why younger women like older men
Poslato: 30 Mar 2026 16:39
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Article about why younger women like older men:
| Psychology Today South Africa
New research on this dynamic finds some surprising answers. Are Women Who Date Older Men Seeking a Father Figure? The underlying dynamics in the young-woman-older-man relationship.
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Share on Bluesky. THE BASICS. Why Relationships Matter Take our Can You Spot Red Flags In A Relationship? Find counselling to strengthen relationships. Key points. Many believe older men represent valued attributes that attract younger partners, such as power or property. One study suggests that the younger-woman-older-man relationship has no unique psychological qualities. An age gap alone is not sufficient to predict who will be happiest with whom in a relationship. Source: LightField Studios/Shutterstock. After the wedding of a celebrity husband and his much younger wife, media coverage invariably focuses on the inappropriateness of the age gap. Whether it’s the new dad George Clooney (56) and his 18-year-younger wife, Amal, or Donald Trump (70) and his First Lady, Melania (age 47), commentators become psychoanalysts, suggesting that the younger woman is clearly seeking a father figure. Similar stories are triggered by the (much less-common) pairing of a younger man with an older woman, as with 39-year-old French president Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte, 64. The rarity of such weddings makes them novelties, but not fodder for the same type of speculation. It’s well-known that men tend to marry women younger than themselves, a pattern that leads to increasingly unbalanced male-to-female gender ratios as you move up to older and older age groups. Men also have a lower life expectancy than women, leaving women in the 75-and-up age bracket with fewer and fewer choices of heterosexual partners. An age difference of up to 10 years is generally not looked at askance by anyone who knows how old each partner is, but as that gap gets closer to 20, things start to look a bit more off balance. Once a man is literally old enough to be a woman’s father (or vice versa, for older women), public opinion starts to shift from acceptance to skepticism. St. Mary’s University’s (Halifax) Sara Skentelbery and Darren Fowler examined the phenomenon of “age gap relationships” (AGRs) from an evolutionary perspective, noting that such pairings have benefits in terms of species survival. A middle-aged or older man pairing with a younger woman, from this viewpoint, ensures that he will continue to have offspring at older ages than would be possible with a peer who is past childbearing age. There are some assumptions within this framework — for example, that people behave in ways that are intended to guarantee the future of the species rather than in response to sociocultural influences. This argument contrasts with the sociocultural perspective, which proposes that negative attitudes involved in ageism and sexism cause older women to be seen as less physically attractive to potential mates. The sociocultural perspective for understanding the pairing of older men and younger women explains not just that younger women seem physically more attractive to aging males, but that the older man represents socially valued attributes that lead his younger partner to want to bond with him. With age, men may acquire greater power or possess more property, financial and otherwise. The older men with the most appeal to younger women would be those with financial prosperity who are willing to heap some of those financial rewards onto their partner. Meanwhile, these older men believe they’ll accrue even more power and status by sporting their younger, glamorous, and well-outfitted new spouse. Skentelbery and Fowler wanted to investigate whether it’s true that the women in such pairings were seeking father figures for psychological reasons. Because these relationships are more prevalent when they involve older men and younger women, the authors didn’t perform an analogous study of “mommy figures.
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Article about why younger women like older men:
| Psychology Today South Africa
New research on this dynamic finds some surprising answers. Are Women Who Date Older Men Seeking a Father Figure? The underlying dynamics in the young-woman-older-man relationship.
>> ENTER THE SITE <<
Share on Bluesky. THE BASICS. Why Relationships Matter Take our Can You Spot Red Flags In A Relationship? Find counselling to strengthen relationships. Key points. Many believe older men represent valued attributes that attract younger partners, such as power or property. One study suggests that the younger-woman-older-man relationship has no unique psychological qualities. An age gap alone is not sufficient to predict who will be happiest with whom in a relationship. Source: LightField Studios/Shutterstock. After the wedding of a celebrity husband and his much younger wife, media coverage invariably focuses on the inappropriateness of the age gap. Whether it’s the new dad George Clooney (56) and his 18-year-younger wife, Amal, or Donald Trump (70) and his First Lady, Melania (age 47), commentators become psychoanalysts, suggesting that the younger woman is clearly seeking a father figure. Similar stories are triggered by the (much less-common) pairing of a younger man with an older woman, as with 39-year-old French president Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte, 64. The rarity of such weddings makes them novelties, but not fodder for the same type of speculation. It’s well-known that men tend to marry women younger than themselves, a pattern that leads to increasingly unbalanced male-to-female gender ratios as you move up to older and older age groups. Men also have a lower life expectancy than women, leaving women in the 75-and-up age bracket with fewer and fewer choices of heterosexual partners. An age difference of up to 10 years is generally not looked at askance by anyone who knows how old each partner is, but as that gap gets closer to 20, things start to look a bit more off balance. Once a man is literally old enough to be a woman’s father (or vice versa, for older women), public opinion starts to shift from acceptance to skepticism. St. Mary’s University’s (Halifax) Sara Skentelbery and Darren Fowler examined the phenomenon of “age gap relationships” (AGRs) from an evolutionary perspective, noting that such pairings have benefits in terms of species survival. A middle-aged or older man pairing with a younger woman, from this viewpoint, ensures that he will continue to have offspring at older ages than would be possible with a peer who is past childbearing age. There are some assumptions within this framework — for example, that people behave in ways that are intended to guarantee the future of the species rather than in response to sociocultural influences. This argument contrasts with the sociocultural perspective, which proposes that negative attitudes involved in ageism and sexism cause older women to be seen as less physically attractive to potential mates. The sociocultural perspective for understanding the pairing of older men and younger women explains not just that younger women seem physically more attractive to aging males, but that the older man represents socially valued attributes that lead his younger partner to want to bond with him. With age, men may acquire greater power or possess more property, financial and otherwise. The older men with the most appeal to younger women would be those with financial prosperity who are willing to heap some of those financial rewards onto their partner. Meanwhile, these older men believe they’ll accrue even more power and status by sporting their younger, glamorous, and well-outfitted new spouse. Skentelbery and Fowler wanted to investigate whether it’s true that the women in such pairings were seeking father figures for psychological reasons. Because these relationships are more prevalent when they involve older men and younger women, the authors didn’t perform an analogous study of “mommy figures.
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