In Praise of Slightly Younger Men

The surprising data on gender, messaging, and age.

TL;DR: If you’re a woman, particularly between 25-35, you should consider adding men about 5 years younger than yourself to your dating pool - you should see more success with them, particularly if you are willing to message first.

During my 3 month stand up career, I had a joke that went: “I get older but the men stay the same age. I’ve been dating 30 year olds for the past 15 years.”

In recent years, I’ve been pondering how my own preferences are shifting dramatically compared to my early 20’s, and wanted to dive deeper into data on how filters affects dating.

So as I tried to find data on how genders filtered out each other, I stumbled upon this old data visualization from OKCupid about response rates from both genders broken down by age. The main point they’re making is that although men prefer younger women (both in stated preference and revealed preference), women actually have surprising success when they initiate the first message with younger men.

Source: OkCupid Blog

However, I noticed some really interesting things I want to point out that the original article did not.

First of all - with a few exceptions that I’ll go into below - women have the worst luck with men their own age from 30 onwards.

I highlighted the same age reply rates from age 30 so you can see that even up to 55, this holds true.

Women Get More Responses from Younger, Not Older Men

What they didn’t point out - and which I find fascinating! - is that women consistently do better with messaging men 5 years younger rather than 5 years older, which I found not intuitive at all.

For example, a 30-year-old woman has a 49% chance of getting a response from someone 5 years younger, but only a 39% chance from someone 5 years older. While this trend becomes less pronounced over time, it still holds true across different age groups.

I think basically there’s an opportunity for women 25-35 to loosen their lower age bounds and for women for all ages to realize that they will likely have more success reaching out at least somewhat younger men, as long as they’re ok sending the first message.

It seems unlikely that the reason for this higher response rate is because it’s purely a sex thing. A five year age difference does not a cougar make.

Behold, The Cougar Reply Zone

I highlighted this block below which is extremely high response rates from men under 30 for women 35-50, with the response rate increasing as the women got older.

These interactions likely aren’t leading to long-term relationships, but if a 50-year-old woman is looking for male attention, her best bet (statistically speaking) is a 25-year-old man. In fact, a 50-year-old woman messaging a 25-year-old has a higher success rate than a 20-year-old woman messaging a man of any age.

Hitting “The Wall” at 30

One bizarre data point: men 45-55 are significantly less likely to respond to a 30-year-old woman than they are to a 25- or 35-year-old. The drop-off is so pronounced it almost looks like a data error.

The only explanation I can piece together: at 30, a woman is no longer in the sugar baby category, but also not yet in the ‘mature and relatable’ category for older men. However, by 35, that “in-between” phase disappears, and response rates climb back up.

So, for once, the red-pill guys were partially right—there is a “wall” at 30. But it’s temporary, and desirability bounces back within a few years. Go figure.

Insights from Men’s First Messages

The data on the men messaging women side had fewer quirks, but the biggest takeaway is that after men turn 30, they will get the highest response rates from women their age or older.

However, they’re just less likely to send a message in a first place.

There’s also a bump in response rates for much older men targeting much younger women. 50-60 year old men do really terribly with 35 year old women and comparatively better with women 30 and under.¹

My Personal Experience

Personally, as a 36 year old, I’ve had really good luck dating men about 4-7 years younger this past year. They were great! They were very intentional, looking for something serious, established with their careers, and emotionally mature.

My friend Katie is 37 and in a very serious relationship with a man in his late 20’s that she met on Hinge. They seem absurdly happy together, it’s kind of sickeningly cute.

The Slightly Younger Men / Slightly Older Woman Gap

From the data, we can see that women do well when they message slightly younger men (we’re ignoring cougars) and men do well when they message older women after 30. The gap happens because most men message younger women and most women don’t message men at all.

I once posted about how women should date slightly younger on Threads which resulted in an onslaught of bottom feeders commenting about women becoming pedophiles and how they would be good target practice for men.

The real point I’m making is that 30-year-old women should consider dating 26-year-old men and that a 34-year-old woman should make sure her lower age bound includes 29-year-olds. This seems to be the part of the dating pool that could use the most market correction.

Who knows: you just might end up in a super happy partnership like my friend Katie.

1. I want **so badly** to make fun of men in their late 50’s-60’s who reach out to women my age so they can finally start their families.