Older men are sad pervs?

[Emerald46]

I've read the entire 'Age Gap' thread on here and just feel depressed! Why do men, often in their late forties/early fifties decide now is the time in their life to get together with a much younger woman and is it wrong?

I 'feel' it's wrong but some of the people I've discussed it with have a very ' oh women just like older men' view. I know the reasons why this happens - patriarchy, us all being fed a diet of sexism on films over years and years of attractive older men being flirted with by much younger, scantily clad women etc etc. I know in the bad old days, women weren't encouraged to aspire for a career or financial independence as much as today so older men seemed a safer bet security-wise but....surely that's all in the past now??

I did online dating about six years ago and on match.com and 'my single friend' the men almost always specified 'acceptable' age range for the women they would date to be from much younger - say 20-odd years - up to (if we are lucky) their own age. I didn't join those sites but when I got chatting to men on POF, the men often said things like, "Well women are just as bad, I got a message from a woman in her 60s!!!"....this would be from a man in his 50s. So, he wouldn't consider chatting to a woman10 years younger either then because a ten year gap would be ridiculous? " Oh yes, but women tend to like older men" was the stock reply. It just irritated me so much.

But am I wrong to think this is misogynistic/sexist/sad/pathetic?

I don't think all couples should be aged within a few years of each other. I just find it sad that so many men seem to specifically look for much younger women but never older women. And why do young women date these men?

I'm not bitter - I'm in a happy, long-term (I hope!) relationship with a lovely man (one year younger than me) but I'm curious. And a bit despondent about the male species tonight...

It’s far too reductive to consider similar age = equality in terms of partner attributes.

A massive power imbalance is always a problem. Often a huge age gap correlates with a huge power imbalance. Perhaps the few cases where a relationship with a massive age gap is a healthy long term one are cases where the power imbalance is avoided for one reason or another.

Where the younger party is very young indeed and lacks the confidence of knowing that she (usually she) has lots of choices in life and plenty of time, potential and prospects in life (lacks secure family background, good education and career prospects, good network of friends, healthy self esteem and resilience), and the older is well into middle age, it's never going to be an equal relationship...

I think it's societal. Like you say, years ago women would've had to accept older men much more for security etc. It's a hangover from that. Takes decades for societal habits to die off. I mean, I think it's much more complicated than this but it's basically down to expectations of how men and women can/should behave.

Yes, true @MarieQueenofScots but I'm using that as a basic pointer. Interesting about height @NotDavidTennant, that's very true.

I'm sleeping with a guy 15 years older than me.

We have similar income, lifestyle, education level and interests.

Obviously I'm not very young, but I don't think its useful to suggest age gap automatically = power imbalance. Equality is important absolutely in a relationship of course.

@tarasmalatarocks

Absolutely agree. The problem is Keith the 17 stone bin man sees attractive and well off older man with much younger woman and doesn’t understand why he can’t have a much younger woman too.

Dating and relationships are a transaction in a lot of ways.

I've always found older men attractive and am married to one 15 Yr my senior (I caneon to him) men are biologically programmed to find women of childbearing potential attractive sexually.

*came on to

@LooQoo lol that reminds me of a warning my gran used to give me 'men never think they're too old or too ugly'. When I was a teen and you'd get old men ogling me in the street she used to shout at them.
There does seem to be more pervy old men about than pervy old women. I guess that there's a good deal of abusive age gap relationships as well. When I was growing up I had a friend who's dad was in his seventies, mum was in her forties and he was disgusting. Was known for pinching all the mums bums at kids birthday parties. People just accepted him as being a bit of a sex pest and a joke. But it is dangerous to brush this stuff under the carpet, a few years later he tried to attack me and I only escaped very narrowly. I wonder now what hell his three daughters and wife must have gone through

MarieQueenofScots whether 15 years is a massive gap depends how old you are I suspect - it isn't quite the generation gap which is always uncomfortable for many people ("he's / she's old enough to be her dad/ his mum" turns the majority of people's stomachs because it feels slightly incestuous and always feels uneasy,as though something there isn't right).

A 15 year gap would be massive if the younger party were 17, but less so if the younger party were 32... Although people in age gap relationships said it becomes an issue again when the older party is approaching 70 and the younger in her 50s - 56 and 71 massive difference.

The nature of your relationship sounds very different to the young women just out of their teens who, with depressing naive predictability, claim to be exceptionally mature themselves (usually they explain that they are mature because they have lost interest in/ never enjoyed clubbing and prefer staying in, and want to have a baby) and yet say their their middle aged boyfriend is a good match because they are incredibly immature ...

anothernotherone

Absolutely - and I commented on the post in question to that effect

As I said earlier though it’s too simplistic to make sweeping statements on age alone.

Well younger people are generally more physically attractive. Or I should say they have greater potential. People may say

''oh I used to very overweight, smoke and drink excessively when I was 25. Now that I have lost the weight and live a more healthy lifestyle I look way better at 40.''

That may be true now, but if they had looked after themselves at 25 then no they wouldn't look better at 40.

Everyone should aim to get someome that they like whether they can actually get that person that fits their criteria is the question. Rather than complaining about the men or women that don't like them back, people should just focus on themselves and what they have control over.

limpbizkit whilst I don't think 15 years is necessarily a huge gap, depending on your ages when you met, I wonder whether your firm conviction that men are programmed to find women of childbearing age attractive means that you're assuming that you'll divorce or tolerate affairs once you reach menopause...

I read that the "7 year itch" also has a biological basis in optimising the chance of passing on our genes, especially for men who have a longer reproductive life but for women too. The idea being that a couple who successfully reproduced remained together for the optimal amount of time to give the offspring the best chance of survival, balanced with giving the parent the optimal chance of reproducing again with a different mate (so producing offspring genetically different enough to increase the odds of evolutionary favourable traits in at least some offspring). In the stone age/ hunter gatherer societies children were often more widely spaced due to less available food and prolonged breastfeeding to keep young children alive in times of scarcity leading to lower fertility. Hence roughly 7 years between getting together and moving on to the next pairing.

I guess some people still do that... But most would hope to have more going on than just the biological drive to pass on optimal genetic material with the best chance (spread betting... )of continuing to thrive and be passed on for as long as possible through the generations...

LOL you going to judge an entire gender by what you see written in OLD profiles? If you went by what women write in their profiles, that would reflect poorly on the female gender too.

Men as a class are problematic in many ways. That isn’t the sole bastion of older men.

I suppose I could confess, as a 41 year old man, that it's probably only in the last five years that I finally reached the level of maturity that my ex-wife needed from me in our mid 20's...

NewLevelsOfTiredness that's just you though - lots of us have been married to adult men our own age, and capable of acting it, for decades.

Scott72 despite the thread title the OP isn't judging men as a sex class, rather the very specific sub set who trawl either OLD or non virtual haunts for very young vulnerable women, young enough to be their daughters.

I'm not judging that set of men specifically at all, @ anotherotherone, I just found online dating a singularly bizarre and very funny/entertaining experience which is why I was interested in person up thread who runs dating forums. Im observing this (amongst other behaviour, obviously) through my business, through much older men assuming it's ok to make a pass at me, through remembering my own youth and that of female friends.... Anyhow, I have many fantastic male friends who I know do not lust after young women. Most of my coupled friends are very stable and there is no sign of the man trying to run off with a youthful neighbour etc. I'm not under the illusion every middle aged man is deluded enough to think young women find him irresistible - I'm just interested in why some do.

Emerald46 ah ok, fair enough. I was projecting then, because I most certainly was judging that subset

I have no experience of online dating at all - in my dating days I met potential boyfriends through friends / friends of friends or work or hobbies or in bars or at parties or on long train journeys...

I think you sound pretty ageist to be honest. It's up to the individual who they date and if they want them to be younger then that's up to them. No obe forces anyone younger or older (over legal age before anyone says anything) to be with the other in a free society. And I'm pretty sure people know their own minds and aren't taken in my society views.

When online dating, I always look at the age range the man sets relative to his own age. I won't reply to anyone who only dates younger than themselves as we won't share the same approach to life (translation: I think they are dicks, but that's just a personal opinion)

I would highly recommend women try women for sex - higher orgasm rate for starters. I find most men disappointing in so many different ways.

(That said, my most favourite lover is a man 12 years older)

@Emerald46

I find that people who sweepingly criticise the relationships of others are usually lacking in their own. There is a couple in my family like this. They spend all their time making snide remarks about other couples, 'oh I would never want to date a fat woman', 'oh I could never be with a man that was shorter than me', despite the fact I dont think I have ever seem then laugh in each other's company.

It's a way of reassuring yourself by saying whatever my relationship is, at least on paper it's better than so-and-so's because my partner isnt fat/short/older/poor etc.

Sad.

Yes @anothernotherone I remember train journeys being quite fun when I was younger, too 😀. I love that @ deathbyboredom - higher orgasm rate has got to be a winner ✔️