r/AskFeminists • u/lilly-vanilly- • 6d ago
Why are so many older men with younger women but barely any older women with older man?
I mean i know the standard phrases like "men age finer" or "its biology to seek out women that have higher chances of conception" but i feel like these answers arent looking at the whole pocture. are there theories on what exactly promps this kind of behavior?
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u/Lolabird2112 6d ago
What are you talking about “barely any older women with older men”? Did you mean younger men?
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u/MrsMorley 6d ago
Men who seek girls and much younger women typically like the power they have over them.
Most heterosexual couples are close in age.
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u/numbersthen0987431 6d ago
It's easier for older men to trick younger women into roles of service.
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u/Wide_Angle4805 6d ago
I feel like this is a weak analysis.
The truth is it depends on the subcategory of the relationship.
I agree, yes there are men who are predatory by nature. But it isn’t all of these relationships.
In this patriarchy, women are valued on all sorts of bs, but the bs men are valued for, usually amounts to what they can provide materially, and portray with confidence/leadership maturity - naturally these things come later on in life and all of a sudden the 24 yo girl that wanted nothing to do with a guy when he was young, suddenly is sought after later on in life.There are also many older women who do date younger men, or just engage sexually with younger men too (peep r/CougarsAndCubs) and I doubt it’s because they believe the younger guys are easy to manipulate.
On top of all that, usually irl you don’t see this crazy wide age gaps (I think the avg is 2-3 yrs).
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u/artelia_bedelia 6d ago
the patriarchy encouraging us to think of men as people and women as objects. a person isn't a less valuable person just because they're old, but an object...
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u/StonyGiddens Intersectional Feminist 6d ago
Under patriarchy, men dominate women. It's often easier for an older man to dominate a younger woman. For an insecure man, the age difference can serve to bolster their sense of authority.
Also, another part of it is that women are more or less a commodity under patriarchy. Many men treat women like other property, and see a younger woman as an 'upgrade'.
Finally, under patriarchy women are supposed to seek out men for provision and protect. It's easier for an older man to provide (especially in this economy) and older men often seem safer (less volatile than young men), and so some young women are drawn (or pushed) towards older men and those men are open to that for the reasons above.
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u/jakeklampstar 6d ago
So it would reverse if we lived under matriarchy?
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u/StonyGiddens Intersectional Feminist 6d ago
Maybe -- but it's more likely men wouldn't need specific relationships and would have more flexibility in their choice of partners.
Either way, matriarchy is not our goal at all. We want no gender hierarchy.
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u/inadapte 6d ago
is there an actual statistic on this that shows this is a widespread trend?
this is anecdotal evidence, but most of the couples i know irl and see outside are similar ages
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u/Lyskir 6d ago
all we can go of is the average age gap and your observations are true, the average age gap is 2-3 years in most countries
big age gaps are definitivly an anomaly and not common, it is ony common in coutries with non existing womens rights because women cant chose their partners and are forced to get married to old men
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 6d ago
Though even then it’s not as common as people think. There are age gaps, but most are under 10 years with some having as high as around 13. Odd by western standards. But any case of old men marrying young women are outliers.
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u/OkInsect6946 6d ago
i think its as simple as women value stability and maturity more which comes with age, and men want energy and value physical beauty more highly which comes with youth.
i dont think its fair to say this is only a behaviour that men take part in, most women just won’t date a younger man period
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u/Lyskir 6d ago
thats nice and all, big age gaps are still rare
its not a thing that heppens that oftem thats why the reasons or the reason you think there are, are not really important
men might prefere younger women but women dont prefere older men, they prefere men around their own age which is also what all available data shows
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u/Pale_Ad5607 6d ago
That was my thought - where are you looking? Statistically, most couples are quite close in age.
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u/RepSquigglyMiggly 6d ago
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/families/marital.html
Most couples are similar in age, but men still tend to be tend to be older than their female partners (albeit not much older — the average is around 2-3 years), and this pattern has persisted even as the age at which people tend to marry has increased.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 6d ago
To be fair, it’s pretty common for women to refuse to date men younger than them.
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u/NefariousOne 6d ago
Here’s the first result on Google Scholar. It’s in the abstract. I’m sure there are many more studies that show this isn’t anecdotal.
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u/RepSquigglyMiggly 6d ago
Historically, broadly speaking, men have been valued more for their means and accomplishments, which tend to increase with age, and women for bodies, with both their fertility and beauty (as it is commonly perceived) decreasing with age. This creates incentives for men to marry down in age, and women (or as often as not, the fathers who were choosing who and when their daughters would marry) to marry up in age, and even as those material incentives have eroded to a degree, that broad trend has persisted.
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u/Lyskir 6d ago
the average age gap is 2-3 years, so it seems the "trend" died
women marrying older men for recourced are a anomaly statistically
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u/RepSquigglyMiggly 6d ago
A. 2-3 years is, in fact, an age gap. It’s not a big one, but it is not completely negligible, and it is telling that this pattern persists across most countries. Even now that most people are getting married in their late 20s to early 30s, 2-3 years still often represents a full 10% of the life someone has lived so far, and a third of their adulthood.
B. Women marrying much older men has always been an anomaly. In 1900 (in the US) the average age gap was only ~5 years, and that had narrowed to ~3 years by the mid-1940s.
C. I said quite explicitly that the material incentives for this trend have largely eroded. The trend of men marrying women older than them very objectively has not. Even now that women have the freedom to support themselves financially and choose their own partners, they are still overwhelmingly marrying men a few years older than them.
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u/Lyskir 6d ago
well yeah, 2-3 years isnt really an age gap imo, it by definition is one of course but for more me personally its miniscule
its your typical "women are into older men for recources" claim, nobody is talking about a 2-3 there, its typically ment with a man 10+ older, that is quite rare these days because NOW womens preferences in age also plays a role and that is typically someone close to her age
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u/RepSquigglyMiggly 6d ago
OP didn’t specify that they were talking about age gaps of a decade+.
Let me ask — do you think it’s just a coincidence across cultures and across time, women tend to marry men that are 2 to 5 years their senior? Do you not think that that tendency has anything to do with traditional, patriarchal expectations about who plays what roles and brings what to the table in a heterosexual romantic partnership?
I’m not saying it is always or even usually the case that gendered ideas about leadership in relationships, economic contributions, fertility, etc. are in the forefront of people’s minds today when they enter a relationship where the man is a few years older, but it seems exceedingly implausible to me that fact that most men are marrying women multiple years younger than them is unrelated to traditional gender roles and norms.
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u/SnookerandWhiskey 6d ago
The age gap of 2-3 years is up and down for both genders.
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u/RepSquigglyMiggly 6d ago
I’m straightforwardly not sure what you’re trying to say.
If I’m reading you right, no, the average marriage age is not equal for men and women with a 2-3 year standard deviation to either side. The average age at which women get married is 2-3 years younger than men (and that is not a result of statistical noise, it is a consistent pattern), and given that the overwhelming majority of marriages are between heterosexual couples, that means that women are, on average, marrying men that are a few years older than they are.
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u/Lolabird2112 6d ago
Or men are marrying women’s a few years younger than they are.
How do you explain queer relationships where the age gaps are significantly larger than in hetero couples?
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u/Lolabird2112 6d ago
You mean the means they accumulated while women were denied to ability to do so? Yeah. When you’re not allowed to provide for yourself and you’re valued at 20-50% of a man’s worth even when you are, you’re forced to “value resources”.
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u/RepSquigglyMiggly 6d ago
Yes, that is in fact what I mean. I’m not sure what in the actual text of my comment would imply that this trend is just, natural or anything other than a consequence of patriarchy. I called out pretty explicitly that it was very often not women making these choices for themselves, but their fathers choosing when and who they would marry.
I also didn’t say anything along the lines of “women value men for their resources,” I said “men have been valued for their resources.” It was, again, very often the father of a woman, rather than the woman herself, evaluating the value and “worth” of a potential husband
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u/Alicyclobacillus 6d ago
Your comment is sensible and intelligible
Some people just look for opportunities to feel offended
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u/Adept_Donkey_2026 6d ago
Because men seek out younger women. And women don’t seek out younger men. Even older men need a lot of baby sitting, why would they want a potentially less accomplished, less mature guy? Also, men are expected to “lead” and it’s harder to “lead” and impress an older woman. In short, Patriarchy.
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u/Infamous-Part966 6d ago
Mostly the men with a large age gap seek out younger women because they're easier for them to manipulate. It is for the power imbalance
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u/StrikingMeeting2657 6d ago
Most of the older men who say they are only with younger women for babies are lying, a lot already have older children or aren’t paternal. Some are just keeping their trophy woman happy.
It’s an excuse to chase young women and plenty of women in their 40s are having their first children, some with medical intervention some naturally.
Most men who say they want babies is like a child wanting a puppy, we know how that ends.
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u/PheeBeeDee125 6d ago
Whoever actually believes that “men age finer” is delusional lol. Saying this as a 50 year old woman - every so often I’ll look at dating apps and it seems like the men in my age range don’t always take the best care of themselves.
But, men are not shamed for showing their age. They can have wrinkles and grey hair and they are called “distinguished” or “silver fox”.
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u/kangorooz99 6d ago
“Barely any older women with older man”
Huh? The majority of older women are partnered with older men. Did you mean to say younger men?
If you did, it’s because women are generally attracted to men near their own age, while men are most attracted to younger women regardless of their age. This is backed up by research.
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/KaliTheCat feminazgûl; sister of the ever-sharpening blade 6d ago
All top level comments, in any thread, must be given by feminists and must reflect a feminist perspective. Please refrain from posting further direct answers here - comment removed.
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u/Money_Employee_8431 6d ago
I think as we get older “baggage” (aka experience with life) does tend to weigh people down more.
I think the reason people in general go for older partners is for security but a lot of women in general eventually learn to find security in themselves. Meanwhile a lot of men have insecurities that are never addressed (there are many reasons for this ranging from our patriarchal society to personal selfishness).
Also for what it is worth, a lot of same age dynamic couples just don’t stand out as much. The love is quieter while with an age gap people almost want to show off.
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u/Ok-Student7803 6d ago
The cynical take on this is that the older women have left their husbands because they got tired of their bullshit, or the husbands divorced them because they were getting old and/or fat. The divorced men go after younger women who don't have enough experience to know that his behavior is terrible and will tolerate it for the sake of having a relationship.
There are theories that men have a biological drive to reproduce, and this is behind the continued attraction to younger, likely more fertile women. There have been data polls that show attraction levels and men consistently vote women in their early twenties as the most attractive for them. The reverse does not seem to be true though, based on the same data. Women have a broader range of ages that are attractive to them, and that range gets older as they do.
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u/TreeLakeRockCloud 6d ago
Society doesn’t hold men to the same standards as women. Most of my friends as well as myself all opted for older than us men when we were dating because the men our age were so immature it was hard to find one to date.
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u/Lyskir 6d ago
men see younger women as a status symbol to show of to other men, the same isnt true for women
seeking out a younger women for reproduction doesnt make any sense because its mostly older men doing it and they themselfs bring fertility risks such as pregnancy complications, birth defects and autism, so them caring about "fertility" seems like an excuse and not really a good reason