To think that a 35 year old man setting his dating range to age 21+ is revolting?

[colachive]

DP friend is in the process of getting divorced. He is actively on the apps, as he hasn’t had sex with his ex wife for 5 years, is pretty desperate. My partner advised him to set his age range from 21 “if all you want is a shag”, and down to 26+ for a relationship.

AIBU to find this gross? 21 year old girls will think a 35 year old man is ancient, no? He seems to think that that’s an acceptable age gap. For context I’m 37.

Well.a 21 year old dating a 35 year is hardly dating Someone old enough to be their dad are they??
How many 14 year old Dads do you know🤔

How about letting the 21yo+ women decide for themselves who they want to date and keep your beak out?

I’m certainly not jealous of anyone with an old man as a partner, whilst they are much younger and watching life slip by.

35 year old? a middle-age man? In 2025? 😂

I'd rather have stuck pins in my eyes than be with a man old enough to be my dad when I was in my 20s you do you.
My dad didn't have me when he was 15 anyway, so was nowhere near 35 himself when I was in my 20s.

If it's not jealousy, what is that sense of superiority pretending 20 year old women who make difference choice can only be stupid and naive?

So you think we have to wait until we reach our 30s to become intelligent? Really?

Im laughing at the people who think 35 is old.

35 is so young!

Exactly!!

I'm in my 50's and I occasionally get messages from guys in their late 60's.

Nope not for me! Some men's expectations are off the scale!

I’m 26 and associate with some 21-22 year old. Don’t think they’d be into a freshly divorced 35 year old man unless he was very handsome or they thought he was rich and wanted a nice free dinner. If he’s a proper sort then he might get that shag he’s after. However most men just take what they can get. Some of my male friends have their age range maxed out, because you “have to cast a wide net”. A few of them have actually met up with, shagged, and in one case dated, women much older than us. I think it’s just how online dating goes.

Absolutely disgusting

Yes, you are unreasonable for finding it revolting that an adult man would like to have a legal sexual relationship with an adult woman.

How old does a woman have to be before she's allowed to decide for herself who she wants to go out with?

I find it interesting that the idea is that for a casual relationship if the man is older he's "using her for sex". If it's casual, isn't she using him for sex? I mean, the whole point is having sex with someone you find attractive, there isn't a need to have aligned life goals.

It does happen the other way as well. My partner mostly dated older women in his early 20, they were generally 35 - 45. The reason being, he said, was that he wasn't looking to settle down and he found older women didn't expect that kind of thing from him.

I don't think its revolting and he can do that as long as he doesn't lie about it.

The question is, would someone that young be comfortable around a man his age? I don't think so. I had this illusion as a young adult (18-25) that I wanted to be with a guy around 35. When the opportunity presented itself, I felt way too creeped out to take it. I don't think he's going to have much luck unless she's low quality lol

Same, even from an early age I found them attractive. Around the age of 15 I would date older teens as I found boys my age immature and stupid. Most my friends did too. Now however, I date younger. Haven’t dated anyone my own age in about 6 years 😂

When I was 34 I had a fling with a 21 year old 😂

It's pretty sad, but men never see themselves as old lol.

I look at things like this along the lines of, would a nice man do this? If the answer is no, I accept that the man involved is sleazy and try not to worry about it.

Actually you’re wrong about nobody accusing older women of being pedos for dating younger men. Caroline Flack and Harry Styles- early 30s and 17 I think. But people went crazy about that. Also that film director Sam Taylor Johnson whatever her name is was like 42 with two kids and maybe married when she started a relationship with a 18 year old Aaron Taylor Johnson. Today people still say he was groomed and call her a predator. They’ve been together ever since and are married with two daughters.

I get what you’re saying though but people seem to pick and choose who they are outraged about. Think Blake Lively was 22 and Ryan Reynolds was 33 when they got together but no one mentions that. Same with Matthew McConagh and his wife were late 30s and mid 20s when they got together like 14 years difference I think,

"To think that a 35 year old man setting his dating range to age 21+ is revolting?"

why would that be that per se 'revolting'? women in that age range can contact him or not if they don't want to, can't they?

If you mean it's ipso facto revolting for a man (or a woman, as evinced by several examples on this thread) to be open to dating outside the bounds of their chronological age, then you're naive. Age gap relationships happen all over the world, and are no big deal to many.

(Happily married 48 years to a man 16 years older than I am. We are the happiest couple I know, our happiness only slightly tarnished now by him being a bit forgetful, and me having stage 4 cancer, but still, we look after one another on an equal basis, our capabilities/disabilities work out harmoniously, and so it has always been. We've had a wonderful life together.. Nothing revolting here..)

Biologically speaking the prefrontal cortex- part of the brain that helps us makes decisions stops developing around 25. But the brain continues to develop until the late 20s. I doubt men would be debating this issue if the roles were reversed.

Agree on both parts. Also I am like your partner, apparently I’m the Samantha of the friendship group and routinely date men in their early 20s despite being 37. Reasons I do this, number one reason is that I can. I find men in their 20s very attractive. They also don’t want to settle down, don’t have kids and the sex is good. If both adults are consenting to sex and are over the age of legal consent then why not? Life is too short to be clutching them pearls.

I was 20 when I met my 36 year old (now) husband. Been together over 20 years now and have 2 children....no he is not rich!
I have a friend who's husband is 23 years older than her, his children are older than her. Been together 25+ years and are besotted with each other!
How about live and let live and leave consenting adults to it.

The logical next step after infantilising adult women is to control them, because they don't know their own mind and will need to be guided and chaperoned by older women and men who know better.

Some 40-year-olds are very naive (see the romance scammer thread!). Some 20-year-olds are very streetwise. Not the point. We have an adult age of consent and if someone's over it then it's not your business.

Scratch the surface of people outraged by this and you'll find an assumption that sex is something women give and men take. Women don't, or shouldn't, have any sexual desire of their own.

I'm not in the market for this but if I was single I would very happily have a fling with a fit 21-year-old guy.

It makes him revolting, in his expectations. And your DH if he suggested it.

Yeah this. ^ Although it's hardly suprising for (most) men. They seem obsessed with having a younger woman/hitting on younger women once they get past their early-mid 30s.

When I was in my late teens/early 20s, I had married men hitting on me at work and in bars, eyeing up a 'younger bit of stuff.' They were only in their mid 30s, and so were their wives. But the men still had a wandering eye. (Many of them.)

The wives were still quite young, and still attractive, but these men still yearned for a (often much) younger, fitter, firmer woman. FOUL! 😖

It's too old for a 21 year old though.