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. Tristan says:

    This is absolutely fascinating. I love that you guys are actually using your data and presenting it here in really super interesting ways, because it tells us things that we never would have known otherwise. I especially like the sliding maps – great way to present information. You’re doing some darn good work. Keep it up.

  2. AT says:

    Problem is, particularly on this site, they almost unilaterally have one (if not several) kids. Yea, no thanks.

  3. Courtney says:

    I’m glad W up there can relate to my experience! It is so true, it seems like men are under an assumption that just because we are older and wiser, we no longer have feelings. Since when does being an independent and strong woman also mean that I will allow you to treat me like shit? And if I ask to be respected or if I say that I am not okay with something, I get accused of bringing “drama.” Please.

    And to J…
    The fact that I am single in my thirties means that I have priorities in my life that are greater than getting married or committed to the first guy that comes along. I have had my share of long and short term relationships and am open to having more. If I settle down with one person for the rest of my life, that’s great. But if I don’t, that’s ok too. I’d rather be alone than be with some of the losers I’ve met, that’s for sure.

  4. browser says:

    I hope the men that seek younger women because of their baby-making abilities consider also that men lose virility over time as well. Just because you still have sperm does not mean you can have healthy kids. It’s not reported nearly as much as female menopause, but the health of children born to men over the age of 40 declines drastically. I can’t remember the exact statistic, but men over 40 have much higher chances of fathering children with autism and other health problems. In general, both men AND women over 40 are not the best candidates for parenthood, biologically speaking.

    I agree with “N”, dating younger men may not be the answer for older women. As a 30-something, I have little interest in younger men because of their typical lack of maturity. However, I have met and dated mature men up to 5 years my junior, but they were exceptions to my trend of dating men about 4 years older.

    As women, we have to deal with super-horny little boys who have little sexual control, experience, or patience in their teens and twenties. They want us to love felatio, but have no clue what cunnilingus is or how to do it well. They assume we want babies against their desires, but don’t want to use condoms. They learn sexual positions from pornography, instead of applying a teensy bit of common sense to what is actually enjoyable to the human body. They also want to impress their buddies by having many sexual partners, but then want their partner to be as virginal as possible. (Do men even realize that stable women don’t want promiscuous partners either? It doesn’t make you a man, it makes you a slut.)

    There is a reason women tend to date men closer to their own age, especially as those women get older. Relative equality in experience, maturity, confidence, and even achievements are probably good predictors of healthy relationships, casual or long-term.

  5. M says:

    Courtney’s comment really sums it up. What are men in their 20s looking for? What are women over 30 looking for? Hint: not the same thing.

  6. drazzalb says:

    I think if a guy’s primary concern is to have kids, then a younger (20s) woman makes sense (although it certainly doesn’t need to be the only factor). As a 40 year old woman, I can attest that there are plenty of men who are happy to date a woman not in her 20s. This suits me fine as I already have the kids I bore in my 20s, and would rather have a delightful companion than a co-parent.

  7. SophiaMorgan says:

    i’m all for guys dating older women but what pisses me off is how this article portrays young women. i’m turning 25 soon and yet i’m already a successful, financially secure, intelligent woman who is matured, comfortable in her own skin and knows what she wants out of life, in a man and what she can bring to the table. and at the risk of sounding arrogant, i think i’m good-looking too.

    point is, maturity isn’t necessarily measured by your age but by your experiences in life, upbringing and outlook on things. i’ve dated guys my age and guys older than me and there have been instances when a young guy is more matured than an older guy.

    is it fair that many guys hunt for younger girls without giving women in their age bracket a chance? no. but is it fair to make young girls seem like an insecure, superficial, sexually inept, immatured lot? no.

  8. John says:

    Attractive people in their early 20’s are a dime a dozen due the “bloom of youth.” But check up on them when they’re 40, (Facebook has been great for this!) and most have gone to seed. But if you meet someone in their late 30’s who’s good looking, you can be pretty sure they’re going to look great for life.

  9. samolyot says:

    this is some of the hottest data visualization i’ve ever seen. heatmaps, sparklines, oh my! edward tufte ftw

  10. gotham13 says:

    As one of the few women over 30 who IS looking for men 25 and under…kudos ;) I did notice a LARGE drop off in interest when I turned 30…no wonder so many other women lie about their age lol

  11. Steve says:

    Although I enjoyed all of the information contained in this article thoroughly, I happened to mostly notice that I live in one of the bluest areas of the map for people who like giving oral sex in any age group. VERY NICE

  12. MandaFriend says:

    Excellent Article. That’s high praise coming from someone who stands to lose a lot if people start taking its message to heart (which, hey…. they probably SHOULD)

    As others have mentioned, you have maybe undersold the reluctance of women in their early 20’s to contact anyone younger. I’m one of these women. I gravitate toward men in their middle to upper 20’s, because not only do they tend to have their own apartments (no dorm beds for me, thanks), but in my experience they are far *nicer*, more compelling conversationalists, and less likely to give bullshit excuses for inconsiderate behavior. In any case, if women even slightly older aren’t considering men, then maybe they’re developing the expectation that they shouldn’t bother with women more than a couple years older starting right at age 18 when 21-year-olds start ignoring them…

    PS- I would lovvvvve to see the speck chart for enjoyment of preferring oral sex among men. Too much to ask?

  13. Christian says:

    I admire your SQL skills – and I just changed my Match filter to 30-39 (don’t want women who think that their best days are over :D)

  14. LauraTheLush says:

    I love this study! I’m 31 and dating a 24 year old guy…My friend is 30 and she’s dating his 19 yr old friend. We all met in college and have tons of things in common. We have a lot of fun together, and sex doesn’t get any better IMO than this!

  15. ScienceSociale says:

    As always, a great read. That said, my experience as a 23 year old (straight) man, online as well as in person, has been that women my own age and older exhibit a pronounced bias against men of my age when it comes to dating. A tabulation of messages sent and received surely tells us something, but lacks vital contextual data (i.e. message content, probability of meeting in person) necessary to interpret the whole story accurately.

  16. belhaven_lass says:

    I had to laugh at the post “older women=bitter and cynical” You obviously aren’t hanging around the right older women. Or, perhaps what is realistic and forthright is being mistaken as “bitter” et al. We just aren’t willing to put up with the drama.

    I ADORE younger guys because they can actually keep up with my energy level. My very best friend is 13 years younger than me. I have always gravitated towards younger people.

    My rule has been that I will not date anyone as young as my children. Therefore everyone under 26 is safe :) My tastes seem to lean towards young 30’s gents, they are happy with themselves, and they are reliable. Unfortunately, they are also wanting to procreate, and that is not something I relish now.

    I feel I am in the prime of my life. I am happy, stable, and have no ties to anyone or anything. I have always looked WAY younger than my actual age, and if I were to put an age on myself, I would say 32, 34 at worst. I am awesome, and any man would be lucky to have me in their corner (and their bed).

  17. anna says:

    sweet jesus!
    awesome article – i’m 30 and totally cool. no, really!
    well done
    :D

  18. SAHappy says:

    I contact a lot of women on this site. I think I have a fairly high response right, and fairly often carry on lengthy conversations (around 20 messages or more.) There was a 28 year old woman and one who was 26 or 27, that I actually wanted to meet. I think I scared both of them off when I suggested that we might get together some time because neither of them ever responded after I mentioned an interest in meeting. However, the one 19 year old I felt like meeting met me the day after we started exchanging messages.

    Just offering some anecdotal evidence that maybe older women aren’t exactly as open to dating younger guys as they let on? Your data doesn’t seem to include actual dates. Fascinating article though, as always.

  19. fotopat says:

    When I was younger I frequently sought out older women. They weren’t interested. Now I’m 40 and I look easily 30 or younger. Up until about 6 months ago I was carded at least 25% of the time when buying drinks. Now the women my age and older frequently look 10 years older than me. A 35 year old woman can easily be hot. Most of the 40+ year olds I see here and other personal ad sites look like they’re 50 to me. Personality is important, but there are just too many 40+ single women who obviously haven’t taken care of themselves.

  20. Tyler says:

    I’m 24 and my experience is women that are younger are less attractive and older women are more desirable.

    HOWEVER

    It is not based on scientific evidence. You basically throw out a bunch of statistical data and analyse it in a way that supports your argument….

    You probably sold a lot of people on this idea, but unfortunately data only gives you an idea of the extremes, medians, and modes… etc. It can represent any argument you so desire!

  21. David says:

    Wow, this is really nice data, nicely organized and presented. Wish I’d had access to this kind of information in my mid-20’s! Sadly, it’s too late for me!

  22. gaveyard girl says:

    OMG who cares!! Look older ladies I love ya but your not 20 any more DEAL with it. If you can find a younger man good for you but you dont need to find a younger man to prove anything! Im 20 year old women myself and nothing pisses me off more then to have a bunch of older women say shit about me in a club because im 20 young and my brest are perkey. Older ladies need love to boy remeber that…..But if your over 30 why would you have a 20 smothing man? Its like daiting a little boy like I said Im 20 and I cant stand men in their 20s. SO COME ON!!!!

  23. sara says:

    i am 41 year old attractive woman , ( i agree with comments above that if your attractive your attractive regardless of age) everyone thinks i am 29-32 years of age when they meet me.
    I have always been sexually confident, but now sex is better than ever
    i am attracted to men of all ages, i do like young guys but most ( not all of course but most) are immature and narrow minded because no matter how good or “young” you look , there is a stigma with being an older woman and i think they are afraid of dating or getting to know them, sure they will have sex with them given the chance but that’s it.
    So this is an excellent article and there should be more articles and information out there on this topic.

  24. qq says:

    It’s hard enough to play kiss-ass to a guy your own age who gets all weirded out about you being “emasculating” or “unsupportive” when you are better than him at something, or when you’re not super-interested in his toys and hobbies, or when you disagree with his opinions, or when you aren’t thrilled with the way he jams it in you. Try it when he’s 20 years younger than you. Ugh. It’s way easier to play nicey supportive wifey girly poo to someone you can at least pretend is really your superior. Seriously, even most of the guys I know who think they treat women as equals still seem to have this … *thing* about being on top when it counts. Not saying everyone is like that, but if it’s the predominant pattern, why would women want to subject themselves to that? And why would you message someone you already know is going to act like you’re some kind of rotten old sock?

  25. Robin says:

    It seems that above age 40 both men and women cease to exist. Robin age 65

  26. Marcus says:

    That was a very well written and researched article maybe I’ll change some of my own habits. Great read.

  27. jh says:

    Shocking…..another politically correct blog where the far left extremists running the site end up data mining in whatever way necessary to back into a conclusion that they wanted to make all along

  28. Skeptic says:

    How people answer questions that they know will be viewable on some level by potential mates (whether individually or as an aggregate statistic) will affect how they answer. There is no way to tell, for example, if women in their 30’s are actually happier or if they are more willing to claim to be happier in order to present a positive face to a potential mate. While I don’t doubt these numbers are interesting (particularly the messaging patterns which are not publicly visible), they are also extremely unreliable and unscientific.

  29. SamanthaH says:

    I’m a 28 year old single chick. In my experience of dating much older (10 – 15 years) men in my early 20’s, they weren’t dating me for my baby making capabilities. They were dating me in part because I wasn’t at the stage of wanting to make demands on a mate for children. The ease of being able to date without having to worry about marriage or kids was a boon to a lot of those past boyfriends.

    In most cases I would steer away from a man that ONLY dates women much younger than him at this point in my life. To me it begs the question, beyond a theoretical sexual desire for young flesh, what are you hiding? Are you insecure? Do you lack an interesting personality? Younger women are much easier to control. They often put up with more male crap that an older, more confident and experienced woman would know to put a stop too.

  30. Glorya says:

    This would be interesting if all messages exchanged on this site were dating-related, which they are not.

  31. Frankotheman says:

    Great Article! I married a woman 13 years my senior, and I couldn’t agree more with every point you made. There is one other thing I feel you should have mentioned, as it could be an issue for men who were more traditionally raised, and that is that older women are more likely to be financially independent. My wife had over 20 years at her job, and so we decided that I would be the one to quit working and stay home to raise the kids. BTW, I was 23 and she was 35 when we met. And we met the old-fashioned way: at a bar:)

  32. Paronomast456 says:

    Great data analysis guys – absolutely fascinating. And I love the fact that you’re interested enough to show this to us – men and women of all ages need to read this! (btw your matching algorithms are way better than any other dating website I’ve tried – but you probably know that ;-) Keep up the good work.

  33. smc says:

    Great article, but now I think you need to make the case as for why women in their thirties would actually want to date much younger men. It was hard enough dating them when I was young! It’s such a treat finally being a grown-up – hard to give that up by dating a young guy who’s still figuring all this stuff out. And I agree with the post above – won’t you share the comparable data on guys (how much they like oral sex, want to have sex, etc… at different ages)?

  34. alfdude says:

    awesome analysis!

  35. Anon says:

    I’m an acquaintance of your second “older woman” and even though it’s already a good picture, she’s better looking in person. Trust me.

    Anyway, two points: 1) The dating pool being skewed towards women early and towards men later on is sort of conventional wisdom, and 2) You guys are once again treating sex like economists. Like it’s a scarce resource that you can never have too much of. But men don’t want someone with as high a sex drive as they can find, they want someone whose sex drive matches theirs. Dating someone hornier than you is NO FUN – you’re tired all the time, you have to fake enthusiasm, you start to question your own masculinity, etc. It’s no good.

  36. Ethan says:

    Can you please tell me what tools you use in order to analyze your data and create these amazing visualizations?

  37. Jay says:

    I agree with this data. Myself I’m an accomplished 22 year old male seeking an older woman. Odd everyone says but, people my age are just not my interest. Accelerated through college so it’s hard for us younger males to even grab the attention of older females. Give us a chance ladies!

    And everyone open up your minds!

  38. Captain Obvious says:

    I’m not being offensive, but this is why women end up single: they forgo marriage for career, and in the end, they lose. Cougars playing the field for young men makes me laugh. They’re older and single for a reason, youg’uns! I’ve dated older women from OKC…and I learned my lesson.

  39. Christian says:

    For the maps, we made a custom drawing script in python; once we found shape files for the political boundaries that was pretty straightforward. For everything else, I used javascript and Excel.

  40. Ooane says:

    Like Robin states ages seem to diminish above 48. I am 64 and still have all my parts and my drive. Just in case you are interested Robin. I like “older women” Nonetheless Robin’s point should not be taken lightly since the statistics point out that there is a longer life span now. Should we all cease to exist?

    My opinion is that the stats are swayed by the fact that many of the questions are not answered honestly. While I am on the subject of honest answers what is the point of making the answers not public? We all have flaws (yes even me, can ya believe it???) :>)

    I dated a lady who actually asked if I was healthy. She told me she was powerful but couldn’t break apart a pair of chopsticks. She hated looking at her naked body in the mirror (her words) but had no interest in the guy next to her (me) who had no problem with those “flaws”. My opinion is that all of her problems were caused by a negligent doctor or two who made money giving her a gastric bypass when all she needed was direction. She has extremely good will power. A mere health nut like me could probably have done more with her weight problems by referring her to some fantastic books.

    If you are interested go look at Carbohydrate Addicts Program by Robert and Rachael Heller. No I am not an affiliate and make no bucks from this. I have just seen the program work and it makes sense. By the way eating the book or just reading it won’t help either. Ya gotta follow the directions. Snuff said about that.

    Yeah you guessed, it I was dumped rather nastily. From my perspective my crime was being exactly what I said I was in my profile. (Ya don like who I yam ya shouldn’t message me and set up a date.)

    My point in all of this rambling (I apologize) is that like Tyler pointed out data is pulled out and massaged to back up the statistics that one presents. That is called point of view. Not necessarily bad, but it does sway the facts. I think a statistic friend of mine said it best. Figures lie and liars figure. Not trying to be insulting because I do not feel that anyone here is intentionally trying to sway the scales, but it is indeed true that a set of statistics can be massaged to produce what ever results you desire.

    By the way I love older women. In general they know more of what they want. If I bring in roses to the house I do not discard the roses until all the petals fall off and then I use the petals.

    The bottom line is these guys reported what they saw. The data is being flawed by the inconsistencies and inaccurate answers and for crying out loud either make the answers public or don’t answer them.

    There is one girl on here that answered over 700 questions. Two are public. Can you believe it? “I wanna know you but I don’t want you to know me.” Putting it in the words of the now renowned Dr. Phil…..”how’s that workin’ fer ya?”

    Okay you can visualize me hauling my towering 5’5” frame down off the soap box now.

  41. Richard says:

    Interesting article. I’m impressed by the amount of time that obviously went into the number crunching and the graphs.

    One thing I’m wondering is, on that map with the answers to the “once per day” or rather “once per week” question, what exactly is so magical about the men in that area between Idaho and Oregon? Women seem to want sex there daily, regardless of age. I checked it out on Google maps, and my theory is, that there’s simply nothing else to do there than engage in some frolicking. Your take?

  42. Chris says:

    Y’know, I have a bias towards (slightly) older women. I just turned 24. My general dating range is essentially 19 to 30, with a bias towards the 25-27 crowd. I’ve found most of my matches after 30 set it so younger guys’ messages aren’t highlighted in their inboxes. While I’m not opposed to dating 30+, I just generally don’t seek them out, due to this sort of sentiment I’ve come across.

  43. jenniebeans510 says:

    thanks for this, very interesting.

    At 38 (I proudly stand by the fact that I look much closer to 30) I can say that when it comes to sex, drive, attitude and skill set is 3 times what it was when I was 23. Perhaps it is the ‘cougar’ or ‘milf’ phenomenons, but younger men are starting to open up to the possibilities of older women- but I can only speak from experience. On OKC and in real life I do get approached by 25 year olds, probably moreso than men my own age. I think the attitudes of men currently in their 20s are much more open to the possibility of older women than men currently in their 30s.

  44. Testify! says:

    The best sex I ever had was with my 37 year old girlfriend when I was 28. They are up for ANYTHING in the sack, but be careful guys, as they often come with some extra baggage. :-)

  45. Dean says:

    I thought that was a fun read, but I think something being overlooked is the response that women have to approaches by men of different ages. I think maybe with younger women and men at the same age that they’re maybe more “on equal footing,” which makes him seem less interesting than an older guy who’s done more and so seems to bring something new to the table. That’s my theory at least. I’d be curious to see the data on who women respond to, to compare that to who they would message.

  46. Caryn says:

    I am 32 and an OkCupid dater. When I turned 30, a friend suggested I try dating men who were a little younger than myself. I’ve been doing that ever since and I am having a great time! I get along with these guys a lot better than I thought I would, and they’re less broken than the guys I’d been dating who were older, many of whom are divorced and have kids, which are not things I want to get mixed up in if I can help it. (I don’t want to have children of my own.) I’m not dating men who are teenagers; just 2-3 years younger than myself. I wasn’t open to guys who were younger than my own age, and I am so glad I opened up my mind a little bit to it. So far, I have found these men find me quite interesting and admire my accomplishments, instead of feeling “emasculated” by dating someone who is a whole 2 years older than they are.

    To SophiaMorgan: I would have said the same thing about myself at the age you are. But the thing is … you’re going to be just that much MORE of a rock star when you are 30+! Because you’re going to have many more years of experience and wisdom to back up the good stuff you already have going.

    And to gaveyard girl: With your poor spelling and grammar, you actually just helped prove the case this post is trying to make.

  47. scott says:

    Asking someone to adjust their standards is, by definition, a futile effort. If someone isn’t willing to date a smoker, or an older person, or a fat person, they simply aren’t going to do so, and no amount of convincing statistics will change that.

    If we weren’t supposed to “discriminate” by age, then why does the site ask for an age range in the first place? Why do they ask for religion and my preference of dogs and children? Why do they ask anything if we’re not supposed to say no?

    Some men are into older women. I am not. And I’m not going to apologise for that.

  48. jbslick says:

    of course older women are better! younger too many problems insecurities. older women are more comfortable with themselves. also better in bed and not locked into crazy marriage stuff they’ve been sold all their lives.

  49. sara says:

    In response to Captain Obvious “this is why women end up single: they forgo marriage for career, and in the end, they lose.” that is ridiculous, they dont choose careers over relationships! ( they may want both , and have to in this day and age everyone needs to support themselves especially since men dont want to expect woman to work as well!)
    This statement is just wrong, this is not woman in 30s 40s and up are single
    its rarely by choice these are the reasons beautiful caring loyal hot woman end up single
    they spend there child bearing years with
    -non noncommittal men who will never marry them
    -unfaithful men and men in mid life crisis who suddenly need to date 22 year olds again
    and many with abusive men ( good for them for leaving..would you stay )

  50. sara says:

    In response to Captain Obvious “this is why women end up single: they forgo marriage for career, and in the end, they lose.” that is ridiculous, they dont choose careers over relationships! ( they may want both , and have to in this day and age everyone needs to support themselves especially since men expect woman to work as well!)
    This statement is just wrong, this is not why woman in 30s 40s and up are single.
    Its never by choice alone
    These are the reasons beautiful caring loyal hot woman end up single
    why they spend there child bearing years with
    -non noncommittal men who will never marry them
    -unfaithful men and men in mid life crisis who suddenly need to date 22 year olds again
    and many with abusive men ( good for them for leaving..would you stay )