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.
