Women in their 20s thru 30s dating much older men. Uh, .. why?

Great Debates
1

I’m a guy, and I’m heterosexual so I generally don’t exactly find other guys attractive though I know women do and I also know that many of the men woman find attractive often leave me wondering why. When in my twenties, I used to see these dirty, scrawny, long haired, often ugly ‘dudes’ walking along with big, dirty bare feet, wearing dirty jeans and a leather, shiny black vest and nothing else, accompanied by two or three hot looking girls and really wondered why.

But, that is not the question.

What do young women find attractive in older men, something like twice their age and is there anyone on this board, female, who has been or is involved with a much older man? I’ve seen these guys in their 50s, 60s and even 70s with women in their 20s and 30s and not all of these guys have a whole bunch of money. With a few exceptions, these women are pretty, intelligent and seem to be happy. The guys all look pretty healthy, but are old and range from trim to wearing their walking shorts down around their hips because of their extended stomachs, from fairly good looking to ugly.

The few women I actually know who date much older guys have given various reasons, from them liking the maturity range and their not constantly thinking about sex like young guys do, to their not being as quick to get into trouble or fights and being gentler and more appreciative in sex, to more caring, more giving, and attractive.

I’ve looked at older women within the same age group and found very few attractive enough to consider having a relationship with, especially those who have lost their figures and seem shapeless. (Like the old saying that we start out in a baby form, shapeless, and after getting beyond our prime reproductive years, go back into a shapeless, baby-like form in our reclining years.)

So, why do so many women like going with guys old enough to be their grand fathers? Aside from the usual gold digger observations. I know the guys really appreciate it and it seems to have given most of them a new lease on life and health, which I can understand in a 65 year old seeing a 20 to 30 year old woman, after helping out at a senior center for a month.

2

You mentioned >>Aside from the usual gold digger observations.<<

But I think that really is all there is too it, pure and simple. Certainly there are variables like weird father-figure fixations, or the rare legitimate love. But in general - though they may use words like “stability” that of course translates to money!

Old saying though “She who marries for money . . . will earn it”. <g>

Reminds me of a joke too:

Well dressed guy asks an attractive young lady sitting next to him at the bar. “Hey, if knew it would be a totally descrete, safe, normal and fun evening. Would you sleep with somebody for one million dollars cash”? She doesn’t need to think long, answering “well, I suppose I would”. He then says “great, will you sleep with me for $50?”. She says “what kind of woman do you think I am?!”. To which he replies “we’ve already established what kind of woman you are, we are just quibbling over price now”.

Oh - disclaimer: I think the situation is reversed among the sexes when it comes to gold digging too sometimes. There certainly are some droopy rich old matrons around with young stud husbands!

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Gold digging, my shiny metal ass . . .

Umm, maybe it’s because guys in their 50s, 60s and 70s don’t want to go out with women in their 50s, 60s and 70s? That they will only date women 1/4 their age?

One of the reasons (just ONE on the many) why I don’t date anymore. I’m 44—who the hell am I supposed to go out with? Bob Hope and Strom Thumond already have wives.

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It’s a mistake to compare men/women to women/men. They are looking for different qualities in a mate. On average, husbands are about 3 years older then their wives. The fact that for greater age gaps there is an even larger disparity is an extension of this.

5

You have already gotten the answer to your posted question from the women you have already asked:

Your actual question seems to be

“How can they find men who are more gentle, more appreciative, more caring, and more giving attractive when I can’t get past the fact that a fifty year old woman doesn’t look like a twenty year old woman.”

For that I have no answer. My 71 year old mother in law has a pretty face and an attractive figure. She doesn’t look 20, but then neither does my father in law.

So. Why do some guys get so hung up on appearance that they cannot get past it? (And does this mean that you will need to trade in your wife when she turns 50 for a pair of 25 year olds?)

Go look up the old Mark Serlin threads and see what answers were given, then.

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Yep - I’m 3 years older than my wife. But its the rich old guy with trophy wife thing I was thinking about. You just don’t see that many poor old guys with such young wives! Except maybe in Utah :slight_smile:

>>On average, husbands are about 3 years older then their wives. The fact that for greater age gaps there is an even larger disparity is an extension of this.<<

I’m confused there. It sounds reduntant as if its saying “The fact is that for greater age gaps there is an even larger disparity in age”. What did you actually mean?

Cheers,
~GD

7

girls want a guy who is sexy,nice and rich…
there aren’t many… so , they often compromise…
have you seen pretty women ?

8

I meant disparity between husband-older vs. wife-older. If you look at spouses whose ages are 1 year apart the husband will be older in most cases, but there will also be a lot of wives who are older. If you look at spouses who are 2 years apart, the percentage of cases in which the husband is older will be higher. By the time you get to the case where the spouses are 20 or 30 years apart, the percentage of cases where the wife is older is miniscule.

The fact that most husbands are older than their wives would presumably reflect the fact that wives are looking for some aspect of age in husbands, and husbands are looking for some aspect of youth in their wives. Being 20 or 30 years apart is an extreme manifestation, which is why it is quite rare. But in this extreme form, the percentage of older husbands is naturally going to be a lot higher.

Sorry for the confusing wording.

9

You can also look at it from a biological imperative standpoint. It’s been said that attraction boils down to procreation - men are attracted to women that would make good mothers, and women are attracted to men that would make good fathers. From a man’s standpoint, that makes the choice almost purely physical, because bearing children is physically demanding. It also explains our fixation with hooters and butts.

But for women, a good husband is a good provider. That means financial stability, emotional stability, status in the community, etc. Women are less turned off by older men because men of any age are capable of procreating, and age really doesn’t matter.

That’s if you buy the biological imperative argument.

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Although I believe it is close to impossible to have a general discussion without generalizing. . …

How is it that anyone can speculate on the motivation of attraction? Who can say what goes on in other people’s relationships?

She could really love this guy.
She could be looking for security.
She could be looking for a substitute father.
She could be looking for a meal ticket.
She could really be turned on by white hair.
She could be more interested in maturity, personality, money, big bands, Lawrence Welk, The History Channel’s all WWII all the time. . …
She could be genuinely attracted physically and emotionally to this particular older man.

Just because you wouldn’t do it doesn’t mean it can’t be done or isn’t possible for someone else.

11

Sam Stone wrote:

There’s another reason for women to dig older guys, from the evolutionary-psychology standpoint:

Remember, our psychology evolved in an environment where day-to-day survival was a challenge. If a guy was really old, that meant he was successful and tough enough to live to such an advanced age. That must mean he was carrying some pretty darn good genes. Women who mated with these older guys thus had a better chance of bearing children with genes that would allow them (the children) to live to an advanced age, too.

Assuming for the moment that many aspects of human psychology are genetically driven, we can assume that those women whose genes made them more attracted to older guys would bear healthier children than those women whose genes made them more attracted to younger guys. In that next generation, that healthier crop of children would out-compete the slightly-less-healthy-on-average children with younger fathers. Eventually, the gene for women to be attracted to older guys would “sweep to fixation” throughout the human population, resulting in the “normal” human psychology we have today.

Note, however, that attraction to older guys comes with a trade-off. Human female mating drives aim not only for good breeding stock, but also for a good provider. If your mate’s too old, he stands a chance of dropping dead before your child is grown up. Your optimal solution would be to breed with a really old guy, but convince a young guy to stay around and take care of the resulting kids – hence, there is a reproductive-success-based incentive to marry a younger guy and then cheat on him.

12

Yeah, I was going to suggest the same thing, tomndebb. And, I wonder - do these women have “poufed” up hair or not?

:wink:

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He was smart, successful, confident and patient. He never pressured me to give him more than I wanted to and made sure that I wanted to give him everything. He talked to me. He listened. He focused on me. The first time I went to bed with him, he just wanted to hold me and look at me. I felt beautiful and cherished. He knew so much I hadn’t learned yet. When we lived together he took care of everything, no detail too small. I never had to baby him, he didn’t like me to fuss. After marrying a 20 year old Mama’s boy and finally divorcing a 32 year old mama’s boy, an independent 48 looked really good. And he was so proud of me.

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>>And he was so proud of me. <<

Of course he was, all such men are of course proud of their trophy wives! :slight_smile:

>>Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain<<

Ok can’t resist, I’m sure I’ll be made to pay in flames . . but “Never trust anything that bleeds for four days and doesn’t die” :slight_smile:

15

What Mark Serlin threads? The search engine only goes back 30 days and when I just entered his name without setting the options I only got 1 post in a thread from Sept. 1999 about world population.

Most of my male friends, and myself, do not find most elderly women attractive, especially over age fifty and most of us do not look foreword to becoming wrinkled, saggy, hard of hearing, and almost everything else we consider old, though we know it is inevitable. Some of have worked in nursing homes and what I alone ran into there really bothers me. Even those alert with full control of their facilities had lost their physical attractiveness. The concept for us of crawling into the sack with a wrinkled, dry skinned, pot stomached, spindly shanked, sagging buttocked, drooping breasted old woman was enough to make the most determined sexual desire go away. I don’t know how gigolos do it! Women prostitutes don’t have to get horny to earn their money, but a guy does!

Being selfish here, I can mainly see attraction, sexual or other, only through my own eyes and I do not know what a young woman can find sexy in a much older man, but I do know of a few who really care for their elderly mates. It is not, I know, coincidental that many elderly men who are rich have very young ladies hanging around.

I can see their point for their desiring a firm, young, pretty lady to one elderly, saggy woman, unless they are like the few woman like Howard Hughes wife, who close to 60, posed in Playboy and looked great! Then, she also could afford all of the expensive and time consuming beauty treatments available to people of wealth. It is true that expertly guided exercise can take 10 to 20 years off of a person’s appearance.

I apologize for any older woman I’m insulting here.

I know first hand girls who have had sugar daddies, and all have been real fond of the old men, were showered with gifts, enjoyed being shown off and did not mind the occasional sex and felt that they were making the old man happy and he was making her happy and everything was right with the world. From my point of view, such girls probably extended the life of the old man and increased it’s quality, but few were ever included in any wills after the old fellow passed on.

That part I understand.

But, according to other people I know, in several foreign nations, like South America, young woman prefer much older men because of their maturity and that they are less likely to be violent or abusive. The Japanese women often prefer older men, though not with such an extreme age difference, to settle down with.

Yes, I also know older women who choose to be with much younger men but, with few exceptions, those women look good and the guys are mostly gigolos.

How common, I wonder, are real love relationships between a woman, say in her late 30s and a guy in his 50s?

By the way, I’m in my 30’s, at just the right age to notice things like this. When does the famous mid-life crisis hit for men and women?

16

>>By the way, I’m in my 30’s, at just the right age to notice things like this. When does the famous mid-life crisis hit for men and women?<<

Any time now . . . . . . . :wink:

17

No it doesn’t. It is a drop-down box. It can scroll up as well as down. At the top is “Any Date”. Try Great Debates and also the BBQ Pit.

Go find the Mark Serlin stuff. You’ll like it. He was also obsessed by his limited view of human beauty. I seem to recall that he also worked in either a nursing home or some sort of medical facility that had a large population of older folks.

I am not claiming that I spend hours ogling the geriatric set, only that as I come to appreciate a person as a person, I am less likely to worry about all the silly things over which you are obsessing. As I noted earlier: You already have the answer to the question you asked–they enjoy the company of gentle, caring, giving men. Any further discussion should probably focus on why you are so self-limiting as to make a big deal about physical attraction when you have already recognized that you will not even be able to maintain it, yourself, unless you die young.

BTW, quote]especially over age fifty
[/quote]
if you truly find 50 to be the cut-off point for female beauty, then I would suggest that you and your buddies file some sort of class-action suit against Hugh Hefner for destroying your aesthetic sense. There may be some arbitrary age above which most women are not desirable to adult males (adolescent males, of course, believe beauty ends at age 25), but it is certainly not any age so young as 50. You have obviously been traumatized to arrive at such an absurd conclusion.

18

artsilver, you must have read that story about jerry buss, the owner of the lakers in todays LA TIMES?
i was thinking about this all day too wondering why a UCLA student (who in the story was identified as not even having been born in 1980 to see the lakers first championship under buss’ ownership) would be “dating” Jerry Buss, who is 68. i was wondering if they actually had sex or just hung out-(so she could meet famous people)
you also commented how women’s bodies become unnattractive as they age, but can you imagine buss naked? good god! hes a billionaire who cant even find a decent rug-it looks like a small animal died on his head-and he has a huge gut to go with that
so how do good looking young women have sex with old, out of shape men old enough to be their grandads-are they really enjoying it or just thinking about the new bmw and all the shoes they will get from these guys?
and ladies, its not that men want women 1/3 their age, its that we want women who stay in decent (decent, NOT PERFECT) shape-kinda like what you ladies want-i’ve had this conversation more than once:
“why can’t men just love a woman for herself…what difference does her weight make?”
“oh, so you are attracted to overweight men???”
“well…no… but…thats different”
“oh”
am i getting off the subject? sorry

19

Sam Stone:
You can also look at it from a biological imperative standpoint. It’s been said that attraction boils down to procreation - men are attracted to women that would make good mothers, and women are attracted to men that would make good fathers. From a man’s standpoint, that makes the choice almost purely physical, because bearing children is physically demanding. It also explains our fixation with hooters and butts.

Well, I guess it’s true enough that a buttless, hooterless woman might have trouble bearing a child–being so deformed and all that. OTOH, it would be pretty hard to have a child without a brain, at least one leg to stand on, an arm or two (for holding the kid near one’s hooters). So I guess that must explain men’s fixation with those things too.

But for women, a good husband is a good provider. That means financial stability, emotional stability, status in the community, etc. Women are less turned off by older men because men of any age are capable of procreating, and age really doesn’t matter.

Well actually it does kind of matter since much older men have a habit of buying the farm before the kid is grown up. You see, when a 20 year old woman hooks up with a 65 year old guy (a retirement present kind of thing) and they decide to have a kid, that means by the time the kid is 10 (and ready for baseball practice) dad is already 75.

That’s if you buy the biological imperative argument.

I guess I don’t. But thanks for being brave enough to be the one to do the dirty biological deed. :wink:

tracer
Your optimal solution would be to breed with a really old guy, but convince a young guy to stay around and take care of the resulting kids – hence, there is a reproductive-success-based incentive to marry a younger [sic] guy and then cheat on him.

Is it possible that this woman married to a guy who’s near death simply wants to, urm, make whoopie? Or do females only have sex to satisfy their reproductive-success-based incentives?

Seriously, I think it’s pretty plain that lots of young women feel very insecure about men (and some with very good reason). I recently heard (through word-of-mouth, so no citation) that in the 1950s, men surveyed claimed to be attracted to 50% of a series of photos of women selected at random; whereas, nowadays, men of the same age claim to be attracted only to 5%. I have to say, this doesn’t surprise me given the kinds of unrealistic images men are expected to gawk at 24 hours a day.

So, naturally, if your 26-year-old boyfriend thinks you need to look more like his video game temptress and less like your human self, then the 50 year old who tells you you ring his bells more than Rita Hayworth did when he was in 3rd grade is going to offer certain advantages. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only psychology I need to know.

Of course, many women are also terrified of being dumped for trophy wives as they get older: the best answer to which is to be a trophy wife.

Personally speaking, I am in my mid 30s and my husband is almost nine years younger than I am. He has has a tremendous amount of energy, more than enough for our kid and for me: which is why I am always the delightful and light-hearted person you have sometimes found here :).

20

tom, thanks, btw, for those last two posts, which I greatly enjoyed. I am glad that nature gave you a butt–even though you don’t have to bear children–so that you could sit on it and type brilliant posts into your computer…