Some blogger over at the dating site OkCupid did an epic and methodical breakdown of dating trends by age and explains why we should be dating older people instead of 22-year-olds who can’t even handle their liquor.
His (we’re assuming Christian is a dude) statistical breakdown is too complex to even think of summarizing in so short a blog space, but here are the key points:
[T]he number of online daters peaks at 24, drops sharply at around 30, and then gradually tapers off, as the remaining singletons either find mates or withdraw themselves from contention…
[A] man, as he gets older, searches for relatively younger and younger women. Meanwhile his upper acceptable limit hovers only a token amount above his own age. The median 31 year-old guy, for example, sets his allowable match age range from 22 to 35—nine years younger, but only four years older, than himself. This skewed mindset worsens with age; the median 42 year-old will accept a woman up to fifteen years younger, but no more than three years older.
No matter what he’s telling himself on his setting page, a 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging 18 and 19 year-olds as he does women his own age. On the other hand, women only a few years older are largely neglected.
[Except in their 20s] women show an admirable openness to both reasonably younger and reasonably older men.
At 29, a woman becomes even more open to older men and, in addition, stops writing the youngest ones. The typical 28 year-old women sends a small but significant number of messages to men too young to drink. The typical 29 year-old sends practically none.
Read the rest of his analysis and check out the interesting series of charts here.
Image.