The Case For An Older Woman

February 16th, 2010 by Christian

"Women older than me keep messaging me. Sorry, but that is not going to happen."—recent feedback from a male user

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.

The Back Story
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.

The Shape Of The Dating Pool

a by-age distribution of men who would date an 18 year-old woman

men seeking women women seeking men

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 21
you 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:

Exhibit A
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:

Ideally, how often would you have sex?
age of the population

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.

Is contraception morally wrong?
age of the population
How often do you get tested for STDs?
age of the population
These maps lead directly into my next topic:
Exhibit B
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:

Exhibit C
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.

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396 Responses to “The Case For An Older Woman”

  1. Anthony

    One thing that disturbs me a bit with this whole analysis is that I am a young guy. I and 24 with my range set from 20-30. Honestly there are very few males my age that I personally know that are in the same boat as me as far as it comes to getting their lives, schooling, careers, and what not started and being put together. The first thought when i see someone over/around the age of 30 is “What do I have to offer them?”. Now with this question set in place. How many women over/around 30 would honestly want a 25ish year old college student just starting their (what most consider) adult lives? Lets be honest. Quite a few of us want to just settle down, get married, have a family. You know? the American dream. I just do not see it happening until much later on in life when we already have something to offer on the table.

  2. Markus

    “At the graph’s outer edge, at age 48, men are nearly twice as sought-after as women.”

    Wow, lucky us – 11% versus, what 7%.

    So, it’s a slightly cooler day in hell – Yay for us. :-(

    Realistically, if you enter your age, and it’s over 45, it should just log you off so you don’t waste your time answering all the questions.

  3. Unique

    I don’t know what we do to your trends but my husband – whom I met on OkC is 34 and I am 49 – soon to be 50. WE ROCK!

    Sex? Everyday? Only once? HAHAHAHAHA. All day, baby. All Day, Every Day.

  4. Kage

    Damnit OKC this was my secret goldmine, now you’ve given me more competition :(

  5. Mark D

    Good article,

    I’d love to date older women (am 26) but you neglect to mention the difficulty an older/younger couple (of either direction) have in finding common ground.

    Other then sex obviously.

  6. Shannon

    I mostly agree with the article and find the statistics really interesting. As a young female I don’t know what its like yet to be rejected by age alone but this future doesn’t seem to look good! I think it ridiculous that in this age there is still such a double standard that exists in the dating world. I hope by the time 30 this discrepancy evens out.

  7. I think a lot of your data is skewed by your sample. Since 20-somethings vastly outnumber everyone else, “attractive” means “attractive to 20-somethings,” contact ranges skew younger, and

    And I don’t buy that a man at 30 can find more dates than a woman at 30, because that man’s “dating pool” on OKCupid is full of the same 23-year-olds that are in everyone else’s dating pool. Really, if you look at the data you’ll find that women are attracting a wider age range than their stated preference until around age 45 or so (at which point they’re interested in younger men who aren’t interested in them), while men don’t attract any women who are “out of their age range” until age 40 or so.

  8. That’s a very detailed statistics. Woow!
    I don’t think that people’s self confidence are that high as it seems on the scale though. Unfortunately many, many people are suffering from low self-esteem and confidence, but I think it’s true that the younger are more vulnerable then people in their thirties.

  9. badlysocialized

    Fascinating, as always! I really do hope you go back over all your posts and do same-sex data – and a post devoted to bisexuals alone would be very intriguing.

  10. jennifer taco

    having read the blurb it seems to me that nature takes it course…older men and younger women get together. But there is a new trend…the younger man with the older woman…seems more frequent. Some men who are interested in older women need the security-they perhaps haven’t been too financially successful in life or may have emotional problems. An older woman is more likely to have compassion for them and understand their problems because she is not just interested in the money.

    Older women are more secure, are more interesting and have a lot to offer a younger man who perhaps does not want to have a family, for some reason. it wont work if he wants a family – he must be over that ie preferably have his own family already.

  11. Ed

    This was a cool blog. I tell you all the woman in my tango class (40+) are extremely hot, but do you think that they would go for me, a 26-yr-old? The biggest problem with young girls is that you don’t know what will happen to their figure when their metabolisms slow.

  12. RosaDebi

    I’m a 51 year old woman. I went on this dating site because I want to date someone in my own age group.

    I don’t want someone more than 6-8 years younger than me, or anyone 10 years older.

    Life experiences are too different when you’re out of your own generation.

    And I get plenty of attention from younger men in the real world because I do look younger. There is something about seeing your age online, that some guys freak out.

    I don’t want to teach boys and real men appreciate a intelligent experienced woman.

    Oh, by the way I’m seeing a real man now!

  13. jennyblenny

    I only read al this because an old school buddy sent me the link. I find it all very strange. I am 38, but I live in the carribean and am a dive master, run my own business, and have a lot of fiends of similar ages, who look fntastic, without any botox, just a general passion for life and very much out doors.. We get to ddate/hang out with men who are in their 50’s, obviously fit and healthy too, and now and then guys our own ages, and sometimes a little 24 yr old who wants to learn something that an older woman can show them, and, if the feeling takes us, we’ll go for it, and it is a LOT of fun.
    I don’t really think that age is the issue, it’s about how you feel inside, how you respect yourself and how you go to great lenghts to make yourself happy, or just by being caught up in the moment!
    That being said I knew from an early age that I didn’t want to have kids, as I am getting older and seeing that there are just too many of us, I am starting to understand myself, although, I’m not ruling it out entirely. ‘
    The human race is going through a dramatic change, it has to, simply because we are an unsustainable menace. The world will get on fine without us, but we might be in for a bit of shock in the years to come.
    Let’s not play silly games, demeaning each other for looks or age, none of it matters, (well, okay, looks do matter to an extent) but it really is what is going on in the heart of a person that I am attracted to.
    If I were to put some of my major loves in a line together, there would be nothing visually in common with them except a special twinkle in their eye, an ease and grace in their manner and an abundance of laughter, an independance, freedom of thought and being, an inquisitive mind and a intense desire to climb the highest peaks of the earth, just to see how it looks from up there, share a wonder and delight in the universe, and have the humility to realise that we are not very important at all.
    You can have great sex with anyone if you really want to and shame on you if you have bad sex with someone because you didn’t really want to but thought you should because you wanted to fit into some graph.. or prove to your self that you ARE desirable over 30!
    Just let go of the bullshit, love who you want, age doesn’t matter.
    Very interesting stuff though! Thought provoking indeed, really liked Christine’s Cougar comments, and other but there were so many.
    Love comes from the inside, if you love your self you will radiate that and it will come to you, whatever you look like!
    We’ve all met those people who, at first sight are stunning, but are assholes and their looks wither away with every crass remark or self-righteous flick of the hair… they become ugly! Then there are those who you just don’t even notice when you first meet them but as you slowly get to know them, their beauty shines through and you wonder how come you never noticed it before!!
    Just some thoughts, I have never participated in any on-line debate before and there is only one person to blame for it.. But, truth be told I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts, Jen.

  14. tencardspread

    Funny, even the fact that I have an age preference on my profile, I still get chatted to by men younger than my “preferred”. One i’ve chatted to for months now and another I’ve met IRL and had a great time hanging out. I chalk this up to my “youthful exuberance”, ok fine, immaturity.

    I would like to think that this article shows that people are over pigeonholing others-cougar, gold-digger, etc.-and just looking to meet people they might actually LIKE for whatever reason. Sadly the comments from some of the idiots who have responded (Nutz) show we are not quite there….yet.

  15. doesn't matter

    Guess as a 35 year old white male of average ttractiveness, Im shit out of luck. A majority of women will rate me very harshly on my appearance, everyone assumes the worst about me as a person, and only my female contemporaries are worth dating and then only by men 10 years their junior.

    Seriously okcupid, you suck.

  16. drsanchez

    Quit calling women in their 30’s ~older~.

    And yes, men tend to search younger than their own age. I’m 40 and I’d still like to have a family, which means my mate needs to be under 40. It doesn’t mean I’m looking for a recent high-school graduate just for sex.

  17. christine

    i read bits and pieces of your article. i find it astonishing that most guys who are IN THEIR 30s won’t reply to emails from women in their SAME EXACT age range. can you say hippocrite? i don’t always message only younger guys i message who i like, period. guys are SO hungup on age. it’s annoying. also don’t young guys understand that women in their mid 30s are in their sexual prime? and young guys hit their sexual prime in their 20s…so why are you deleting all the messages from the 30 y/o women? men are totally fixated on airbrushed photoshopped models who we can’t EVER look like in our wildest dreams…how are any of us women supposed to compete with that? please. it makes you totally lose faith in men altogether.

  18. Tom

    I must agree with Jon. Kindly keep your hands off the women of my generation, whippersnappers!

  19. Eve-il

    Thank you. I am married, 33, with 1 sexual partner. But I have many relationships with men and women, and I have noticed power and attraction relationships that are interesting,but confusing to me.

    I had two friends(men, in late 30s and early 40s) who were attracted to me, but not attracted to women their age. We were out to dinner one night and They were insulting a group of beautiful 40 and 50 something women. saying they were old bags that spent all day at the spa/salon.

    These men seemed to me to be attracted to me because I was sexy to them. The ironic thing to me was that I think I am sexy to them for two reasons. One because I am relatively pretty, young, and thin, and the other because I really am self respecting and would Never sleep with a guy like them because they do not respect women enough.

    I have for years found it disturbing that the more disdain I have for these particular set of sterotyped male antics the more burning the sexual attraction seems to be towards me.

    Frankly, It really does make me more and more gay. Because I respect those gorgeous 40s and 50s something women So much more than those men. But ironically, that also attracts those particular men, because they want to watch me have sex with those women.

    Can you see how I am messed up about this? Just because I am out of the dating pool doesn’t mean I don’t live in a world with these pressures. So I very much appreciate your charts and the people’s comments and discussions.

    I have not felt this not gay in years, because I can see room in your numbers for a bunch of cool guys that are not just interested in watching two women who hate them have sex with them.

    I was rated a 7 out of 10 in elementary school by a boy I had a crush on, and I have always felt that this was pretty accurate. But I have a certain sex appeal, because I really want to have sweet sweet sex.

    When I was in my early 20s I was not confident enough to not do something if it hurt, consequently I was deeply conflicted about sex. Because I was uneducated on how to have sex in positions and ways that didn’t hurt or to slowly and trustfully build up sexual positions etc. in ways that don’t hurt.

    Now I have confidence to say no when I am uncomfortable, and know that I am far from frigged. I just want sex to be gratifying for both every time. And Now I have experience and knowledge of how that is possible.

    Many of my friends and family are getting divorced and remarried(I’m at that age, I guess). And they are like me. Already have children. Are sexually more confident, and know how to be attractive.

    I don’t think it is the age inequity of attraction that is the problem. I think that the sterotype man here is attracted to a thin woman that is well above average attractiveness and active, and not needy. And these men do not meet these standards themselves and as a group are not wealthy enough to offset all of their weaknesses, especially now that woman are more and more capable of financially offsetting their attraction to money by working and providing for themselves.

    So for now, while women aren’t fully independent and self confident it seems that men can get women that are younger. Because for ex; maybe she is not able to support herself and she is ok with a slightly uglier older guy, who thinks her firm butt makes up for her lack of independence. Supply and demand.

    i think men are attracted to good things. They like me for being independent, self confident, thin, relatively attractive, and sexually competent, but of course I am taken. And my poor husband hated it when I was all of the opposite, but I did have a really hard butt. I just hope that made up for the hours of crying and frustration.

    Come on, call a spade a spade. Young women are what they are, and older are what they are. I just hope relationships can make it through both.

    And as a side note; I wonder how many women are like me and feel more attractive physically the older I get? I think this will decline after 35, but I honestly think I got better looking as I lost my baby fat, and learned how to dress etc.

    I know that I thought my mother was more beautiful than Juliette Binoche at 35. and only very pretty as a 20 something.

  20. candy

    as an attractive 27 year old woman who passes for early twenties, i receive tons of messages from guys who are 35-50, not at all attractive, don’t share any of my opinions or interests, and who are often embodiments of specific traits that i have clearly stated my disinterest in. they are so far removed from me in lifestyle and social community that it’s unlikely we would have ever even passed each other on the street or been hanging out at the same place. not only is it incredibly annoying to have to sift through their messages, but the fact that these men feel they have any chance with or anything to offer me is almost enraging. it is a perfect example of how traditional male standards of worth are based almost entirely on their gender alone and partially on their ability to make a basic modest income, while women are judged harshly and considered undesirable even when they are smarter, better looking, more fun, more active, more interesting, and more self sufficient than men their age. the fact that these painfully uninteresting guys have the inflated egos and overestimated self confidence to continually message hot young girls who are not only out of their league but clearly not interested is a testament to how rampant sexism is in our culture. it’s also amazing that most of these men are clearly not reading my profile and just messaging me based on photos, but when i go to their profiles they list things like long term relationships and not casual sex instead of just being honest about why they’re really here. maybe they think if they throw the generic bait out enough times they’re bound to catch something young and pretty and unassuming, but i wonder if any of them are ever successful with this tactic even once, and if not then what keeps them coming back to try again other than their feeling of entitlement and inability to have their egos deflated, which is a direct result of their male privilege. anyway, i could say a million things more, but i just wanted to let these men know that they’re fooling themselves, and also to thank you for posting this article.

  21. Italian guy

    Hi, I am 36 and, based on your charts, am about to go underwater as regards my chances of beating the average male fellow. Sounds scary! In my experience, more and more older women are realizing they can be attractive to younger men (One of my best friends, a 40 year old lady, is having a long term relationship with a guy who’s exactly half her age).
    I am happy women have finally realized they deserve to try and get whatever men have always wanted.
    But we can’t deny that you can’t expect a “logical” behavior when it comes to heart matters. It is just natural that people will look for younger mates. Your web-site-counsellor role may not help you say that, but biological instints cannot be suppressed by “JavaScript graphs”.

  22. Nadine

    so old women are unattractive and infertile, on the other hand they’re desperate and grateful. Pay your money and make your choice.

    Luckily you don’t have to admit your real age on the internet, you should just lie about it, better than lying to yourself. :(

  23. Wow an amazing amount of work went into this article and kudos for that. Some of the graphs are easily a goldmine of information! Being a 20 year old male student I can relate to the what can I offer to even a 22 year old woman who is already out of school?

    I feel there is one missed point in the article though. The evolutionary reason for men to pick younger women is fertility. The range ends at around 35 while men are fertile into their 70s. This can also relate to why men find women younger to themselves.

  24. D

    I think I’m one of those people who throw off the curve as well. My oldest match age is 9 years above myself (for guys and girls) and my youngest is 3 years below. Sorry, but I don’t want to be dealing with kiddies anymore.

    And yes, older women are amazing! If you’re not sure, ask yourself this: would you rather have sex with someone who looked good doing it or was really AMAZING at doing it? Not that older women can’t be just as hot as younger- but they’re definitely more sexually experienced and talented.

  25. unjump

    Believe it or not, a lot of men want children, knowingly or just instinctively. For a mid-20s aged male w/o kids, pursuing someone in her mid to late 30s or older makes it pretty likely that by the time they actually get around to a point where they’re comfortable intentionally having a first child together the woman will be approaching menopause.

    But you know, this whole “procreation” business isn’t very important, we’re all just looking for good sex right?

  26. older women are great. there should be a selection of older women to browse on ok cupid.

  27. BigB

    The reason they are mostly ignored by me is because they tend to have one or many more children.

  28. I think what men might look for on a dating site is different from what they actually do go for in real life. Perhaps the possibility of rejection online by a young, beautiful woman is a lot less daunting than in real life, so that may cause more of them to try and reach out beyond their age bracket.

    I persuaded a friend in his late 30’s (who I think is an all round great catch) to sign up for okC. He normally dates women around his age and finds younger women in general annoying and deluded. He logged onto the site once while I was there, and there was a whole load of matches for him that were around his age and he went, “Oh man, I signed on so I could meet young, nubile girls. Not women my age!”

    If I didn’t know him I would have thought he was an ass, but he’s normally not like that. So I’m guessing part of it could be the mental state a guy is in when looking for random chicks online.

  29. This is interesting, since I’ve recently become single again after being married for nearly 20 years. And I’ve found that dating in my late 40s is *way* better and I have much more opportunity than I did when I was in my 20s. This is the opposite of what I’d expected at the outset, and it’s been a nice surprise. And it’s good to see that there is apparently some actual data that supports this.

  30. Jason

    Thank you so much OKcupid!!! This is exactly what I’ve had on my mind the past few days and you so succinctly provided good data. Very interesting results and not exactly what I expected. But very good indeed. :)

  31. UKGuy

    Wusif, you are an ill educated liability.

    If you’ve ever had sex you have the responsibility to get tested for STIs. The people who do get tested are the responsible ones. If it’s been some time (3+ months, 6 ideally) since you last had sex, now is the ideal time to get tested so that you can be sure you’re STI free for your next partner.

    People who catch STIs are not necessarily doing anything wrong, and all STIs are not equal. There is no such thing as safe sex – the only thing that exists is *safer* sex, where the risk is substantially reduced from unprotected unconsidered sex.

    Get educated. Learn about the different types of STI, how each of them can be preventd and what can be done if you do catch them. Knowledge is power.

  32. George de la Jungle

    The writer leaves out, or is unaware of, the key issue with older women. TEH CRAZY!!!
    I married at 32 and divorced at 39. Given my very average looks and career level, I found myself pursuing mostly women about five years younger than myself.
    I was surprised how many relatively serious — well, serious enough to scare me off — personality issues I ran into. I hadn’t expected that, but of course I should have, as it only stands to reason. A nice looking woman, mid-30s or older, with plenty to talk about and capable of doing so intelligently. A triple! Not so fast. There’s a reason she’s single. She’s NUTTIER THAN A FRUITCAKE. This emerges slowly, though, through a series of dates, rather than on the first time out, since she’s gotten better at camouflage over the years.
    I’m a bit of a man slut, so in most of those cases, I angled for the lay anyway. Then looked for the next exit point and took it! There are a couple of genuine disappointments as well, eg women who I was tremendously attracted to physically and really enjoyed just spending time with, and even hobbies with etc., but that just weren’t emotionally stable enough to be likely to last over the long haul.
    I persisted, though, and tried to have fun playing without hurting too many feelings of my own and others before finally finding the right one — which I sincerely consider to be akin to winning the lottery — and settling down. She’s 14 years younger than me, but we seem to have no age-related issues whatsoever…

  33. David

    Well Then Let Users Take the Age Off the Page

    Your study is flawed. In “real life” people meet without knowing the other person’s actual age. On OKC, age cannot be concealed, unless the user deliberately lies.

    This article is quite convincing as an argument for allowing users not to post their ages publicly. Facebook allows it. Why doesn’t OKC?

    There’s no requirement for OKC users to post whether they are thin or fat, so why should they have to post ages? If you want to put your money where your mouth is and actually do something to help users hook up with better matches, you’ll change your policy instead of just paying lip service to the idea.

    Maybe you’re afraid of some stereotypical “child molester” scenarios. Well those guys have always been able to just lie. What about all the users that want to be honest, but don’t want to immediately be stereotyped by preconceptions about age?

  34. UKGuy

    David, you’re not accounting for users that look much older than they are. You hope that you can grow older with your partner, but there’s also the worry that they’d rapidly age.

    It’s one thing for a 25 year old to go out with a 35 year old, or 35 with 45 and accept there will be a normal aging process. It’s quite another to have two 25 year olds where one looks 35 and may rapidly look older.

    Candy, it’s probably time to learn to calm down if you’re getting worked up or angry when contacted by people you don’t like – you can’t control it, so getting worked up won’t do you any good. The 35+ year olds may be trying it on, but they may also have a different perspective on life than you – and besides, using age/2+7, you’re well within the ‘advised’ dating search bracket.

    I get contacted by unattractive 45-50 year olds, but I’m not about to get annoyed or insult them. They have a right to search for a date too, even if I choose to reject their advances. I’ll also inwardly laugh at the women with huge lists and nothing to offer back, but they’re simply going to have to be very lucky or learn the hard way to improve themselves/be realistic.

    With regards casual sex, some men won’t have serious relationships with women who have casual sex, and some women won’t even speak to men who list casual sex. Also, women that are happy to have sex on the first date but feel it is their right to a relationship afterwards are a sizeable minority of daters (this is obviously no different than casual sex..). It is therefore no surprise that people lie.

    Not reading the profile is a habit both men and women have, and in my experience women can be remarkably thoughtless. Young, old, male or female, many of these are basic human dating problems.

  35. Dan

    I love the discussion about “older” men and women. It’s so ageist in its supposed enlightenment. What does it say to women in their 50s and older that the title of this article is about “Older” women who are in their, what, 30s?

    Why did the study only focus on one age group, basically a younger one? I realize that there would be less data for people 50 and older, but that problem can be handled in other ways that are statistically valid.

    But of more importance, would the conclusions be altered when the lens is drawn further back, to see what it is like over the entire age span? Perhaps focusing only on a subset of the sample does not allow one to fully understand what is happening. Might the data presented here lead to different, and perhaps more valid, conclusions if the context (i.e., the entire developmental ages of dating) were considered?

  36. Alison Carey

    What a great thing to read on my 26th birthday. Seriously though I hope this article changes the world. Hurrah for statistics!

  37. sanfransocialite

    As an older woman of 37 I can say that while your numbers are good – they don’t tell the story of how it would actually play out in the real world.

    Unfortunately, there is a very big gap in the social and economics between a woman in her late 30’s and a man in his mid-twenties.

    I think many men pick younger women because they want to feel superior to a woman and when faced with a woman who has an established career, a home and thriving social life they feel inferior and intimidated and seek someone they can feel more akin too.

  38. Sean

    There are some interesting points here, and GREAT uses of interactive information visualization techniques. Kudos for that.

    Unfortunately that’s overshadowed by TREMEMENDOUS flaws in your interpretation and framing of the data.

    The three biggest flaws:

    1– You built this upon subjective value judgments, suggesting that men overall are somehow foolish, or perverted, or even evil and unethical because of their preferences for younger women. I suppose bringing extreme personal opinions into this can be great, it can make your presentation more human and funny, but you should be transparent about that and clearly frame your opinions as opinions, so that casual readers don’t get them confused with the facts, so they can walk away forming their own informed opinions and so your own credibility remains intact.

    2- You sidestepped the fact that, by and large, most males prefer younger females, and most females prefer younger males, across almost all human cultures – and among the other primates as well.

    3– You overlooked the overriding reasons why (2) is true. It’s not because men or women are dumb or evil. It’s not because we’ve all been tricked into thinking this way by the media (although media portrayals of beauty cause all sorts of other problems…) It’s not because men and women sit down to decide logically who it is we’ll be attracted to, and we’re somehow following the wrong flowchart. (We don’t *decide* these things anyway. We *feel* them.) It’s because that’s the way we evolved. Significantly more women in their 20s pair up with men in their 30s than the other way around, because more such couples survived to raise more, and healthier, children who survived to carry on those biologically-encoded preferences. Presumably that’s because slightly younger women gave birth to the healthiest babies, and because slightly older men were the most successful in protecting them from physical attacks from lions, humans and the like.

    In short: You’ve got some great data, and thanks for sharing it, but please try to contextualize it!

    Thanks

  39. Sean

    I can’t believe that I misspelled “tremendous.”

  40. Neo

    Christian conveniently forgot to mention that most older single women have more baggage than an Airbus Superjumbo.

  41. shaster

    Very interesting. Speaking as a 50-year-old, male, OKC member, older women (in my case, as much as 11 years older) are more “randy” and are contacting younger men! My last OKC girlfriend was five years older than me. I would be interested to see want is reflected in older data samples.

    What your research fails to recognize is why men are skewed to younger women. Many men are not just looking for a roll in the hay, but a potential, fertile mate. Women under 25 are way more fertile, while women over 36 have dramatically lower fertility rates. Hence, men, who want to have children, have no choice, but to look at younger women. It is a simple law of biology!

  42. Amy

    Very interesting article! From a an evolutionary perspective, though, men want one thing – to pass on their genes. And guess who is the most fertile? That’s right, young women. Maybe men can use cognition to overcome this particular evolutionary bias, but I’m doubtful.

  43. Matt

    Please make this blog a book. I would buy it for everyone I know.

  44. Alex

    on the map for sex, exibit A, in Oregon, malheur county is a dark blue, why’s everybody makin’ whoopy in malheur county, Oregon?

  45. megan

    i would buy the book too. seriously.

    depressing to know that i’m already a few years past my peak attractiveness at 24. on the other hand, i have a fabulous boyfriend who’s 36. from my perspective, the older man/younger woman pairing simply makes more sense than the other way around. if either partner is into traditional gender roles at all (the man paying for both when the couple goes out, for example), this is unlikely to work if the guy is less established than she is…

    also, what’s with young women in the eastern half of the u.s. only wanting to have sex once a week?

  46. dk

    One possible explanation for the “striping” in the women’s heat map at age 29 is that women may be lying about their age. It’s not hard to imagine that women in their early thirties are saying they are 29, resulting in a stripe for 29-year-olds that looks much more characteristic of early 30s than 28-year-olds. There’s a similar, fainter stripe at 39. On the other hand, I have a hard time explaining why early-twenties women would say they were 20, especially since it would make them too young to drink. Maybe it’s teenagers saying they’re older to get older guys?

  47. ANGIE

    OLDER WOMEN THAT ARE ATTRACTIVE , FINANCIAL STABLED , HAVE A BEAUTIFUL HOME AND DO NOT HAVE A BUNCH OF CHILDREN RUNNING RUNNING AROUND THE HOUSE IS VERY INVITING TO A YOUNGER MALE. I AM 20 PLUS YEARS OLDER THAN MY BOYFRIEND, MANY YOUNGER WOMEN DID NOT TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY AND WHEN HE WAS DOWN AND OUT THEY DID NOT GIVE HIM THE TIME OF DAY. I WAS ABLED TO SEE HIM AS THE MAN HE IS AND TOOK A CHANCE WITH HIM. HE HAS TWO CHILDREN AND HAD A TERRIBLE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE YOUNGER WOMAN. THE YOUNGER WOMAN IS IMMATURE , PLAYED A LOT OF HEAD GAMES, AND WAS UNSURE OF HERSELF. MANY YOUNGER MEN WANT TO HAVE A LIFE AND THEY WANT TO ENJOY IT. WITH MANY OF THE YOUNGER FEAMALES IF THE MEN DO NOT HAVE A LOT OF MONEY TO SPEND ON THEM THEY DO NOT WANT THEM. THERE ARE A LOT OF YOUNGER MALES THAT CAN NOT FIND A DECENT GIRLFRIEND. THEY ARE VERY HAPPY TO BE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH AN OLDER WOMAN. JUST AS A YOUNGER WOMAN ENGAGE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH AN OLDER MAN FOR SECURITY THE YOUNGER MEN ARE DOING THE SAME THING. DATING A OLDER WOMAN MAKE LIFE EASY FOR A YOUNGER MAN, SHE HAS PATIENCE AND WILL GIVE HIM THE SUPPORT TO DEVELOPE HIS LIFE TO ITS FULLEST POTENTIAL. THE OLDER WOMAN IS A BRIDGE THAT THE YOUNGER MAN CAN CROSS AND GAIN WISDOM AND FEEL MORE SECURE ABOUT HIMSELF. THE OLDER WOMAN IS NOT JEALOUS AND SHE IS NOT A DRAMA QUEEN, SHE BEEN THERE AND HAVE DID ALL OF THAT. FINALLY AN OLDER WOMAN DOES NOT MIND SHARING HER ASSETS WITH THE YOUNGER MAN. THE OLDER WOMAN IS NOT A GOLD DIGGER !

  48. Conan

    Y’know it was interesting I did a match search and set my preferences for people 10 years older than me and up…For the longest time Okcupid kept trying to match me up with younger people (including in icebreakers, quivers etc.).

  49. Evan Perigoe

    What Goes Around Comes Around
    Yes, the attractiveness and “dateablility” of Men and women peak at different points in their lives. But when I was 18, 19, 20 and 21 I couldn’t get a date with a woman the same age to save my life. 18 year old girls dated 22 year old guys, 21 year-old college students were dating older grad students.

    Now that I’m in my mid twenties, it’s finally my turn.

    This study negates something REALLY obvious. If I date, develop a relationship with and then marry a 21 year old she will be very attractive into her mid 40s: that’s more than two decades of being with someone really hot. If anything this study establishes that with a girl like that the best really would be yet to come.

    But if I dated, had a relationship and then married a woman who was 31, I’d only get about half as much time of a partner who was truly attractive to me.

    I know: love conquers all, so whoever I eventually end up with will always be beautiful in my eyes. But if I can chose, why not chose younger.

    This study also ignores a CRUCIAL variable: money.
    As women age, they develop better and more expensive tastes.
    Take a girl who’s 20 to a restaurant with soft lighting and nice silverware and pretend like you know your wines and she’ll be impressed for $50-$70.

    Try the same thing with a girl 5 years older — who has probably dated successful men in their late 20s and early 30s many times– and she won’t be impressed by a bill under $150 from a 3 star restaurant.

    As a young guy in a recession, I just can’t afford the tastes of older women. And somehow I doubt that any of them will be treating me any time soon.

  50. W

    You ought to look at it the other way round – your claim is that younger men should date older women. But what is the use if older women refuse to accept younger men?