Should Men Consider Dating Older Women?
Published on March 2, 2010
I’m really learning to love OKCupid more every day. As I’ve written here in the past, it is my recommended free dating service. Aside from offering a great free dating option, they’re the only service that offers substantial statistics on the dating habits of their members.
In some ways I believe these statistics aren’t going to tell the whole story as I believe the type of clientele will differ from service to service. As an example, this article I’m about to discuss shows how online dating drops off at older ages…at OKCupid. Sites like eHarmony have been seeing a boom in older age groups so I’m not sure the stats are universal. Still, they’re providing more information in a week than any other dating service provides in a year. In some ways, they’re writing the book on online dating statistics. Most articles I’ve seen in the last 6 months, whether it’s a major publication or a blog like mine, ends up pointing back to OKCupid.
The most recent article that caught my attention is A Case For An Older Woman. It’s a really long article but for anyone interested in dating statistics, it’s a great read. What the article points out is that as men grow older, they are more willing to date relatively younger women. I suspect most of us don’t need a chart to tell us this but here’s theirs anyway:
The article points out that men actually lie about the age range they’re willing to date. Men will concentrate on the low-bound of their age preferences and will actively contact women younger than their specified youngest preferable age. The desirability for women actually peaks at 21! Perhaps not shocking but it is young considering the age span dating at the site. The article then moves into its sales pitch on why men should be concentrating on dating older women arguing based on sex, attitude and looks. It then makes a pretty (no pun intended) good case by showing women of different ages in same attractiveness percentile.
I actually work with statistics for a living so I know you can make them say just about anything you want (hence my hesitation when dealing with OKCupid statistics, while at the same time loving that they provide said statistics). Even with that knowledge, I do think the article makes a good argument. One of the biggest self-imposed handicaps I see when talking to singles is that they refuse to contact all but a very small set of people. For men, this article makes a pretty good point that there is too much concentration on age and that if guys would just try talking to some different women they might be amazed at how much they would like those women.
Author: Brad
Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.
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