What Is It With Men and Younger Women? Pt. 1

This isn’t so much a series of “blog posts” as it is “Thinking Inside Your Box workin through some stuff.” Blogs are cheaper than psychiatrists. Hell, they’re even cheaper than booze!

OKCupid made the news a while ago when they wrote on their blog about what they’ve seen in their statistics about age. To get right to the salient points:

• Women tend to be attracted to (or message) men whose age is commensurate with their own. As women get older the age ranges of guys they’ll communicate with moves along with their own age. To be clear, ladies may prefer older guys, but what they consider “older” changes as they age. A 20 year old girl might date a 26 year old dude but not a 30 year old; a 30 year old woman might date a 36 year old man but not a 40 year old man.
• Men like women in their early 20’s.

Christian Rudder, the guy who writes the OKCupid blog (OKTrends) would be the first to say that this is a case of the data backing up something we all already knew: guys like younger chicks. We all knew that. I’ve mentioned it before on this blog, specifically calling out that if you’re looking to have an affair the perfect age to look for in your partner is 23. (My readers didn’t necessarily agree with me on all aspects of that post, but you’ll notice that I didn’t retract it: I’m sticking to my guns on that one.)

The point is, we didn’t need statistics to know that men like younger women. It’s a truism. It’s nice to have our assumptions validated, but we all knew it. It’s the way things have always been and probably will always be. A lot of ink has been spilled as to why this might be the case, and many assumptions tend to focus on the nubile bodies of girls in their 20’s – these girls are young enough that they still have those youthful looks but old enough that men can fuck them without feeling weird about it. (Sometimes men should feel weird about it, but we don’t. A 50 year old with a 23 year old? Eugh! The only one who loves that situation is the 50 year old.) (Well… presumably the 23 year old is okay with it as well.)

The other assumption I see a lot of is that guys are so immature that they need to hang out with younger girls just to be with someone who’s at the same mental/emotional level. Maybe it’s mostly bitter divorced women who say this, but frankly there’s a bit too much truth to this for my comfort. I’m not sure if it’s the whole story, I think the immaturity brings with it some selfishness, but that brings me to my next point:

An assumption I don’t hear quite so often but which rings true to me is that younger girls are more willing to put up with a guy’s nonsense than older women who are tired of his bullshit. Any time you hear a guy saying, “she makes me feel young again,” what he really means is: “she doesn’t call me out my bad habits and selfishness!” Or, to really nail that point home, “she doesn’t hold me to the same standard my wife does (or did).”

Do you want to go out to the bar with the guys on Wednesday and spend your money on beer instead of going home to your family and putting that money toward groceries? Your wife might not like that idea; she might ask/demand/wish that you live up to your responsibilities as a husband and father. A younger girl might be more willing to agree with you when you tell her that it’s your money, and all your wife does is bitch and never let you have any fun. Eventually that 23 year old girl will get older, get a husband of her own, and start to realize that she’s being saddled with her own husband’s immaturity and selfishness – meanwhile, you keep getting older but there continues to be a stream of new 23 year old girls you can hang out with who will validate your bullshit. “Yeah, your wife is a bitch! Why won’t she let you spend your own money? … Buy me another drink?”

So I don’t have an answer as to why guys like younger girls, but I think it’s true.

So how does this apply to me? To be continued…

(Don’t expect anything grandiose.)