The Case For An Older Woman

February 16th, 2010 by Christian Rudder

"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.

721 Responses to “The Case For An Older Woman”

  1. The Statistician says:

    @The Economist,

    You’re committing a very common logical error: the Conditional Probability Fallacy.

    You say that 50% of the time, infertility is caused by the man. So what! The point is that FOR A GIVEN MAN, regardless of his fertility level, it is virtually always true that a younger woman is more statistically likely to be:

    1). Fertile
    2). HAVE MORE YEARS of fertility ahead of her
    3). More likely to have healthy children and fewer complications
    4). More able to RAISE her children, healthier, for longer, and make sure they reproduce

    Remember, what matters in the biological-genetic game is not just how likely a woman is to get pregnant in any once instance, but also how many opportunities she has left to get pregnant, how likely those children are to be healthy, and how able she is to raise them in the future (if something happens to the man).

    In every case, younger women are more statistically desirable mates. And so therefore, FOR A GIVEN MAN, younger mates are virtually always more biologically attractive.

    So, before you go calling names, reconsider your assumptions.

  2. 18 year olds like younger girls, too. says:

    One thing I think you forgot to mention about the graphs.

    18 year olds date younger than themselves.

    I’m not blaming you; the minimum age to sign up for okcupid is 18.

    What the charts should read is 18 year old males date females as low as 15

    so 18 15
    19 16
    20 16
    21 17
    22 17
    23 17
    24 18One thing I think you forgot to mention about the graphs.

    18 year olds date younger than themselves.

    I’m not blaming you; the minimum age to sign up for okcupid is 18.

    What the charts should read is 18 year old males date females as low as 15

    so 18 15
    19 16
    20 16
    21 17
    22 17
    23 17
    24 18

  3. Rachel says:

    It is so lol to see men arguing over this argument in terms of fertility. Men fancy younger women, period. Society persistantly sexualizes teenagers and preteens – for example with this recent trend for removing pubic hair. Who has no pubic hair? Pre adolescents! Who does not get periods? Pre adolescents! Men can continue justifying their prediliction for young to illegally young women and children by ranting on about fertility cycles and biological predilictions – the truth is that everything men find beautiful about women, is more evident in young women. Fair hair, slimness, lack of body hair – it really is as shallow as that.

  4. Jack Kessler says:

    Talk about skewed statistics! Good Lord! It may come as a huge shock to you twits that there are people older than forty, older, than fifty, older than sixty, and older than seventy. Theeee hottest cougar I know admits to being 73 though I am sure she is older, and she preys on me because I am only 63. And I soooo much enjoy being preyed on.

    We live in an age of male potency in a bottle and libido in pills. It is definitely not over until it’s over. And let me tell ya, it ain’t over.

  5. ballsdanglin says:

    i don’t want no old wrinkled bitch with kids and grandkids!

  6. Seru says:

    I’m actually apparently opposed to the norm. I like an Older woman because I can trust she will be Stable emotionally, and will be likely more experienced and honest.

    That, and I don’t need some young pup who doesn’t understand my habitual laments about honour.

    (LordInquisitor on OKCupid)

  7. Kelly says:

    Personally, I’m ok with having a smaller amount of men messaging me as I get older. I basically can’t use this site as a 25 year old due to all the totally useless messaging I get from totally boring men. I look forward to a smaller pool, and hope it includes people who bother to think of whether or not we will actually have something to talk about.

  8. Joshua says:

    This post offers good advice for men who are in their teens or 20’s, or who do not want children. But there comes a point at which the desire of a childless man to have children (or at least have the option of having children) conflicts with the lower likelihood of older women to conceive. It’s a function of our animal nature that many of us would like to reproduce. Since I’m almost 35, I think i’m unlikely to find that in a woman more than a couple years older. It may be foolish to place that kind of value on a few strands of DNA, but that feeling is pretty hard-wired, and pretty hard to fight.

  9. Jessica says:

    Thanks for writing this. I always enjoy your charts. Yay charts!

    Men don’t seem to have a very good idea of the age of women they are dealing with in day to day life. Obviously on OKCupid they see the age printed out but in normal life when they see women walking around – they are VERY inaccurate about guessing a woman’s age.

    I am in my late 20’s, early 30’s. Because I am “attractive” men assume I am between 18-22 (which I know because they tell me, often). if they don’t bring it up I don’t tell them how old I am. When they find out my age they are shocked. I don’t know where they get this idea that women all get fat and ugly after age 24 but I suspect it’s one of those things that – they make this error ALL the time and never realize it. So in their mind it confirms it.

    I don’t mind anymore I’ve learned that a good way to sort out the losers is – if a guy assumes because he is attracted to me I must be 18 – that’s a pretty good cue he is socially inept and I should just end the conversation right then.

    Also, I have always dated younger men. it’s a coincidence, I don’t have a hard and fast rule, it’s just that the older ones … I don’t know. It’s just never happened.

    I also think it’s barrels of cute when men talk about how they have to date a younger woman because of her fertility. No dude, you just need someone to make you feel like a big man. Men over 40 have a much harder time conceiving, the pregnancy is more likely to result in a miscarriage, older men are more like to have babies that develop schizophrenia and autism, increased rates of cancer, dwarfism, neurofibromatosis, Apert Syndrome, lower nonverbal IQ scores, Downs Syndrome …. and even these children’s children are more likely to have birth defects like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, hemophilia. The list goes on and on.

    So, women who want to have children: stay away from men over age 40. :p

  10. John says:

    RE: STDs and testing

    Wouldn’t an older woman have had many more opportunities to get STDs and therefore a much better reason to get tested?

  11. lsl says:

    I’m 38 and really depressed by this. I look and act way younger but it doesn’t seem to matter. Gah!

  12. wtf says:

    @JOHN (4/7/2010)

    Younger woman have the greater chance of STD’s I’m guessing, because (I’m guessing )they put out a lot & like a lot of sex. If they didn’t you wouldn’t be interested in them either, so cut the bullshyte. Just cut it and get a new song to sing.

  13. Villain1 says:

    I wasn’t aware that you were calling anybody names, (stupid guy ego thing) I thought you did a great job with your article. Well done.

    I have personally invested lots of time and money and countless hours of rehersing and gradual practice and learned as much about “Female Psychology” as I could for many months. (Divorce recovery) I wanted to know more about them than they did, not for taking advantage of women. There’s a whole lot more going on than just sex. Most guy’s haven’t got a clue. I can communicate with just about any women I choose and interlectually converse on many subjects. I have lived and worked on three different continents, so have travelled extensively and tasted many cultures. My hobbies include wines, (making and tastings), cooking, music, female psychology, hypnosis, NLP, stock market, anything new age, self help toys, gadgets, cd’s dvd’s hundreds of e-books. I understand the workings of some of the universal laws. BTW, the law of attraction works like the law of gravity, it always works.

    I was exposed to much during a 25 year period of being a professional salesperson, sales manager and as a marketing manager. I have met many people over the years, I have trained many people.

    I had only recently discovered that one of the biggest problems men have with meeting women face to face is what’s called”Inner Game” It means they are terrified to approach a woman let alone have a conversation with them. Luckily I have never experienced this. Men spend fortunes on learning how to become a PUA’s, pick up artists. I was one of them, I have learned a lot about F P there. (and still learning)

    I’m not a PUA although with the knowledge, experience, skills and training I have under my belt I would consider myself as being lethal in this arena if necessary.

    I have some experience regarding the use of dating sites with all kinds of results. I have just made some arrangements to meet a 19 yr old woman this weekend, We’ve been e-mailing back and forth for a few days, she finally asked for a picture of me which I immediately sent, she called me an intriguing sexy old man.

    My occupation is that of a construction pipefitter in the oil and gas industry, so I can get lots of time off between jobs. I am tanned, toned, fit, healthy and strong. I take good care of myself and walk a lot. I am very well groomed, I have pedicures, manicures and facials, I get my grey hair cut every two weeks. I dress well, courteous and well mannered. I am a good dancer and socially gracious and apparently charming. After my divorce I was a wreck, I have worked very hard at getting myself rebuilt.

    I will have a meaningful conversation with any age range of women. My age range for getting physical with them ranges from 19 to whatever physically attracts me. I don’t hunt specifically just young things (very flighty if you ask me) or married women, or cougers, she’s just has to be attractive to me.

    For women online, average often turns out to (should have said a few extra pounds……) if you’re not overweight then say I’m slender or slim. Sorry girls, I know men lie as well.

    Age of women friends I have gotten physical with from now being the present until Nov 2008 which was when I felt I was ready to date again are as follows, my meeting this weekend will be my most recent, yes I am that confident, sorry guy’s eat your heart out, (do the work on yourself) ages 33, 38, 24, 24, 22, 54, 47, 19, 23, 21, 42.

    I have another as yet unanswered 7 e-mails out to more women of ages of 19, 22, 24

    ,27, 28, and 30 years old. Fingers crossed.

    Last but not least a woman friend of mine (Married) 43, decided to get something outside a failing marriage and recently posted a personal profile on a website. she told me that she received about 30 odd replies within a week. I asked her several weeks later how it was going? She replied “I know one thing, I’ll never even bother with anyone under 28, they’re absolutely hopeless and don’t know anything.” She ended up seeing three and is down to one only.

    Like that other guy said ” It ain’t over till it’s over”

    I am only 61. And, I am very thankful.

  14. Kick says:

    lol! great article, totally on point :) i am another example of someone people are shocked to hear the number when told my age; i identify with slightly younger age bracket, seem to have the most in common and tend to have better dates.

    would love to see you do an article geared toward my age bracket extolling some of the benefits of dating younger men. because there *are* younger men who prefer to date slightly older age bracket; i see too many examples of women’s profiles where they request not to be contacted by men under a certain age and i really believe they are shortchanging themselves :)

    thanks

    (kick_keswick on okcupid.com)

  15. Bob says:

    One thing I didn’t see you address adequately was children. Not fertility, but already having children. How many women compared to men already have children, and how many women are single mothers that have primary custody of their kids. The odds of dating a woman in her 20s that doesn’t have kids is much better than a woman in her 30s or 40s. If an older man is childless, from a pure dating perspective, having a girlfriend that doesn’t have to care for children is much more convenient.

  16. philip says:

    i didn’t know there was so much math involved in targeting women. i’d rather use the shotgun method and use my math skills for poker.

  17. Griff says:

    It’s interesting that I didn’t hear any talk about unfair dating practices from women during highschool and college when they were all dating older guys with cars and money. That age bracket is a lot harder on guys for dating, I wonder if all the older women now complaining about ageism were complaining then.

  18. anon says:

    Your pictures comparing older and younger women are misleading. Older women can certainly look as good as younger ones… until the clothes come off. At that point the differences are usually pretty obvious, and the effects on libido predictable, especially for older men. So it should not be surprising that we prefer younger women, regardless of any other considerations.

  19. joseph Bolden says:

    Another thing is change and its not viagra its men living healthier
    and longer, like me with energy to burn but knowing pacing is key.
    I like dancing, dancing is sex play on the floor but at times I want
    to eliminate the foreplay (dancing) and get to the play (sex) and move on.

    Anti Aging life extending tech is giving more men and women more time
    to enjoy what was too short a life. As for women lots of ’em in their late
    teens up to early 30’s know that men have baggage and women have issues.
    (Issues and baggage are the flipside of the genders facing off each other)

    It seems the only way men really can get what they want is to actually research
    which adult dating sites is geared to them specifically.
    I’m only on a younger site like facebook is because a younger woman wanted me.

    But really some really RRR sites are what men and women are looking for not fake
    play sites that is only chat-on-line. Agism is anti male and female as attractiveness
    is looked on as a negative when horny guys like myself 55 or women in their 60’s still
    get it on daily(we take more time but then we know what where now more capable of
    and know our limits) I cannot wait to be on a website where women in their early 20’s
    prefer older men and its no Eww factor. Besides if I don’t continue doing it I may stop
    and drop dead due to lack of excercise:)

    I feel slightly sorry for younger people but don’t have much sympathy in that they
    have time to figure stuff out meanwhile I cannnot choose any site but a specific site
    where younger or slighlly older woman are smart, horny, and adventurous to take me
    on. I was never the hansome, athletic, suave, well traveled seducer of women.

    Now I don’t have to be they can seduce me anytime and its no ones business but ours.
    Someday the aging may be reversed enought where everyone has more time but for now
    Its a mutual choice between men and women of various ages to choose whom they want
    for their own mutual needs, wants, and desires. That’s the new world we’re living in and I’m
    glad to be around and enjoy it. I pray that applied science will keep advancing.
    and that elder woman and men such as grow youthful and younger.

  20. Drew says:

    This article completely fails to mention that from a young age, women consistently message older guys. For all the guys who struggled and failed to find a mate their age when they were in their high teens and early twenties, I’m saying don’t blame us for getting back what we missed out on when we are finally attractive to that age group.

    The article also fails to mention that, once they figure out what they want at about age 30, women are all about messaging younger guys. Trouble is, the biological clock is ticking, and which 25 to 30 yo man wants to start a family a few months into a new relationship?

    To all the women whose time is running out I say, maybe you should have stayed with that nice guy back then, the guy who put you on a pedestal which made him a bit boring, so you dumped him for that rebellious sexy guy who treated you badly all those years.

  21. Shadowplayher says:

    I seem to be at the bottom of all of these charts in terms of attractiveness to the dating pool (chronological age 47, mental age — whatever I want it to be…..)

    My experience here as proven otherwise. I’ve been messaged by men from the age of 18 all the way to 70 years old. Some of the young bucks are hot for me to make them my boy toy. To them, my stage of maturity seems to be a plus rather than a negative.

  22. eddie says:

    awesome info, interesting stuff. i am 24 and my wife is 36 and our baby is 1 and this has really shed some light. i have always been for the older girls though. they are just so much more real

  23. Craig says:

    I could not agree with Drew more, I’m 23 and moving on up on that scale of ‘attractiveness’ for guys, and as soon as I’m to that level in a few years, it only makes sense for me to go after the hottest 18-23 year old women that I missed out on when I was actually their age, CUZ THEY DIDN’T WANT ME THEN/NOW CUZ I’M TOO IMMATURE. But where should I be looking?!?!

    Does this article suggest that when I’m 26-28 (in the peak of my life) that I would have better luck with a woman up to several years older? Wouldn’t it just seem weird dating a 33 year old or something at that age? And what’s wrong with the system the way it is, the cream of the 18-23 year old crop gets taken by older guys and that’s how it has to be, right?

  24. Practicalgrl says:

    Hmmmm…..I’m a 36 year old mother of two. I workout all the time and keep myself in shape. I’m married but if I were ever to find myself single, I would go at least ten years up. To a 46 plus year old, I’d be a young hottie. My grandmother was widowed at 50 and remarried a man 6 years older who happened to also be a multi-millionaire. My grandmother looked GREAT at her age. So you see…the game doesn’t end just cause you’re past 25! Love and seduction happens at all ages….you just have to know how to play.

  25. Sam says:

    I think the discontinuities in women’s dating preferences at ages 20 and 29 may be explained simply by the fact that some women lie about their age. According to what I’ve read, because of the “big three-oh” effect, there are lot of 30- and 31-year-old women who report as 29-year-olds. (This has been determined by just looking at the age histogram for women’s profiles, which drops at age 30, and picks up again around 31 or 32.)

  26. @the Author re:Statistical Analysis says:

    The average age of an OKCupid user is going to skew the charts on what the age of the typical recipient of messages is. The average age of an OKC user based on the histogram you provided is somewhere in the late 20s. The charts of what the average age of the person to whom messages are sent reflect a biased towards the late 20s simply probably because that is where the bulk of the users are in the first place.

    This may change the data significantly enough to change your narrative, or at least the severity of it.

    Hopefully what I’m trying to say makes a bit of sense to those who did the data mining.

  27. Mary says:

    @Joshua.

    That is kind of why I try to avoid older men, some of them are clearly too marriage and family oriented. Guys have an internal clock going and I am very creeped out by guys who want me for my reproductive capabilities. I’m more about having an adventure and sex than having kids. I want to travel. Become established. See the world.

    Second, not enough guys think it is important to stay attractive. They just aren’t insecure enough but guys often wildly over-estimate their own attractiveness and end up pestering women who aren’t at all interested. All of my friends have had this experience. As someone who intends to be a breadwinner after I finish my education, I’m going to want to date someone who has seen the inside of the gym. Being self sufficient, means I can afford to discriminate. It all comes down to economics. As more women become educated in hard subjects, they will be less interested in being a trophy wife. At least that’s my assumption. I could be wrong, but who wants to date someone who is flabbier, less educated, and more entitled than she is? I mean the diet here in the states is atrocious. It seems designed to make people age fast.

  28. Jessica says:

    I am 24 and if I were dating, I would definitely prefer dating an older man, at least 5 – 10 years older!

    Majority of my girlfriends agree with this. An older man is often more mentally mature, may have a career, own a house, and generally be setup in life. I also have children so the possibility of meeting a man who also has children from a previous relationship is higher when the man is older. This is opposed to younger dudes who are still in the ‘partying’ stages of their lives and may not understand the maturity it takes to raise children. Trust me, I have personally tried and tested this theory.

    I think it is unfair to say that older men hunt for younger women, because younger women find older men just as appealing.

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  30. notconvinced says:

    I don’t think that dating sites reflect the real world. I’m 40 but look 25-28. On a dating site, this will exclude me from searches. However, I am still surprised by the number or 25-35 year-old guys that ignore my age when I post a picture.

    In real life men my age NEVER approach me. If I approach them and we start talking they figure out my age from my stories and then become all excited because I look young but have all of the experience-goodness. I can actually see a shift in their facial expression/body language. They look like a kid on Christmas morning!

    My problem is meeting men my age in real life. I am not exaggerating; the average age of guys that are seriously interested in me is around 26. Although they are much more physically attractive than a 35 year-old man, they don’t have enough substance yet. Yes, men get much less physically attractive after 30 too. Why didn’t they get a chart too? šŸ˜›

  31. Susan says:

    I had to check the date this was published because I was convinced there was a reason why so many younger guys keep expressing interest in me even though I’m sooo damn old. But then it occured to me that I don’t spend as much time at okcupid that I do at the other sites so now I’m wondering if previous research has been done and that must be the reason why 2 of my last 3 partners/boyfriends were 12 years younger. But I’m in love with #3 who is 6 1/2 years older.
    Ya know.. I forgive you but.. we already know this information (heavily suspected) but we don’t really want confirmation as you have most surely done.

    Damn… oh, but YEAH… I SEEM TO WANT SEX more and more as I get older even though I am less happy with my physical appearance.

    Thank you for the help but I am not interested in younger guys. I don’t want to feel old and I don’t want to feel threatened by the younger women but I do and there’s no convincing myself that I’m just being paranoid.. thanks partly to your insight and mathemathic proficiency.

    ps..Exactly how old are you and do you have a profile? Now, I’m goin to look and discover that you have probably already answered or made obvious the answers to those questions and I’m goin to feel like a dumb girl… lol, when you get older you care less, lol… and it’s easier to accept that we are all dumb girls more often than we fear.

    thank you and kudos to you
    Have a great week

  32. JAl says:

    “Should” was a word used in this blog. Younger guys “should” be looking at older ladies?That, will never happen, even as there’s currently 1 in 4 girls with an STD There’s eons worth of great reasons to avoid older mates. This blog is clearly the work of the devil. Why is there an overwhelming desire to entirely change every possible thing about masculinity by females? Even when great points are made, they still want to try to undermine them just for the sake of trying their hand at an evil. WE ARE MEN! WE WILL DECIDE HOW MEN BE! The End

  33. Praved says:

    “In fact, unrealistic male expectations inspired this article, so we want to do everything we can to correct for them.”

    You’re going to correct nature? Something will leak out around the edged as you try to push the lid down.

    Women seem to have the most desire pleasure in their first half of life. Men get it increasingly in their first half and into their second. It was pretty shitty to have to be a younger male if you were in a large group of older teens and you wanted to catch the eye of the prettier girls. You had no chance. And the perception of elapsed time as a teenage boy was much greater for a shorter amount of actual time.

    You’ve focused only on adulthood. Life is a continuum and 18 is a cutoff that is specific but arbitrary. So your data and rhetoric are constrained by that. It all evens out when you broaden your spectrum to all of life I think. Otherwise, it would have caused pressure in society and our genes to adapt. We accept it.

    I doubt we’ll evolve from it. Maybe though, now that there is no real impetus to have babies real quick before all the men rush off and get killed as teenagers in wars. Would take a loong time.

    We’re designed such that women optimally procreate young and men splatter it wherever they’re allowed to to their greatest satisfaction. Men love feminine beauty and are attracted to it. In any of its ways and forms. I am anyway.

  34. JAL says:

    Did I mention that it’s been a long while since I’ve seen a blog this evil? My keyboard is refusing that I even type to it.

  35. stwom4ever says:

    Having dated men who are on average 8 years younger than me in my last 4 relationships- it is very interesting to re-enter the dating pool and have the following contact me:

    22-26 year olds who are more mature than some of the guys over 40!

    Having guys 61-66 contact me (I am 46). After dating younger men and… as I am childless, I am happy to be with people who have no kids or grown kids, but I don’t see myself realistically entertaining a 20 yr age difference in either direction

    NOT HAVING guys contact me who are 43-47! It seems these are the men who waited to get in the game and now want a relationship and children which I am not really prepared to do at 46 without a surrogate! BUT, most of them are the perfect match for me!

    Being contacted by guys 38-41 who “dig me” and think I am “cool” but think I may be too old at 46! My last relationship lasted 13+ yrs and he turned 40 this yr. No, he did not want kids and that was not the problem.

    What’s a girl/woman to do?

  36. Daniel says:

    I’m messaging older women all the time (ages 26-38 as suggested above) but keep getting told ā€œsorry you’re too youngā€. So maybe you should make a case for the younger guy. lol

  37. Judyjudygirl says:

    At 67 I am constantly receiving e-mails from men from 19-56 with the greatest number in their 40’s. I do not understand this since I very clearly state in my profile that I am not interested in men under 60. I am simply not interested in men my children’s age. So where are the men my own age? Out looking for 40 yo’s?

  38. D. says:

    When it comes to attractiveness and attitude, age is not more than a vague number. A 40 year old can look like 30 – or like 50. Am I right? Same age … and yet their looks are twenty years apart.

    I am 42, and for about four weeks on okcupid. Since then, more than 300 men of all ages (19 to 65) messaged, winked or added me to their favorites. All of my dates asked to see me again. I can’t complain, really šŸ˜‰

    Ok now … I am off to go rock climbing.

  39. bitBM says:

    Huh. What do you know? A study concluding what I already know. I’m going to get what I need before I become too old to be loved and valued by a man of any age.

  40. PhotoDrew says:

    Since I fit into this demographic I feel I need to comment. I’m 27. I’ve been dating younger the past year. The youngest I’ll go is 21, but the oldest I’ll go is 29. Although I’ve since upped the minimum to about 23 because the 21 year old party girl has lost it’s fun. It doesn’t please me that you’d rather spend more time drinking than doing something else with me, but hey that’s how it is at that age.

    But, back on subject, my reasoning of dating younger is as follows:

    1.) I’m not at a financially stable point in my life. I went back to school and work part time. Someone in a similar place in life is better for me.

    2.) What seems like a large percentage of girls my age that are online dating have children. Again stemming from where I’m at with things in life, I don’t want to be involved with someone who has kids.

    3.) I don’t want to date older because I do not want to be pressured in anyway into settling down right now.

    So all these reasons, at least for me personally have to do with my life situation. If things were more stable I would consider otherwise, but that’s just not the case. Although I would gladly go five years younger before I’d go five years older. Ideally though It’s 2 years in either direction. But that’s just me.

  41. Amused says:

    I am always amused at how many more he-trolls come out to leave bitter comments than she-trolls.

  42. Hmmm... says:

    So the data show that men spend a lot of time contacting much younger women. But do they have any success? Seems like they are indulging in “fantasy dating.” Sure younger women will let you take them out for dinner but…

    I’m skeptical of those extremely long emails from older men bragging about their success with younger women. Methinks the gentlemen do protest too much.

  43. Jamesf3 says:

    Another skew for men hitting on younger women – I don’t look for women under 50, but when I log in, the first 20 images you show me are 20 somethings. ‘YOU MIGHT LIKE’ is leading, too.

  44. DGB says:

    As a gay male, and thus more or less a third party observer of all this straight male stupidity, PhotoDrew’s and the Statistician’s comments above illustrate male hypocrisy and emotional/fiscal/biological double standards.

    So, PhotoDrew:

    1) If fiscal stability is an issue for men around your age, then why the assumption that the same isn’t true for women around your age range?

    2) Perhaps, but for that matter a lot of professional women are waiting later in life to have children. And where the hell are the fathers of these children, anyway? I know of some men this age that are divorced fathers as well, so using your logic, this issue has less to do with gender and more to do with whether or not the person is a parent, with childless members of both genders having better chances with younger men or women.

    3) That’s a strange comment. As I said above, a lot of women are having children in their 30’s. So why would a 27 woman be any more likely to pressure a male spouse of the same age than vice-versa?

    And then to top it all off, you said at the end that ideally “it’s 2 years in either direction.” But already you’ve said that you’re willing (allegedly) to go between 23 and 29, so that + or – 2 years is in that range. There’s no reason for someone your age to go as low as 23, and I bet you rarely date someone 29 years old, if ever. Even if they are based on a small kernel of truth, the reasons you gave are specious and absurd.

    As for Statistician, let’s see here:

    Did you know that older men are ALSO less fertile and are ALSO more likely to give father children with genetic defects, regardless of the mother’s age? And did you know that the benchmarks are pretty much the same, i.e. that male fertility and sperm quality are highest in men’s 20’s?

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/02/030210080435.htm
    https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2006/NR-06-06-01.html

    Huh, so why wasn’t this stuff discovered before? Well, perhaps it was because it was more difficult to detect for whatever reason. Or gee, maybe it’s because of lingering gender inequalities that have caused female sexuality research to be focused on fertility and male sexuality research to be focused on pleasure and orgasm?

    That might be it. Hai, let’s revisit this gem of a paragraph of yours:

    ā€œRemember, what matters in the biological-genetic game is not just how likely a woman is to get pregnant in any once instance, but also how many opportunities she has left to get pregnant, how likely those children are to be healthy, and how able she is to raise them in the future (if something happens to the man).ā€

    Wow. So getting pregnant has only to do with the woman, and it’s only of concern that someone is there to take care of the children if something happens to the man. I mean, if something happens to the woman, then the man couldn’t possibly care for the children himself. I’m glad to see that your views of fertility have been unaffected by modern science and are still stuck in the early Renaissance with King Henry VIII. I think I’ll call you Fides Defendsor Defendsor.

    ā€œSo, before you go calling names, reconsider your assumptions.ā€

    Before you speak tripe, you should reconsider your overtly sexist and biologically incorrect assumptions as well.

    God damn it, I’m glad I’m not a straight women if it meant having to put up with the likes of you guys.

  45. Braincandy says:

    Regarding the people-with-children aspect, I think it’s inaccurate to pin a bias against people with children on a desire for convenience or freedom. Speaking as a personal preference, if I’m going to invest in establishing a lasting relationship with a person, I want to know that I’m the #1 priority for that person and vice versa. I want to have my OWN kids with that person someday, and not come 2nd place to someone else’s kids.

  46. Cat says:

    I’m only 25 and this article/its comments are making me want to go join a nunnery.

    My tastes already skew pretty far in both directions on the age scale–I find myself attracted to 18-year-olds and 40-somethings alike–and I have a pretty flexible definition of physical beauty. I can dig funny-looking if the guy is smart, witty, open-minded and shares some of my interests. And there’s some chemistry there. And he isn’t a fucking misogynist.

    Guys who are complaining about women not paying attention to them when they were young: I don’t think it was your age, bro. You were probably just an asshole. And that hasn’t changed–either you got better at hiding it from potential mates, or you have enough money to convince the more shallow women among us to look past it.

  47. NoCougar says:

    Look it’s all about what your goals are. If you want to be a cougar and have meaningless sex with hot internet pool boys then I’ll be sure and send the 24 year olds that keep messaging me to you :) I want the ones who are ready for something real and long lasting, and also the great sex.

    But we can’t escape societal pressures: people just think it’s weird for a woman to be with a man more than a couple of years younger than her. It’s not weird for a man and has been a tradition for many thousands of years. It’s ridiculous to think it’s not about fertility; men, especially powerful men in previous eras , are well-known to have taken a new wife as soon as the previous wife has become too old for childbearing. They still do this in some cultures. Men retain at at least some fertility almost their entire lives and women obviously don’t. You can complain about sexism or treating women like baby factories all you want but the hard cold facts are it’s pretty much a cross-cultural preference and all about male drive to spread DNA as widely as possible, probably with some fear of mortality mixed in there somewhere, needing reassurance that he’s still vigorous and not about to die any minute, nor that he’s too old to be attractive.

    @Drew: despite my worry about finding someone, I’m very happy I dumped the “boring” bf from several years ago, yes even for a guy who treated me badly and who I cut off contact with 3 months later. I’d rather be alone than with someone I don’t love and don’t find attractive. Trust me, you both are better off without the other. You don’t want to stay with someone who doesn’t want to be with you; I’ve seen this go on for years and it’s a bad scene. And you can’t make yourself love someone.

  48. L says:

    I’m 36 and look about 28. All I can say is it doesn’t seem to matter how old the guy is – all I meet are perverted *ssholes.

  49. Ed says:

    I liked the article and information graphics very much. What software was used to create the information graphics?

    Thanks,

    Ed

  50. F says:

    People are talking about this article as if it is about older men dating younger women. The statistics given are only about older men CONTACTING younger women. There is no information on whether these guys are actually getting a date.

    When I was in my twenties I thought older guys were creepy.