess I should let up on him because he is young! He loves me. And I love him. It’s not age, I just don’t think anyone else can make me happier. Thanks!!!!
BTW….
yah there is a REAL male equivalent to menopause! It’s called BPH! “Benign Prostate Hypertrophy” It basically causes men to “not get it up” and have hesitancy with urination. The commercials are all over TV! It sadly happens to 1/2 guys shrinks their penis to an unreasonable size and their sex life is never the same! LOL. Just so guys know! Not every guy will be a hugh hefiner. Mother nature eventually gets us all!
Really? An entire blog post about older women with no mention about their reduced ability to produce healthy children and reduced years of fertility?! That’s ridiculous. Good looks are a biological proxy for the ability to STAY HEALTHY AND MAKE ME MANY HEALTHY BABIES. Duh. A hot 35 year old is much more likely to have pregnancy complications than an average 25 year old. That’s why there’s not a single culture in recorded human history where men (on average) date older women. That the author of this superficial post didn’t even mention these biological and cultural constants is stupefying. Biology isn’t destiny, but to ignore it is really ignorant.
Again given the choice between the tight, toned, tan young energetic hottie vs the older, baggaged, man-hating, job-driven, cynical, divorced woman, most guys will pick the first. Blame them? Why? Who needs a ‘challenge’ as they get older? No thanks, I’ll leave it for the next knight in shining armor. I’ll take the younger hottie and most men throughout history have done that as well and will continue to do so. Kings, serfs, slaves, pharoahs, presidents, actors, paupers, popes, rabbis, it doesn’t matter. Nature makes it more appropriate as well. After all, dried up ovaries do not perpetuate a species. They do however perpetuate facial hair.
Wonderful mapping of the territory! What you leave out: the sad truth that men start to fall apart, to get sad (body & mind) as women move into their best years (40s & up).
@ Jarrett and all other young males worried about female fertility declining:
please note that in about 50% of the cases where a couple struggles with infertility, it is the man’s issue. And that is only the figure science can measure; a science that is more advanced studying the reasons of female infertility than male infertility. My humble guess is that, as science advances, that figure may climb up to 70%. (My personal anecdotal evidence, from friends and family, yields a ‘male factor’ percentage even higher than 70%. )
The male reproductive organs are more fragile and exposed than the female, hence more often harmed by infections, childhood disease. sports etc. The risk of any of these factors having hit at least once rises with the man’s age.
Jarrett, dear, you better check your own fertility first…
I dont think men “should” be looking for or looking to date any particular age group. This article has obviously been written from a very bitter female perspective backed up surreptitiously by some statistics that change little. It is what it is. It’s a social rule of nature.
For instance the observations were turned around- where by men who were short, for instance, (say shorter than my 6 foot) were illustrated to be less attractive than those who were tall, especially compared to women- this could be illustrated quite easily I’m sure. Height is irrelavant for a woman to her attractiveness. A shorter woman is still attracted to a taller man though. A shorter man has very little choice, once less than 5 foot 5 – especially. However it would be ludicrous to suggest that Taller women should be looking towards shorter guys. No one would ever suggest it. It has become social law of the jungle.
In the same way- the media is now trying to portray fat ,obesse lazy women of huge proportions as being attractive by calling them “BBWs “(“Big beautiful women”) to recondition MEN, the natural age aspect is also the latest thing that very sexist women have latched on to- calling old unattractive women (usually with kids from previous relationships) “Cougars” to try to glamourise them somehow. Or how a woman can be deemed attractive if she is impoverish with no career where as a man can not. These are merely social rules of the jungle- in a social dating climate that heavily favours women already in many ways- no media conditioning , whining or appeals are about to change it. Unfortunately it is far from a meritocracy but articles arent about to further bias it agaisnt men. It is what it is.
Just a note on biology.
While women do stop being fertile when younger than men, average age for menopause is 50 years old and getting later by a month every year. So there’s no need to actually rule out a woman in her 40s.
Added to this, actualy ability to produce a baby is no guarantee; it has been shown that the male influence is the ability to carry children is higher than popularly thought. When men age between the ages of 30 and 40, the likelihood of their partner having a miscarriage almost doubles from 16.7% to 33%. Men produce sperm on a daily basis and this results in potential mutations etc which can make the birth terminate.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jul/07/health.children
Just something to think about.
Uh, what about the fact that as women get older you find a higher and higher occurrence of single mothers with increasing numbers of kids? I don’t think I saw that accounted for anywhere in the article.
It’s not that I think of them as evil or bad or anything (I was raised by a single mother), but I don’t want to be daddy to somebody else’s kids, nor do I want to come second to them. When she’s saying “MY KIDS ARE MY LIFE AND THEY COME FIRST BEFORE EVERYTHING!”, that’s letting me know that I will never have the part of the relationship where it’s just us enjoying each other. I’ve no desire to deal with that. Many guys don’t. Spontaneous (and extremely hot) sex in the kitchen, in the hall, and everywhere else in the house with wild vociferous abandon is kinda hard to do when her 6 year old might walk in on you, then go tell the ex about it.
Also, no matter what she says, at some point you’ll fall in to the role of participating in some aspect of raising someone else’s kids. Psychologically, I don’t want to do it. They aren’t mine, I don’t care about them that way. Biologically… there’s a reason male animals fight and kill other males in competition for mating. We want OUR genes to be passed on, not the competition. I don’t care how much “humans are different from other animals!” spin you try to put to it, it just doesn’t fly. I don’t care about some other dude’s kids. At all. God forbid she has out one of mine, then I start playing favorites.
Ignoring this huge aspect of seeing more single mothers as the age goes up is an oversight at best, and incredibly disingenuous at worst. What a whiny plea for the case of the older woman. Some are incredibly hot, have it together, and are great in bed. Fine, wonderful. Stop ignoring one of the biggest negatives.
Is this global data, but presented on USA, or is it just US data?
I always start reading these articles thinking that it’s global, but halfway through start noticing differences š .
If it’s just the US data, could you mention it somewhere, please?
I bet some things differ geographically (hm, maybe that should be: geopolitically?), like, say, the attitude towards contraception in Northern Europe vs. other places.
And maybe I’m wrong – it would be great seeing that data, too
.
Holy crap! That’s amazing. I found myself in your charts. I guess I’d better get my shizz together quick, ’cause the 40s will be here in a few years.
I just apply the universal rule no one younger then 1/2 your age + 7 then you can flip it for your upper limit.
Women may continue to be fertile later in life, but the real statistic of an increase in congenital malformations as the birth age of the mother increases cannot be overlooked. Over 40 it’s significant. Over 50 and you’re just asking for trouble.
Only one problem with this article: you suggest men try out older women, but then you also say that, at various points, older women stop messaging younger men. So basically, you want the men to waste time messaging the older women who are less likely to reply to them? Doesn’t make sense.
I’m 26 and I’ll date a woman in hear early or mid 30’s, but anything older than that is typically not a great match for me. I think that’s fair-minded enough.
I think you are slanting this against men a little much. The data show that men tend to date younger women, and that women tend to date older men. Is this just a male bias? Why isn’t it a female bias too? It is well-known, and evolutionarily reasonable that men tend to go for women who are most fertile, which is at a younger age. Women will go for men that offer them security, and are best able to protect both them and their children. This used to mean a big strong guy, but now it means a man with more resources, which are typically older men. To me it seems just as likely that women seek older men, as it is likely that men seek younger women.
What’s going on in southeastern Oregon? (see map on women’s desired frequency of sex)
@Andrew
“…40, single, and having one night stands with a long line of 20 somethings~~~~” Sounds like heaven to me LOL :)))))) What is also left out of the equation is emotional maturity. I have always been more attracted to men who are older than I am, although I have dated younger my range is usually set by inability to deal with immaturity and irritation at someone wanting to ‘father’ me. I also happen to enjoy being single more than being in a bad relationship, that coupled with the fact I am black and 40something I guess means I should just curl up and die LOL
Good thing I understand that statistics is just a measure of averages and at the individual level everything is possible.
I’ve never been one to fit the standards of society. I am 50 and having a very hot relationship with a 23 year old guy. He never asked me how old I was but assumes I am in my late 30’s or early 40’s. I prefer older men for intellectual stimulation but younger men for the other kind
“I just apply the universal rule no one younger then 1/2 your age + 7 then you can flip it for your upper limit.”
I first heard of that as the Serbian Rule, by some Serbs.
seems to me older women expect even more from a man. A young girl is happy to have a dude. An older woman wants a “professional” with a “career” and a “nice car” and a “house”… I only have one of 3 of those, so younger chicks it is.
Actually, the asymmetry of desired ages is in fact stable, and what you (and the original poster) have missed is that *women don’t go after younger men either.* A man who messages older women is much less likely to get replies from them, and thus whatever time and effort he puts into it would get more replies if he spent them pursuing women his own age or younger–unless he’s got a fetish for older women and not interested in anyone else, he would get better results by chaning his behavior (an economist would say, “for a man, messaging older women, even when age is not a factor in attractiveness, is not optimal behavior”).
In fact, we do have words for women and men who pursue partners below and above their ages: cougars and cubs. The fact that there’s a specific word for people with these tastes would tend to suggest that they are different enough from the mainstream to require specific terminology.
In other words, you can make arguments about men should desire older women, but current patterns of behavior have evolved in society precisely because they are complementary. Men won’t change unless women do too.
Except for a few things left out, the article was very good and definitely welcomed since I am on the far right end of the scale (offit in several cases).
Leaving the issue of childbearing out has skewed the analysis a bit. Both because men in the middle of your range are looking for children (thought not all) and because those on either end of the age range are usually avoiding them.
Only other ommission was those of us over 40. Personally my single life has been on the upswing for most of the last 16 years and when meeting men in person I just seem to connect better with those younger because of their attitudes about life. Men in the 50’s can be even more apathetic, dull, and obstinate than most single women I meet of the same age.
As for the “cougar” issue, I don’t seek out younger men but the publicity of this trend seems to be bringing the men who can appreciate older women out of hiding. Some of this is good, but some of it includes those with no more interest than a juvenile curiosity.
Pertaining to the “Older women contacting younger men” saga:
I’m sorry to hear that Cougars are bothering younger men out there. Maybe they’re doing so because the men around our age are too busy chasing after younger women & they feel as if this should be a ‘tit for tat’ ordeal; however not all older women reach out to younger men. As a matter of fact, I had to put a block on my profile, preventing men between the ages of 20-38 from contacting me, so in my situation, it’s quite the opposite; it’s the younger men who won’t leave me alone & quite frankly, I have absolutely nothing in common with our baby cubs out there & I do believe they need to stick to their own kind, which happens to be to seek a young babe as themselves.
I’m 27 and I have been dating a 33 year old woman for about six months now. We both agree that we are in the best relationship we’ve ever been in. We’re discussing marriage and plan to be within the next 6 months to a year. I dated many women much younger than myself previous to this and none of them could hold a candle to the fulfillment I have now.