The myth of men's mid-life crisis

It is a common belief that throughout most of their life, men prefer sex partners close to their own age, but at a certain age, they suddenly freak out and develop a preference for much younger women. Many wannabe experts have offered mystical explanations to that phenomenon.

It is undeniable that many men in their 40s or 50s start pursuing much younger women, but I say that it has a perfectly logical explanation.

It has to do with reward-to-effort ratio. One has to put up a certain amount of effort in order to seduce a woman, and one gets a certain amount of satisfation if that goal is reached. Let us create a model that enables us to understand a man's partner choice situations throughout his life.

I am sure that pretty much every man finds younger women more attractive than older women. Of course, different men's preferences are hugely different and a woman's attractiveness is influenced by many other factors apart from her age, but I dare to suggest that it's pretty close to the truth to say that if an average 20-year-old woman's attractiveness for an average man is 1 unit, then the average 30-year-old woman's attractiveness is 0.8 units and an average 40-year-old woman's attractiveness is 0.2 units.

As to the amount of effort, it is reasonable to assume that it's relatively easier for a man to find sex partners among the women he interacts most with, and it's reasonable to assume that a person interacts most with people in his own age group. Considering the social custom that a man be slightly older than his partner, we can say that every man has a certain comfort zone (as far as we can ever talk about any comfort when seduction is concerned) which is the age group slightly below his own. In other words:

1) for a 25-year-old man, it is, on average, easier to seduce a 20-year-old woman than to seduce a 30-year-old or a 40-year-old woman;

2) for a 35-year-old man, it is, on average, easier to seduce a 30-year-old woman than to seduce a 20-year-old or a 40-year-old woman;

2) for a 45-year-old man, it is, on average, easier to seduce a 40-year-old woman than to seduce a 20-year-old or a 30-year-old woman;

That would be because those are the women he has most social interaction with, and has more in common in terms of discussion topics and such.

Let us say that when the difficulty of seducing a woman in one's comfort zone is 1 unit, the difficulty of seducing a woman out of one's comfort zone is 2 units.

(By the way, the numbers don't really mean that much. We could just as well set the attractiveness of a 30-year-old woman at 0.9 or 0.7, the effort to seduce outside of one's comfort zone at 1.5 or 2.5 or 3.0. The following calculations would still be essentially the same.)

Now, let's look at the pussy hunting choices of a 25-year-old man.

Prospective partner's age	Attractiveness	Effort to seduce	Reward to effort ratio
20	1	1	1.0
30	0.8	2	0.4
40	0.2	2	0.1

For a 25-year-old man, the situation is the simplest. He has the most interaction with the most attractive age group, so he has no need to spend any thought on older women. (Meaning: he probably wouldn't mind fucking them if they were to offer themselves, but he hasn't got a reason in the world to make any effort to approach them.)

When the man has turned 35, his choices are as follows:

Prospective partner's age	Attractiveness	Effort to seduce	Reward to effort ratio
20	1	2	0.5
30	0.8	1	0.8
40	0.2	2	0.1

In his 30s, the man still pursues women of his own age group, but not, mind you, because he finds them most attractive. If he could take any woman he wanted (like in a brothel), he would rather choose a 20-year-old, but since he has most interaction with 30-year-old women and feels most comfortable around them, it's easier for him to settle with them, rather than make the extra effort to approach the 20-year-olds. In other words, at the age of 35, the women in his own age group aren't yet ugly enough to push the man out of his comfort zone.

Now the man has reached the age of 45:

Prospective partner's age	Attractiveness	Effort to seduce	Reward to effort ratio
20	1	2	0.5
30	0.8	2	0.4
40	0.2	1	0.2

The 40-year-old women are much, much less attractive than even 30-year-old ones. So the man has reached the point where staying in his comfort zone is no longer rewarding enough – he has to leave it. The important thing to realise is that it's not because the man's preferences have changed. The man has preferred 20-year-olds over 30-year-olds over 40-year-olds throughout his life. What has changed is that the women in his own age group have gradually become uglier as they aged, so it's inevitable that at some point they have become so ugly that they're no longer worth pursuing. So, for better or worse, the man has to leave his comfort zone.

Why 20-year-olds then, rather than 30-year-olds? When we look at the table, the answer is obvious. When it's equally difficult to seduce a 20-year-old or a 30-year-old, one naturally goes for the 20-year-old. And as I said above, it doesn't matter if their attractiveness ratio is 10 to 8, or 10 to 9, or 10 to 6. The result remains the same – the reward-to-effort ratio makes it more reasonable to pursue younger women.

By the way, even if you would argue that it's easier for a 45-year-old man to seduce a 30-year-old woman than a 20-year-old one, it would alter the figures in the last table in favour of the 30-year-old women, but the 40-year-old women would still clearly remain the underdogs. So it won't change the general result – that at a certain age, it is perfectly natural for a man to start pursuing women much younger than himself, and, contrary to the popular belief, it is not due to the man's inner change, but to the external change in his circumstances. In other words, it doesn't happen because the man suddenly begins to fancy much younger women, and one doesn't need any Freudian mumbo-jumbo to explain it. It happens because of the obvious fact that as women age, they become increasingly less attractive, to the point when they're barely tolerable, so that the man is forced to leave his comfort zone unless he's willing to give up sexual pleasure altogether.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that it necessarily happens when the man is 45. Some men might reach that point a 40, some at 60, but it happens inevitably sooner or later. The above numbers are just a rough approximation to make the general principle easier to understand.

Actually, there are other factors, apart from the reward-to-effort ratio, that contribute to this phenomenon:

1. The man learns eventually that it's actually possible to be desirable to women much below his age.

This is something totally counterintuitive. Since younger women are obviously more attractive than older women, men naturally assume that the same goes for men. They can't even imagine that a 20-year-old woman would desire a 45-year-old man.

I am sure that it's one of the biggest surprises in every man's life to learn that many 20-year-old women actually believe that older men don't desire them but prefer women closer to their own age.

2. As the man gains more life experience, he will at one point have enough inner strength to liberate himself from the social taboo that it's somehow unseemly for a man to hang out with women young enough to be his daughters.

Unsurprisingly, older women are doing anything in their power to uphold that taboo, because once their physical attractivess is gone, they are desperate to keep their men from leaving them. So they keep screaming "pedophile" whenever they see a man with a woman 20 years younger. (Do you know what the woman's definition of a pedophile is? "A pedophile is any man older than yourself who desires women younger than yourself.")

3. By the time a married man's children have grown up, which usually happens sometime in his 40s, it is safe for him to leave his wife without risking financial ruin through the so-called child support payments.

So, these are the perfectly logical reasons why men tend to start pursuing much younger women sometime in their 40s or 50s.