Honest opinions ... is a UK 14/16 seen as unattractive for dating as a 50 year old?

[lemonepisode1]

I'm online dating for a while. My face is decent and I'd consider myself relatively attractive in the looks stakes but it is my body that men seem to dislike.
As above , I'm that size, 5'7', proportioned except for a wide , flabby meno belly.Im 2.5stone overweight on the scales.
I weight train and walk and run over the week.. so I exercise every day. Look after my appearance/ clothes/ grooming etc but I really believe it's my body that turns them off .
Honestly, especially to men on here, is that size and body type unattractive to you on a woman who is 50?
What are your experiences and more so, what do you find attractive out of interest ?
Thanks.
Lemon

I’m five foot seven and a size 14 -16 with a bmi of 30. I wear size 14 skinny jeans from primark, size 16 from only/or. We are all different. I need to lose 3.5 stone, at which point I will be a small ten. We are all different.

As a man in his 50s this makes depressing reading. As far as the original question. No it's fine looking at most of my mates they,if measured in a similar way would be much more like a 20.
're the younger women...I don't get what a 35 year old would see in me if I was on the dating scene and what would we talk about? All my cultural references are from the 70s and 80s.

Strange as my friend late 40s, slim, mixed race and definitely not blonde, exotic looking seems to have no trouble at all. She is pretty smart though, a Dr and definitely guys seem enamoured with that.

As that horrific case in the press recently demonstrates.

A woman saying to the multiple rape victim that she's so sorry, it's her fault her husband was one of the rapists; because she wasn't having sex with him enough/at all.

Then there are the attitudes to infidelity, but seemingly only male infidelity (?)

And if they are older and retired, they want a housemaid who is also available to them at all times, rather than an equal partner. Having a partner with a full time professional career is far too intimidating for fragile egos!

Dating at 50+ is all about confidence, energy and personality. Noone at that age is an oil painting but if the vibe is right you'll fancy each other anyway.. If you're not getting second dates it's most likely your personality doesn't click with them, not that your're a few pounds over a size 12.

Everyone I know who's pulled a good partner in later life has been living their best life for themselves and found love when they weren't expecting it. Usually via work or hobbies etc, where there will be people with a similar energy and mindset already. Not by trawling through randos on OLD.

I'm significantly bigger than you and 50, and didn't have issues finding someone I connected with on the apps. He even has hair and is taller than me 🤣

It’s your age

a colleague who is in his early 50’s and he likes women of a similar age. The women he has met online are way out of his league he knows that he has the advantage and so many are disappointed that few men that are a similar age are interested in them (his words)

I think most men are more concerned about age than size. Ime,a 50 year old man would rather date a 25 year woman who's a size 14/16 than a 50 year old woman who's a size 8/10. So many men are obsessed with youth when it comes to women.

🤢

Are these men such a catch that they're going to have much younger women drooling over them?

I doubt it.

Men may be 'interested' in dating hot young women but those women will not be interested in them. Not much of an 'advantage'.

Honestly when I was in my 20’s the thought of a man my dads age trying to pull me would have absolutely repulsed me 🤢 I would have thought they were a sad sleazy old creep

I think the most frequent lie I've come across is height, and I'd go to 5ft6 being only 5ft4, but shorter or the same height is obvious on meeting and its so irritating. While your busy castigating your own figure, haven't you found that most single men around 50 are overweight, bald or both. I found the few slimmer ones were mainly smokers or busy taking profile shots of themselves in the gym - the sort that would treat a woman like a sex object.
Chances are the over 50 men you are dating are equally packing a bit of weight and then some, so who gives an F what they think.
If you want a slim fella yourself, you probably do need to be reasonably slim too, but that's kinda fair.

I agree.
I've dated some lovely men my age / within a couple of years older & younger.

All nice, decent guys, all dating within their age range.

Not found one for me, and it took too much time and energy sifting through online to get the odd decent date, I'm not one for OLD but the idea that's it's your age or weight holding you back isn't my first thought, more that it's a numbers game and also a lottery. You can be lucky and find someone fairly quickly or it can be a relentless task (I know a Londoner in her 30s who dated for 10 years a couple a week until finding her very handsome same age architect (so to be) DH on there) so it can happen

But if you were a size 10 now you would look haggard and a lot older

I'm 52, size 18 at 5'4", don't dye my hair, don't wear makeup. Met a couple of lovely men in their 50s on OLD. (Also a lot of arseholes and some nice guys who I just didn't have a spark with.)

You don't need every man to be looking for you, just one you click with.

Not in every situation, I was 24 when i met my 41 year old now husband. I didn't have 'daddy issues' whatever those are.

Huh? Why would she look haggard and older if she was slim. What a silly thought.

As an early 50s man (who’s with a two years older partner I met online at 38), all I can add is that the thought of dating someone in their 30s or younger is not appealing at all.

As a PP pointed out earlier, none of my cultural references would mean anything to them, they might still want DC (I’m definitely done with that - who’d want to be changing nappies at my age?!) and I’d want to enjoy my not-that-distant-now retirement with someone who wasn’t still, (rightly so for them), grafting and building their career.

My tastes run more to a sense of humour that gels with mine, broad cultural tastes and someone wanting to travel a bit. Size 18+ is probably a bit bigger than I’d prefer, if I was being completely honest, but I’ve dated women of that size when I was younger and personality counts for more.

Holding fat in your face smooths out wrinkles and can keep you looking younger for longer.

No it doesn’t, it just makes you look like you’ve a fat face.

My daughter is in her early twenties and frankly the thought of her being with a man in his 40s nauseates her and me tbh.
She is regularly harassed sexually through verbals and once through groping, in her part time work and finds them and that age group generally Lecherous and entitled. Not one of her peer group are with men older than late twenties.

Wow. Big fat faces or haggard? What a way to describe each other. Surely we shouldn't be even debating what type of 50 year old woman is more acceptable to 50 year old men, when it's pretty much guaranteed that fat or thin the majority of us have more to offer than the majority of them. Which is the crux of the problem for women like the OP. Not finding one who will find her attractive, finding a tolerable one from amongst those who do.

This is a significant problem for young women. There was a post yesterday from a 20s woman who is receiving unwanted attention from numerous ex colleagues, all middle aged men. Whenever I see posts on here proclaiming that men in their 50s 'will' be dating young women, I always think, spare a thought for young women before perpetuating this myth, that really has no basis outside of older men's fantasies. They may want young women, it's rarely reciprocated, and every time we assert they 'will' be dating them, it adds to a culture where aging chancers will keep trying their luck and bothering young women.