quote:As you can see, men tend to focus on the youngest women in their already skewed preference pool, and, what's more, they spend a 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.
posted
Men who want children obviously should focus on younger women, biologically speaking; fertility really does drop alot across the twenties. (Of course this may not be realistic sociologically speaking, in that relatively few 20-year-olds are really thinking of children; but our genes haven't caught up with that yet.) And I must say I dislike his moralising about the trend; why is it bad to want to have sex with someone young and pretty?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: And yet, I am plagued by teenagers.
You'll notice he doesn't say anything about absolute amounts. For all we know, the low-frequency red parts of his heat maps represent about 50 emails a day. Besides, in a big site like OkCupid there's a lot of room for long tails; his results are for the median.
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posted
For that particular trend, what I find amusing is not the moralizing but the fact it seems that men are either unaware of their real preferences or that they don't want to broadcast their real preferences (I'm not familiar with the site so I don't know if stated preferences are visible to normal users).
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
I can vouch for this data following pretty closely to the in-person dating company I worked for. All the men wanted younger women, and the older the men got, the younger (relatively) they wanted.
Also, as the group got older, a greater and greater number of women were interested in a smaller and smaller pool of men.
A few of the men figured this out, and were constantly getting dates. Most of the men kept insisting on trying to hook up with women 20 years younger, and couldn't figure out why they weren't getting all kinds of action.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Younger is generally preferable, all else being equal, yes.
All else being equal I definitely prefer older. It didn't help me get any dates, but things worked out ok for me anyhow.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I can vouch for this data following pretty closely to the in-person dating company I worked for. All the men wanted younger women, and the older the men got, the younger (relatively) they wanted.
Also, as the group got older, a greater and greater number of women were interested in a smaller and smaller pool of men.
A few of the men figured this out, and were constantly getting dates.
Hmm. I don't really get a much better response from older women than younger, other than the older ones seem to want a relationship, and the younger ones tend to want to just date. There are exceptions to that rule. I definitely get plenty of dates. I have more than I can really handle sometimes.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
As a twenty-one year old male bachelor I wouldnt feel all that comfortable with having an emotionally involved relationship with a significantly older woman. About five years older and two younger for me, just to level the playing field of the relationship, I dont exactly have much to add to a conversation about mortgages but I dont want to hear about how your mom is totally invading your space all the time.
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: As a twenty-one year old male bachelor I wouldnt feel all that comfortable with having an emotionally involved relationship with a significantly older woman. About five years older and two younger for me, just to level the playing field of the relationship, I dont exactly have much to add to a conversation about mortgages but I dont want to hear about how your mom is totally invading your space all the time.
Yeah, the age gap thing can be a problem. BUT...it is simply A problem. Age difference can be overcome, if there's enough compatibility in other areas, in my opinion.
That's not to say that those of us who have more difficulty in long-term relationships shouldn't be extremely circumspect about compatibility issues prior to making long-term commitments like living together or marriage.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
steven: In our case, we were local, and rather expensive, so we had a more limited number of clients than a big website. So for a 45 year old man, there might have been 2,000 women 45 or older who would be intrerested in a date with him, and only 100 women 35 or under who want to go on a date with him.
So for any given night and activity, he's almost sure to find a date if he looks in the older group, while it may be harder in the younger (smaller pool of possibles) group to find an available date on Thursday for the ballet.
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