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This omits the rather obvious problem that men are much more likely to date younger women. So the dating pool might be largest for men around 50 because of all

• colmvp 5y ago
  > Which leads me to think it must be really lonely being a single women over 50 On the other hand, if they were a woman who dated an older man, they certainly didn't care about 'taking away' (for lack of a better term) that opportunity from a woman closer to his age. Younger guys are at a disadvantage due to lack of status/maturity and nobody sheds a tear when they go through long periods of bachelorhood without luck.
  • cultofmetatron 5y ago
    yea I concur. everything up to mid 20's was a long dry spell. Now I'm in my late 30's and easily meeting women 10+ years younger than me. Helps that I hit the gym, have a successful career and am well read and well travelled. I've had a few women my age that I knew when I was younger who are still single and now showing interested in me (I was friendzoned to hell before) but why bother with them when my options keep getting better as I age?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • throwaway1fe4 5y ago
      This comment made my day. I'm 31, founder of startup in an area I genuinely have high hopes for but is neither taking off nor dying. I also moved to Europe from the bay area to do this, at age 28 feeling like I had one more adventure in me. The uncertainty of the startup and knowing there is no way I would ever accept regular employment (software/computer vision/robotics if curious) in Europe has made me extremely hesitant to think about family. I have no concern for my future earning potential, besides the difficulty of getting back to the US with covid (I'm not American, yet...). 30 hit like a truck though, and a year and a half on hold with covid doesn't help. Thanks for sharing your experience of being basically me +10 years. Might consider getting my sperm frozen though. How would "Don't worry, I froze my sperm" work as a tinder line? Anyway, thanks for the HN therapy.
      • i_am_new_here 5y ago
        > "Don't worry, I froze my sperm" You think this is great / that it might be great, but it is not: It is creapy. You'd find out about this at some point and drop it. Women do not work like that.
      • nl 5y ago
        If you want to have a family, do it. I don't understand your comment about freezing sperm though. Unless you have some medical issue fertility issues don't usually occurs for men until decades after 30.
        • eloff 5y ago
          That's not true actually. Fertility declines while birth defects increase. While it's more dramatic in women, it happens for men too.
          • nl 5y ago
            I worded what I said very carefully. Fertility does decline in men with age, but it's not really a concern for most men until 45-50: https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-does-fertility-begin-to-decrease/ https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-d...
      • cultofmetatron 5y ago
        you have plenty more adventures in you! I've got 5 years on you and still kicking. As a CTO, it helps to keep your mind fresh with new experiences. Some of my best ideas have come from walking around new surroundings. My advice for staying young 1. cut down the sugar 2. limit alcohol 3. lift weights regularly 4. stay out of usa, its unbelievable toxic to be there now europe is great. I'm a US citizen but my startup is in london.
• cigaser 5y ago
  Older men are also more likely to quit dating pool completely. At some point drive is gone, and there are better things to do, like fishing.
• cauliflower2718 5y ago
  Surprisingly, the peak age for a man seeking women is around 50, but the peak age for a man seeking [women with jobs] is around 40.
  • grenoire 5y ago
    I'm confused by the wording, could you elaborate the 'peak'?
    • cauliflower2718 5y ago
      In the plot where x-axis is man's age, and y-axis is eligible dating pool population, 'peak' refers to the age (place along the x-axis) at which the man's eligible dating pool is largest (highest along the y-axis). This is indicated by the vertical pink dotted line.
• 88840-8855 5y ago
  Assuming you are right, you must add one more thing to your hypothesis that men around 50 have the largest dating pool: you must have some status and wealth to access the younger women. A broke, non handsome, average 50 year old guy will have exactly 0 access to women between 18 and 35.
  • donatzsky 5y ago
    If you otherwise is an interesting person that takes care of himself (ie. don't look like you've given up), you don't need wealth. That's a myth that needs to die. Sure, once you're past 40 or so, you need to pay more attention to how you look, but that's just the reality of getting older. I've heard stories of men in their 50s (if I remember correctly), that were broke and homeless, but still had plenty of hot, young women in their life.
    • cutemonster 5y ago
      People (the women) don't start with asking "how much money do you make" and might not discover that, until they're a bit in love already, and thereafter they might think it doesn't matter that much? So being happy (having created a happy life for oneself) and taking care of oneself (and others) is what matters more I suppose
  • peteretep 5y ago
    > A broke, non handsome, average 50 year old guy will have exactly 0 access to women between 18 and 35. I have seen tens of counter examples to this in the West. Men often get more confident, more stable, and more stable as they get older, and the world itself simply treats them more respectfully.
• durnygbur 5y ago
  > Which leads me to think it must be really lonely being a single women over 50. There is a little mental excercise I do every time I feel empathy for lone older women. I imagine she is 15-20 younger, I approach her and she ghosts me or laughs me off. There, empathy dissapears.
  • wearywanderer 5y ago
    I'd be lying if I said I never had similar thoughts, but consider this: maybe 1 time in a hundred that woman would have been the love of your life. Who knows?
    • bradlys 5y ago
      1 in a 100 would be great odds. I’d kill for those odds...
  • ibrarmalik 5y ago
    Indeed building imaginary scenarios helps dissapear any empathy.
    • durnygbur 5y ago
      It's not imaginary scenario but a very real one concluded from the experience. There was nothing pleasant in gaining it.
  • jari_mustonen 5y ago
    I’ve been having similar thoughts but in the end it is just bitterness. It is true that there is some poetic justice in it but how is unneccesary suffering ever justified. Dig deeper if you feel your emphaty dissapearing. It is never a good sign.
    • timeslip1523 5y ago
      Empathy, or rather sympathy, is easily used as a backdoor to control you. There's a reason we have the phrase "harden your heart". Sometimes, for example when faced with a manipulative liar, the right move is to turn off your empathy, like how the fight-flight response turns off pain.
• bachmeier 5y ago
  > This omits the rather obvious problem that men are much more likely to date younger women. So the dating pool might be largest for men around 50 because of all the single women over 50 - but most of those men won't consider them. There's some truth to this but the difference between 48 and 52 isn't very important if you're 50. Men don't draw a sharp distinction at that age where they refuse someone two years older but are happy with someone two years younger. Beyond that, you really aren't going to find many attractive 30 year old women interested in you if you're a typical 50 year old man. (No offense intended to anyone, but balding, somewhat overweight 50 year old men with bland personalities just aren't in high demand with women that age.)
  • eloff 5y ago
    Is obviously a non linear effect that increases as a function of the age difference. There's no step function at any magical age. I feel like I shouldn't have to clarify that. Also if you're a 50 year old man with high status you'll fare substantially better than a 20 year old man with low status with 30 year old women. I've personally been outcompeted by balding, portly middle aged men with women my own age when I was in my twenties. Not that anecdotes mean much, but it's pretty universally true about humans. It even holds with primates and other social animals in general, not just humans.
• globular-toast 5y ago
  The main problem, and I see this a lot in this type of analysis, is it completely takes attraction out of the equation. It is assumed that all men are attracted to all women, and vice versa. In reality, if you're not attracted to someone, they are not in your pool, regardless of any other factors. Any such analysis must be conducted on a per-sex basis as the game is completely different for men and women. In fact, it's debatable whether the creepiness rule applies to older women, or to women at all for that matter. To do this properly for men, the number of available older women needs to be heavily attenuated. According to this, 60 year old women are in the dating pool for 35 year old men. How many 60 year old women do you really think a 35 year old man will find attractive? A vanishingly small number. Conversely, men find the women on the bottom end of their creepiness band disproportionately attractive. But not enough to balance it out. I suspect it would be more realistic to simply rule out all older women. For women, attraction is different. Women do not have a preference for younger men. In fact, the opposite would seem to be true, especially since women do have a preference for wealth, stability and status. So, using the same example of a 30 year old woman, think about the limits of the non-creepy dating pool. How many 25 year old men will be attractive to her? Not many. But, equally, how many 60 year old men will be attractive to her? Also not many. However, it is probably also the case that not many men in general are attractive to her. There are so many other confounding factors. Like, for example, the fact that women can't do much to change their level of attractiveness, they're either attractive without trying, or they're not, while for men it's necessary, and often sufficient, to build attraction through hard work (similar to how male in other species do courtship displays). I find the reluctance to take attraction into account to be, at best, wishful thinking and, at worst, delusion. It makes any analysis like this, frankly, ridiculous.
  • durnygbur 5y ago
    > In fact, the opposite would seem to be true, especially since women do have a preference for wealth, stability and status. I repeatedly see this claim in Anglosphere discussions and books but see counter examples within my culture. Slavic women (Polish, Russian, Ukrainian) desperately hooked up to men they perceived as higher status (attractive Italian, Spanish, French, German etc) then betrayed and rejected. Traumatised later on these women intentionally picked less attractive men (chubby, bald, lower, from sexist cultures, average job) so they are sure these men got something "above their league" and they'll never desert them. Basically prioritising stability (but not necessarily security) over wealth and status.
• watwut 5y ago
  For a lot of history, women did not get to pick their partners. Moreover, marriage was an economic institution, not a romantic one. And there were also limitations on males: military service and expectation they will be providers pushing their marriage age higher. You can't just bring in system in which participants have severly limited options and then claim it is all individual choices.
• watwut 5y ago
  The case of age gap between men and women is greatly overstated on HN. The average age difference (for a heterosexual couple) is 2.3 years. In 64 percent of heterosexual couples, the man is older. There is age gap, but you all wrote about it as if 45 years old routinely dated 23 years old. They don't.