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. Jon says:

    Are you trying to make it harder for older men to get a date? Hey, let’s introduce more, YOUNGER competition for women my age! Please.

  2. PatrickW says:

    Great analysis! The only problem I find is that data set is based on online dating which is quite different from meeting people face to face. Online dating carries almost no cost compared to face-to-face meeting. There is no need to get off the couch, shower, dress up in your best clothes, and drive to the bar, club, or event. There is no cost in approaching someone clearly not interested or out of your league because the cost is a single click plus some canned message. In real life, the cost is being rejected and looking ridiculous approaching a woman who is clearly not compatible with you. Hence, online men go for what they have a very slim chance of landing because they can afford to, and the resulting data set makes men seem like borderline cradle robbers. It’s like leaving some dollar bills on the floor and see who picks them up.

    What would be interesting is to trace through the messages and look at what percentage of mismatched pairs actually communicated with each other rather just who are the spammers (sorry, mass communicators) and who are the recipient of the mass communications. Then we get a sense whether men are just on some fishing expedition in which they know they have very little chance of success.

  3. Gargamel says:

    Dating women in their 30s has so many benefits over dating girls that are 20-23. Yes, youth is attractive, but when it comes down to it, you cant just sit and stare at them all day. There are a lot of very attractive women in their 30s and they can actually hold a conversation, not burden you with their BFF’s “I broke a nail” drama, and actually know what they are doing in bed. If you blindfold any man and offer him 2 choices-choice 1 spends her time talking about how her friend is a bitch because she wont let the girl wear her favorite pair of jeans, cries when she breaks a nail, only wants to have sex once a week in one postion and never at her house because her mom might hear, and is disgusted by oral sex, not to mention needing to be completely financially supported. Choice 2 is completely financially independant, has intelligent and articulate conversation about wines, history, art, cuisine and other similar topics, prefers sex daily and enjoys experimentation, enjoys giving oral sex, and is completely financially independant. The guy chooses #2 every time. It is not until you throw in the fact that number 1 is 20 and number 2 is 35 that you get any sort of thought in the choice, when choice 1 wins almost all of the time.

    I am in no way trying to insult younger women. The characteristics Imusing are those more prevalent in each age group. I have met 20 year olds who have the maturity and experience of a 35 year old and vice versa.

  4. Melissa says:

    This article rocks. I’m 35, and I think I look better now than I did at 25 (and I look way younger than my age). I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: 30-something women are still young enough to be hot and old enough to have confidence and self awareness. We’re the whole package.

  5. Lisa says:

    Just what guys are looking for: a nice fertile woman they can knock up? You must be some of the dippy 20 somethings mentioned above. Especially illogical given that women’s fertility does not actually decrease until long after their supposed attractiveness wanes. This article actually suggests the opposite of what you goofballs are claiming: Men pursue women who are youngest even when women who are just as biologically suitable are available.

    Okay, cattiness aside, that evolutionary imperative stuff is nonsense. Not only are human beings the least motivated by instinct of any animal, but reproductive research shows that men’s suitability for procreating may be more affected by age than women’s. That is, men continually produce sperm and their ability to produce quality sperm declines with age. Women, by contrast, have all the eggs they will ever have at the time they come to reproductive maturity, all the quality of cells produced at the height of their ability. Since women who have children late in life tend to do so with men of a similar age, the higher incidence of lower quality zygotes is not necessarily attributable to the woman. The huge amount of money going into infertility research should have some nice, unintended side effects.

    This phenomenon is social and economic, people. The Greeks invented science but they still thought that the woman determined the sex of the child. After thousands of years, some of you still haven’t woken up!

  6. Christine says:

    Story of a “Cougar”.

    This is for Clay (see above), whom many will think is a fool (myself included), who has no clue of what he is talking about. I am a 42 year old woman that has been in 2 ltr’s (marriages) for nearly half of my life, with men that are older than me. These men slowed down and gave up on life, letting themselves go, which was a huge turn off for me. I, on the other hand, have taken exceptional care of myself for many years. And have reasonably good genetics, a high metabolism, I don’t smoke or drink to excess, and excercise daily. Which has resulted in me being in better shape now than I was when I was 25. I am more intelligent, confident, secure and socially skilled than I was 10-20 years ago. Men who want to date women so much younger are trying to hold onto that youthful vitality that is fading from them twice as fast as it is for women. Women generally live longer, healthier lives than most men, and today’s women who take care of themselves well, are looking better than ever. Look at Jennifer Anniston and Demi Moore, prime examples of women who look incredible for their ages and aren’t afraid to be with men that please them. I have recently dated 2 men that are 30, and both were amazed that I wasn’t their age, or younger. I have dated men as young as 22, whom I did find to be immature, self-absorbed and rather shallow. So, I believe that my own personal age range is 25-35. Most men over 35 are aging rapidly and no longer appeal to me, unless they are unusually active and genetically lucky. Women in their late 30’s and 40’s are definitely worth looking at, if a younger man is interested in a relationship with an emotionally secure person, who is well adjusted and happy with who she is. We are for the most part, very caring and nurturing, yet we know what we want and will not accept mistreatment from men, unlike the poor girls that are still struggling to find out who they are and what they want out of life.

  7. Countach says:

    From my personal experiences and those of others, I’ve found the following things to apply:

    1. Many older women like younger men, but only those younger men who have movie star looks. Younger women don’t seen nearly as concerned about this, evidence to the contrary.
    2. Older women, even the ones that dominate, still want the guy to always make the first move.

    Thus, older women = epic fail.

  8. Nutz says:

    What a load of crap. Guys want to date hot women and looks coincide with youth. Just the way it is. Women who are older who have gotten their crotch hopping out of their system or have been pumped & dumped by a chain of alphas their whole life are older a wiser (aka bitter & desperate), so naturally they’re in damage control mode to grab a beta while they still have some eggs to use to hurry up and have a family. That means they’re nicer, more accommodating, and generally less of royal pain in the ass about dating.

  9. AJG says:

    “Are you done showing us a bunch of fucking graphs now or are you eventually going to get to a good reason why I should be looking towards hooking up with an old hag who just wants to use me for my money?”

    ^ Wow the guy who wrote this is an idiot. Older women don’t give a damn how much you make. Unlike their younger, gold-digging counterparts, they can take care of themselves. I’ve met two gorgeous women in their 40s from okcupid in the last 6 months, one pulls in $65k and the other is a business owner and -pays- alimony to her ex-husband. You wouldn’t guess either of them over 30 either.

  10. Supreme Cougar says:

    BRAVO darling. I knew the odds were with us from the start! Now will do you one in reverse “In case for the younger man” ?
    I can hardly wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  11. Nancy says:

    Yes of course, immediately somebody has to reach for the evolutionary psychology excuse because apparently you aren’t allowed to call this what it is – traditional sexism, pure and simple. Men are valued more than women, and traditionally men – who had all the money- traded their income for a woman’s youth and beauty. So many people are still living in that antiquated mind set.

    It’s the ECONOMY stupids – not evolutionary psychology. Women like young hot guys as much as men like young hot women – but women suffer less from over-estimating themselves. The whole “cougar” phenomenon is a result of women being financially independent enough to value men for looks rather than money – a luxury that only MEN had until very recently.

    And women age MUCH better than men – just compare the 40-50 something women’s pix to men of the same age on OK Cupid – WOW – the years of men not taking care of themselves – drinking alot, eating badly – and then balding and/or going for the “natural” look (most men can’t be bothered dying their hair, updating their wardrobes etc) start to make a huge difference once you hit 40s.

    And BTW – I get plenty of 20-something men contacting me – it’s the men in the 30 – 40 age range I never hear from because they all think they are going to get a 20-year-old underwear model.

    I would get lots of men 50 and older too – so I had to specifically say on my profile that I don’t want them. So many of them look like my grandfather that I’d rather be celibate than even think about them naked. *shudder*

    And I’ll bet most of THEM think they’re going to get a 20-something model too!

    So many men are SUCH self-deluded assholes. Most women are competing for the very few men out there who are not assholes.

  12. melissa says:

    “I think heather has something there. If looks remain the same, and sexually older women should be more appetizing (for a lack of a better word), then why do women (until their 30’s) something normally look for older men, and men normally look for women in ther 20 somethings? I’d say primal instincts play a too stronger role (just as attractivness is usually stronger than anything else that “should” be a better match maker). At the end of the day, men look for the more fertile women, as they represent the stronger breeders.”

    I have to disagree with this. If this were the case, I think men would naturally gravitate toward plumper women as well. Fat did not go out of fashion until modern medicine significatly increased our life expectancy, and reduced the number of pregnancy-related deaths.

    Youth is a sign of fertility and health, but then so are child bearing hips and corn-fed body type. I think men’s move towards skinny is a sign that the biological imparitive is weakening.

  13. Suzanne says:

    To begin, this really was a good article. Very informative and eye opening for me but….

    For someone like me at a 30 something looking 42 year old, this article almost makes it seem as though I have nothing to look forward to. I’ve experienced in my 20’s the “old” guys hitting up on me. Now in my 40’s I’m experiencing the 20 yr olds hitting me up. I’m not interested in any man more than 3-5 yrs younger simply because in my experience the younger guys are mostly looking for experienced sex and I find many of them to be very immature and unsettled. Almost like a teacher/student relationship (I just may not have met the right one yet). I am also not interested in a man that is more than 5 yrs older than me because in my opinion I have not found many of them very attractive. Even men my own age look and physically behave older than I do (no spunk, no play to their actions).

    This article suggests that an older women is content not to be in a serious relationship or married. For me the older I get the more important companionship becomes to me. I’ve played around enough to know exactly what I want.

    I may be cornering myself into something impossible to find but I wish there would be more hope for someone over 40.

  14. Delilah says:

    After all this comments, I started to question my decision about getting in to a relationship with a guy who is 9 years older than me. We both want someone for life as it seems, but now I worry about if I will end up looking after him like 20 years later.
    I already did have a whisper coming from the back of my head about this age gap saying “Are you sure?” but after reading this, it got worse…
    I wish I could find someone in the same page of life with me who is younger, even younger than me; of course I would prefer him, but this is the best I could find for now. *sigh*

  15. UKGuy says:

    Ladies, don’t lie about your age – you’re causing part of the problem.

    As a 36 year old guy, I have no problem dating someone of my own age, and would go up to say 40, perhaps slightly older if the person was truly exceptional.

    The issues :

    Looking at women and thinking that they’re had an awful lot of mileage for their years – either because they’ve had a tough life, or more probably because they’re lying about their age. I’m not expecting a supermodel, but I know what the average 35 year old looks like from real life and if you don’t match it I’m not going to bother.

    Almost everyone over 30 who is still in the dating pool has issues (men, women, goats). Do you want to deal with those issues? The older they get, most probably the more issues.

    Children. Plenty of women have them, most of the remainder want them. Great for the men that want kids and the single dads; less so for men who don’t want kids (although ultimately this probably only applies to dating unsure women or non long term relationships)

    Older women can be more independent, decisive and forward. This is a huge advantage, except when it translates to becoming stuck in a rut. Men and women alike develop certain preferences and then refuse to re-examine them.

    Then there’s the matches -if I look at the number of matches aged 35-42 in my local area, the numbers are fairly consistent with 30-35 (a huge drop off after 30, as mentioned). Of those matches, a much higher proportion than 30-35 refuse to fill in their profile, have children, are significantly uglier than average or are grossly obese.

    Based on the searches I’ve done, I’m still better trying 25+..

  16. Roger says:

    Nice post! Very good insights on a very rich data!

  17. Deleted comment says:

    Why did you delete my comment? Just because I came up with the idea before you doesn’t mean you have pretend that you came up with it first.

  18. cybrgrl says:

    Another excellent article. I’d love to see these analyses printed in a book, or individual articles printed in journals for posterity.

    cybrgrl – who is old and a librarian. ;-)

  19. nitrofan says:

    None of your charts went over 48yrs. of age. At 54 Im finding it difficult to find an attractive women in their mid to late 40s. Yes, there are plenty of them out there, but most still have kids around the house, or they are looking for Mr. Perfect. Younger 40yr. olds dont want anything to do w/ a 54yr. old. I’m not looking to date anything older then I am, they would remind me to much of my ex.

  20. BZ says:

    This study should have taken into consideration the fact that many 30+ women even though they are intelligent, beautiful, sexy and so on… they have children.

    And children are a no-no for many men (not my case).

    So it’d be useful for a future article like this to have this fact into consideration.

  21. Cathie says:

    Interesting. I’m 29 and have only dated 2 men in my life. I find men in their 50’s that message me to be annoying. I wonder about guys in their very early 20’s who message me. I’m just not into being a 55 year old’s trophy or playing games with a 22 year old. I’m looking for a long term loving relationship.

    Note to OKC…I thought I found one on this site. He was my age, same exact likes, etc etc etc, but 1 hour and 45 minutes is too far away for him. Ya, just had to get that out. Sorry.

  22. Chris says:

    I think at least for myself that my age range selection (which is almost identical to your 35 year old guy findings) is more about finding someone my own age… but if some beautiful 25 year old was to write me and seemed interesting I would look.

    I would actually prefer to find a 33-37 year old woman with 1 kid… however since I have to widen it out a bit to be realistic I widened it almost exclusively on the younger side… because that’s where people have less kids… and where people are more physically active (lol not talking about your sex charts.. talking about kayaking, hiking etc)

    If I had additional criteria like :
    # of kids
    # of pets
    Weight ( no anorexics… but at the same time if you weigh 250 lbs… you are not going to keep up with me… and if you were doing the things I like to do at the frequency I do them you would have never hit 250… which means you are not compatible. P.S. 300 lbs is not “curvy” which is why I don’t like the current system… there is a lot of “artistic interpretation” going on.)
    Height (just to justify the weight)
    Smoking
    Drugs
    Hobbies (harder to implement but the most important one to me)

    Some of these are even data you collect maybe not as deep as I want but there is a “has children” field and a “body type” field and a “drinking” or “smoking” field… but I can’t SEARCH on them

    I would be custom tailoring those fields… and letting my range slip from 24-37 to 30-40.. which is where you think I “should” be…

    Basically I think of some the issue… at least for myself is the search criteria.. I can’t search for what I want… and what I want tends to be on younger women… so I search on younger women.

  23. Chris says:

    I agree with this poll and most of the comments here. I’m 21 and I always have been attracted to older women. I find older women more attractive, mature, and easy to get along with.

  24. coolguy says:

    I’m 26 and I dated my co worker for half a year, she is 55. It was probably the best and most positive experience I have had with a women, ever. I loved it, and I would will always consider them as possible relationship potential. Age is only what you make it to be, and the sad fact is women my age are usually still caught up in the fake reality, aka dumb and immature.

  25. Anna says:

    1) I always enjoy the analysis on this blog. The posts here are ridiculously fascinating on a regular basis.

    2) The trend that disturbed me the most is that younger women are more likely to think contraception is morally wrong. The hells!!? Curses be upon abstinence only education!

    3) Holy crap, did the south east corner of Oregon jump out to anybody else? What is going on there? The same *exact* spot on two graphs shows there is a high concentration of 18 year old girls who 1. are interested in having sex at least once per day AND 2. believe contraception is morally wrong. So what do you think that blip’s nickname should be, STD Central or the Blunderful Baby-Makin’ Station?

  26. Cosma says:

    Thank you for writing this! Now I have a link to reply with when 50 year old men write to me, a 27 year-old woman. Its repulsive; my parents are that age.

    Also of note: I definitely feel that I’ve recently been effectively kicked out of the dating pool. However, this sentiment has allowed me to wash my hands of tomfoolery and commit myself to my actual dreams, making art, traveling, learning, growing. I imagine that if a guy were to date me in a few years he’d be truly lucky; if he were when I was 24, I’d feel kind of bad for him.

  27. themake says:

    The author spends massive time, energy and math explaining why it’s so shortsighted and “judgmental”of males to prefer younger women–almost mocking the fact the men prefer women younger than themselves and are mostly not interested in women older than them. But the article starts off with a quote from a young male user who is clear in stating his preference for younger women AFTER BEING CONSTANTLY CONTACTED BY OLDER WOMEN. So . . . why is that ok? Apparently, it’s a two way street–people generally prefer to date and mate with the younger set. The author would be well advised to aim his “nonjudgmental” judgmental missives at both genders b/c their dating habits and preferences are exactly the same. This is so even though men do have “primal, biological” reasons for wanting younger mates relating to age and fertility. This is a real anthropological concern rather than the phony nonsense that females have come up with regarding their “primal, biological, cavepeopleish” need to be protected and provided for as a way of explaining away their wholly materialistic, self-centered and selfish preferences and behavior, e.g. only seriously dating males with a lot of damn money.

    What’s so glaring about this analysis is that it’s anything but honest. It never can be so long as it’s based on data from a dating web site. People on dating websites are looking for one thing and one thing only: SEX (or if you’re a women, concert tickets, meals, door prizes, stuff, honest graff ). Nothing more. Regardless of age, or gender or preference, or geography. No one is looking to get married off one of these sites and if they are, they need to stop, take some time and do some serious thinking about their life. Seen thru this lens, younger always makes sense. Being with someone younger means a better chance of being with someone who has had fewer sexual experiences and partners. And being with someone who hasn’t been porked a million times by the entire offensive line means a healthier mate, one with less chance of having contracted an std or something else.

  28. Derrick says:

    I’ve always had a thing for older women but I’ve also always sort of felt as though I have little to nothing to offer them as a younger man (especially one without a college degree or much of a direction in life) considering most women in their late 20s/30s/40s have, you know, careers and homes and bills and possibly children…I would definitely go for more older women if I thought they would be at all interested in younger, less mature men

  29. Dave says:

    I’ve noticed that younger women tend to be attracted to me more then older women. I’m 25 now, and it’s been like that all my life.

  30. bostonbrandmgr says:

    Strong independent, beautiful, sexy and successful women don’t need charts to speak for them. (Though I love the marketing research that goes into these). The societal tide is already turning, and it would interesting to compare these stats again in another year or so. I know lots of single 30’sand 40’s women that date younger 20’s men. And NO it’s not just about the sex. One friend said “Younger men are more attentive, positive and affectionate. Fun and able to do athletic outdoor activities (like snowboarding) and are generally more accepting of my (the woman’s) career, and modern role and equality.” (I’d love to see this same reasearch broken out into lifestyle segments, and not just by age (and include the 40-somethings too).) Even the term ‘cougar’ is evolving in context, and is now being redefined as a strong, active, modern, career-oriented, finacially independent, often well-educated, and emotionally self-sufficient woman, who happens to date, yes really date, younger men. Why? Because they actually have more compatible values and lifestyles to these new ‘cougars’ than older men who often desire a more traditional model. And these younger men feel that compatibility is a plus too. Said one 20-something that I spoke with,”I tend to like older women, the young ones always have too much baggage that they cant deal with and they dont know what they want.” A real modern cougar definately knows what she wants, and doesn’t need any man, or a statistical chart, to get it for her. But she often does want a younger man, and there are plenty of younger men out there who do want to date her too.

  31. DR JEFFY MOOG says:

    In my case, I’ve found that there are plenty of good-looking older women on here, and I DO message them. However, 99% of them don’t want to be a “cougar” and are looking for someone their own age to marry and have kids with.

  32. crtvlmnt says:

    You need to make this case for OLDer women and men their age. I have a LONG list of “hidden” users, most of whom are men who filter out or refuse or state a non-negotiable preference for women at least 15 years younger than they. When I was 45 (say) I thought a man my current age (58) was another generation.

    These men also state clearly that they don’t want to be anyone’s “sugar daddy.” Well, isn’t that the MOST likely reason a woman in her forties or younger would want to be with a coot in his sixties? This is not to gainsay the charms (whatever they might be) of an older man.

    Very few men my age have shown any interest in me. Most who do are in their twenties and forties, with a 98 year old thrown in to make the whole thing sort of in a weird way average out.

  33. Christian says:

    We did all the graphs in Excel. The maps were make from scratch using python.

  34. Rick W says:

    Great stuff! You put out a lot of food for thought. I tend to see an evolutionary, instinctual reasoning to a lot of human behavior so I have to agree with the idea that a lot of this is based on successful procreation.

    One thing though. I know that we may not make up a large segment of your population but still, why do the 50+ y/o just drop off the charts. We’re still here.

  35. UKGuy says:

    Can I just address this ‘play to their actions’ and ‘attentive’ bullshit, amongst other things.

    Younger men haven’t yet grown out of the habit of prostrating themselves in order to get laid. Older men no longer give as much of a crap about getting laid and therefore want a more equal partnership.

    A more equal partnership requires that both partners :

    Don’t lie about what they want
    Are direct
    Don’t play games. Playing games involves 1) Not saying when you’re available 2) Expecting plans to be dropped/changed at the last minute 3) Expecting gifts or unexpected events without offering the same yourself 4) Demanding wholesale life changes upon meeting someone because you’re just so more darned important than their friends, hobbies and work
    Examine their own prejudices and examine which dating requirements are truly essential
    Are willing to compromise within reasonable limits (without affecting their core self)

    In short : men and women, you’re not teenagers anymore. Grow the fuck up and re-examine the bullshit dating stereotypes.

    To the men and women who have done all the above, I say Bravo! Conversation with such women is often challenging and thought provoking in a good way, and even if I may not necessarily agree with some viewpoints I can often respect them.

    Please consider that if you consider this ‘dull’, the (probably unwanted) effort your date is going through to win you. This is not romance – it is abuse. Equality does not kill the ability to have a kickass relationship.

    I still wonder on the whole rationale of this study. It’s my experience that older women who are worth dating already receive plenty of attention. Younger men generally don’t want older women with, or who want, children. To have some blatant self interest here, why are you putting more competition into a field where I already have a very limited selection of dates (interesting women who do not want/have children).

    I’m happy to date 35 year olds. I’m also happy to date 25 year olds. 40 year olds too if they’re cool. I’m quite happy to leave the 25 year old women to the 25 year old men – provided you stop telling them to try and look at the limited number of awesome women my age who I could have a fairly serious long term child free relationship with.

    Pushing the younger guys to contact older women is therefore producing precisely the effect you’re trying to fight against : older guys contacting younger women. Way to go!

  36. Katrina says:

    This post was way overdue. Thanks

  37. Essive says:

    I wish there were some way to have a gender-by-gender search preference on here. My age range for men is smaller than my age range for women – I’m going on 21, and would be okay with an 18-27ish range for men, but an 18-35 range for women.
    Men around 30 looking for females my age are almost always really creepy about it (they almost exclusively want girls in the 18-22 range), while most of the women around 30 just seem to have less strong age preferences.

  38. Erin says:

    I told my 26 year old boyfriend – I’m 34 – about this article, and he laughed and noted that he was clearly the exception. He’s always preferred women 5-15 years older than him, for many of the reasons cited above: they’re better lovers, have more self-confidence, and – when they’ve taken care of themselves – can be just as hot. As a non-smoking, non-drinking longtime vegan, I’ve maintained good skin and a healthy body weight. Over a year on, we’re even beginning to think about having a child in the next several years (my first!) – and I’ll have a wealth of diverse life experiences to share with my family.

  39. Andrew says:

    Cool post… Simply put I love older women………

  40. Michael says:

    Well I noticed this data does not point out ends to means. Men without children may wish to have that experience. As women get older closer to 35 that is the known benchmark where, based on national statistical averages, problems with pregnancy occur. So if you go for women closer to the 35 bench mark one of two things with respect to the reality of having children come to mind:

    A) things get VERY rushed, which in turn is a gamble for the relationship itself

    B) You wait until or after 35 to have children. Medically speaking past 35 you begin to roll the dice with God and hope all is well. Children are much work, special needs children can be MANY times over that of children with out special needs. That should make both men and women think about long term ramifications.

    So my point is that a good number of men would like the experience of children but they are also aware of some biological implications. From a mental/emotional standpoint I can clearly see the preference. Yet the thought of playing dice with God when the at the end of the gamble would be kids… Well if most people can agree pregnancy wile drinking alcohol is a bad idea why is it a far leap to not want to gamble with the risks of pregnancy later in life. Cause we all can find cases where women drank alcohol during their pregnancy and kid was ok, but can you tell me YOU would choose to take that risk? Hence men 30+, one may argue, feel forced into dating younger women. Also may I point out that not all Americans have great insurance to take care of special needs children.

  41. Sam says:

    Older women are HOT. Enough said. Your analysis looks promising though…even as I try to wrap my mind around the concept of “older” and “in their thirties.” Doesn’t match up. To me. Anyway. :)D
    Oh, and not to get all Betty Friedan on you, but to WHICH “older woman” are you referring? There are thousands of them here on okc. And they’re not all alike.

  42. Simon Funk says:

    [Moderator: I am re-posting because website link was wrong in previous attempt]

    Are these trends really about “age” or are they about “generation”?

    This doesn’t make a difference as far as your point goes (your point is empirical, whereas I am asking about the assumed cause). But I really wonder if you ran the same survey ten years ago or ten years hence, would the results look similar or would they be shifted by ten years?

    Note especially the contraception morality. Is that going to change as they get older, or does it just imply that the current younger generation is way conservative compared to, say, folks raised in the 1960’s.

  43. drew says:

    another awesome post. keep it up guys!

  44. luddite says:

    Sigh, 36 SWF, not so awesome. Thanks guys my age for liking the kids.

  45. anon says:

    Love the stats approach but let’s face it, it’s not going to change. At the DNA level, women want security, so they will naturally trend older in their mate selection. Conversely, at that same DNA level, men want women with the best chance to bear healthy children.

    So regardless of where the pools or “best chances” align, biology is biology. You can’t fight 250,000 years of evolution.

  46. Gene says:

    I’ve tried contacting older women, and they’re just not interested. In fact, contrary to your “advice,” younger men need to be very careful with older women on dating sites, because most older women are looking for males in EXACTLY their own age bracket (they hate older men just as much as they’re not interested in younger men).

    The typical woman in her 30s or 40s is looking for a male who is +/- 4 years her age, NOT MORE IN EITHER DIRECTION.

    Of course, in the rare case that an older woman is interested in a younger man (a “cougar” situation), she will let you know herself. That has happened once or twice for me. But that is way out of the ordinary and doesn’t happen with any degree of regularity. In my experience, myths about the ubiquity of “the cougar” are just that, myths.

    By the way, an interesting fact that often goes unmentioned is the tendency of women in their 30s or 40s to strongly dislike men who are 10+ years older than they. This is especially true when we’re talking about never-married no-children older women, but even for women with children, or who’ve been married before, they find a large age gap even more repulsive than younger women. Strangely, you would think that a 10- or 15-year gap would matter a lot less in middle age than in youth, and yet the exact opposite is happening. I really don’t think a lot of people are talking about this, and your statistics belie this trend.

  47. Esn says:

    Guys, do you keep statistics for geography besides the United States? I live in Canada and would be very interested in seeing interactive maps of my country (or Europe & other places). Do you really have so few members who don’t live in the United States?

  48. wusif says:

    I’m 27, male.
    I haven’t been married, have no children, but would like to have some after marriage, which I wouldn’t want before beeing in a serious relationship for at least 5 years, and I think that’s a pretty common attitude for men of my age.
    Now cpmes the math: this means 5 years plus lets say another two (between marriage and haveing children) makes 7. Between 35 and 40 naturally the fertility of women starts decreaseing (and this is a fact I’m not willing to discuss) subtract the 7 makes an absolute maximum of 28 to 33.
    BTW a friend of mine (who’s 22) married a 32 years old woman, she’s now 35 and expecting a child, who’s gonna have down-syndrome (btw: chances triple with every 5 years of age of the mother, starting at 30 with 0.1%). Why take more risk than necessary?
    I have never had any reason to get checked for STDs ever in my life and I want this to stay like that. BTW I’d rather not have sex, than risk such a thing (I really held this for all my life, which is why I only had sex with 2 women so far). People who often have reason to check for STDs somehow must act unreasonably pretty often. Do I want such a woman as the mother of my children? Hell no!
    Finally I won’t stop dreaming about haveing an intact, call it old fashioned type of family and therefore if a woman already has a child I would have problems fitting her into this dream (since I want to reproduce too).
    I think the main part of the problem is house-made by the women. Many women want to make career first and start thinking about haveing a family pretty late and do not realize, that their time is ticking much faster than it is for us men (this is not fair, but still a fact).

  49. fran says:

    What about the huge clincher for younger women…

    Younger means less likely to have kids, ex-husbands, or be really set in their ways (ie. willing to relocate maybe). Younger people in general move socially and physcially much more than their older counterparts. However, the disparity between men and women’s views on age are mostly about what we see in society.

  50. looking1112 says:

    The more I read… The more I see that most of the women who post on this excellent article are in touch and most of the guys are still out of it. When it comes down to it, even when the name doesn’t make the gender clear, the comments do. Apparently the world needs to move in order for many of them to begin to get it.

    I’m 25. I had to put on my profile that I wasn’t looking for someone old enough to be my father, someone close to twice my age or more. I find comparatively very old guys, those in their late 40s and 50s, who message me to be creepy. Not alluring, creepy. Its sad that so many guys can’t handle women their own age or older and that its often the only factor that they consider.

    That being said, I’m about 3 years older than the guy I’m seeing. ;) It does happen, it does work.