I’ve seen often of men in MRA circles thinking themselves so high and mighty and going to extraordinary lengths to find any area where they can put down women or claim themselves to be superior in some way. There seems to be this innate jealousy among them that women have the upper hand in sexual matters. But they just love to expound on the theory that it won’t last forever, that women are only attractive for a very short amount of time and then are nothing more than old hags who are “on the shelf” and forever forgotten about while they, the almighty male creatures that they are, continuing being hot stuff for the rest of their entire lives.
They seem to think that women (young, hot women) are still going to be chasing after them even when they are senior citizens. I’ve also seen a lot of complaints that older and middle aged men who do online dating will put down that they are willing to date a woman who is even as young as eighteen years old (even though women rarely are willing to date a man so much younger). I’ve seen a lot of young women complaining about this as well, exasperated that these men think so highly of themselves to really think young women of that age are going to all flock around them or even be interested at all.
The one thing that we hear all the time (now that women are putting careers before marriage and children) is that female fertility will hit its peak early on and that youth is important for women who want to have families. We also hear that women having babies when they are older can put their offspring’s health in jeopardy. While all of this is true, the one thing that nobody ever focuses on is that men, even though they don’t go through a kind of menopause where their fertility officially ends, become less fertile as they age too. Actually, male fertility starts to decline around the same time female fertility does. Although most men can still father children throughout their entire lifespans, their ability to do so lessens as they age and men take just as much a risk as women do that their offspring will be unhealthy if they father children at middle age or later. This isn’t to say that men or women can’t procreate healthy children later in life (after all, my mother had two healthy children in her forties without any problems) but is just simply to say that youth is important for both males and females who want to have families, not just for women. If, evolutionary speaking, men would be attracted to younger women because they could bear children, then would not too women be sexually attracted to younger men who would be in peak physical shape and also be able to father healthy offspring?
Of course, part of a man’s attractiveness is what he accomplishes in life. A younger woman might be attracted to a man who has status and who she perceives to be an authority figure. It’s not really all that unusual but unless the guy’s extremely rich it’s unrealistic to think that hot twenty-something year old females are going to flock around him even when he’s a senior citizen. Contrary to the narcissistic beliefs of many men in the “manosphere,” men do have a “shelf life.” Let’s get real, no woman wants to date her grandpa. Unless the guy’s Hugh Hefner (and even he’s not so virile anymore), it’s unrealistic to think he’s really going to still “have it” when he’s a senior citizen and his b*@ls are sagging to the ground. There have been a lot of older men (like kings and other powerful men) with younger women (sometimes a lot of younger women) throughout history but these women often didn’t have any choice in the matter or, once again, were with the man because of the extraordinary riches and influence he had. Once again, this simply doesn’t describe your average Joe out there in the dating/marriage market.
The way I see it is that women are instantly attractive when they reach physical maturity. A woman doesn’t have to accomplish anything to be attractive to men. She can offer a man her body and promise to have his children. She can offer herself to a man. A man, however, can’t just walk up to a woman and go “here I am baby, what you see is what you get!” Oh please. Men have to achieve status in life to up their value in the dating and marriage market. Generally I think it takes men about a decade longer to really up their market value but men probably have another decade longer than women of being more attractive. But that attractiveness will decrease with time and men delude themselves if they really think otherwise. Besides, most couples are around the same age and it’s generally the exception to find older men with much younger women and older women with much younger men. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen or that it can’t last, but simply that it isn’t the norm.
Another issue is older women in the media. It’s true that older women are not quite as represented in movies and television as older men, but let’s examine the facts of life here. Most movies and shows, unless they are strictly romance, have a male lead (and where there is an exception to this I’ve found that older women are just as represented as younger women). I’ve also seen that a lot of shows and movies tend to cater to the younger generation, which means younger male and female leads .That’s just how it goes. Most men don’t want entertainment in the way of movies, television or music that is female dominated. Women routinely will listen to music sung by men or watch shows dominated by male actors (in fact sometimes they prefer it) but most men won’t. Look at any man’s iPod and, unless the guy’s a complete fruitcake, you probably won’t find a lot of songs sung by women. You might find one or two, but for the most part men like listening to music sung by men; they like movies and shows with men doing masculine things. I guess that’s because men need to have an area of life that is all theirs, that women are mostly excluded from.
Nothing lasts forever. All things fade away in time, and a man’s virility is no exception. There are some men who are still attractive even as senior citizens, but then again there are some women that are too. A young woman might feel an attractiveness to an older man because she perceives him as a father figure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to date him.
B. A. Hunter 
Wow, are you by any chance me? You’ve basically just written exactly what I think. I’ve discussed this stuff many times with my mum, and these are the conclusions we come to as well. I’m sick of men acting like their fertility rate is eternal and are immune to the laws of ageing, like their balls are some kind of magical equipment. Particles, plants, animals, bacteria, buildings, cities, stars, moons, galaxies, blacks holes etc. all succumb to age sooner or later, yet somehow men’s sacks are an exception? I mean, really? How risible. Sure, sometimes the news does report on certain men fathering healthy children well into their senior years (eg. Robert De Niro), but the fact that it’s sensational enough to be reported in the news by definition means that these cases are an exception rather than the rule, and guys shouldn’t think that it’ll apply to their average moe-joe self. I mean, you won’t hear in the news about a 30 year old guy having a kid, because that’s considered ordinary. My mum had me when she was 41 and Dad was 48, and I was born very healthy, but just because my dad was 48 and had a healthy child doesn’t mean that all men can delay fatherhood until then. Additionally, even if in some Disney fantasy world a man’s balls produced perfect sperm forever, men have to consider that the older they get, the less energy they’ll have to take care of a kid, and kids do get depressed about having older parents (speaking from personal experience), especially if the kid has an old father or mother who’s at death’s door (imagine your dad being 60 when you’re born). It’s really selfish at the expense of one’s kids to think that you can have a child whenever you want. Kids need both their mother and their father when their brains are developing, and preferably HEALTHY parents who aren’t that close to dying, as kids generally don’t handle the concept of death as well as adults, and losing a parent can be a huge shock to their young, developing system.
Funny story, I remember when I was 22 years old and working in retail, I was serving a man who asked me if I had an older sister by the name of so-and-so, when I said yes I do and asked him how he knew, he said “You look like her, and I knew her when we were all living in Italy.” Talk about a small world, hey!? When we lived in Italy I was 1-2 years old, mind you, and my sister is 15 years older. And since he was of a similar age to my sister, that would have put him in the mid-late 30s. I told my sister about him, and she said “Yeah I remember him, he was chasing after me but I found him unattractive.” This guy started hinting that he wanted to see me further, or at least started inviting me to hang out with him and his friends. I turned him down very politely. Maybe he wanted to reconnect with my sister through me, or maybe he wanted to hook up with me, or both, lol, but at very beginning, before he even asked me out, I told him that my sister was married with kids, so at the very least he knew she was hands off. Nevertheless, what was going through my head during the whole experience was “This guy is in his late 30s and is single, presumably with no kids, and he’s trying to hook up with a girl who was in her diapers when he was chasing after her older sister in Italy? Gross! What a creep! Why is he single? Why hasn’t he been able to find anyone all this time? Time is ticking for him.” Moral of the story? Guys, don’t think that you are eternal. Young women DO look at you and your age, and we DO make judgments about you, and your shelf-life is a lot sooner than you think. We may not necessarily voice it, but just because we don’t say anything, doesn’t mean we don’t think it. We might not necessarily always be right in our judgments, but that doesn’t change the fact that judgments are made regardless and our actions are influenced accordingly, just like you guys make judgments about women and their age, regardless of whether they’re correct or not. Women actually ARE capable of thinking for themselves. So don’t think that you’ll have a ring of hot, young women in their early 20s around you, worshipping you when you’re 40+. Why? Because young women will be too focused (and rightly, too) on young guys their own age to notice an oldie like you. And a lot of people don’t age well (both men AND women), so when you’re that age, you’d better hope you have something going for you (either looks, personality or status, and even then, if you do get a young woman who expresses interest, you should question her intentions first to make sure), otherwise you’ll be invisible. Just think about it for a second, as a guy in your 20s chasing after a young girl, if you saw an older man in his 40s+ chasing after the same girl, what would run through your head? Would you be thinking “What an awesome and cool guy! I hope I can be like him when I’m his age and pull all the young women!” or will you think “What a loser! Who does this old moron think he is? Look at HIM and look at ME, I’m so much younger and better looking than him. Does he seriously think he stands a chance against ME? Go back to hooking up with women your age!” I just find it funny when guys say “When we’re in our 40s, we’re going to be in the prime of our lives and have young women lining up to be with us.” Because it just won’t work that way. Women also like young and firm men, but unlike some men, when women are in their senior years, they tend to know better than to try and hook up with a young guy, because they tend to be more dignified about such things.
Anyway, well done. Loved your article!
Oh yeah, also another thing I feel compelled to add. This whole thing about huge age disparity between a man and a woman, you gotta consider that two people who are of very different ages will probably have very different interests and have very different life circumstances, which, by inertia, will be more likely to place them in social circles with other people closer to their own age. And a lot of interests are somewhat related to age. For instance, some young people may be mad about clubbing, but get tired of it 10 years later. So if you’re of a certain age and like a certain thing, chances are that this is an age group that tends to be interested in such a hobby, which would bring you together with other people in a similar age bracket. This is not a hard and fast rule, and some interests may attract a greater age-range, but what I’m trying to say is that someone in their 20s will most likely have very different interests and priorities to someone in their 40s and older, and, hence, will be less likely to intersect. This is why, like you said, couples tend to be the same age. I mean, sure, older men can try and blend into groups filled with much younger people, but good luck trying to not look creepy.
One of the things as well that is not considered is that men, after a certain age, cannot always get erections like they used to. Once a man hits his mid-40s his erections start to change (usually) and many even become impotent and can no longer even have intercourse and it gets worse with each decade that passes. So you have to think about it. A lot of young women are attracted to older men as father figures but if the man is, say, in his late 40s or early 50s and she is in her 20s or something, he might be good right now but a decade from now he may not be able to perform sexually anymore while she will still be young and beautiful. That age gap will close in very soon. There are some men who can still perform later in life but men are really no different than women in how age affects them. Young women don’t like old, bald, fat, wrinkled old men! Most middle-aged men are NOT attractive! There are some that are and there are some women that are but only a smaller percent. Also, these old very rich guys might always be able to get hot 20-something year old women because the women want the resources they can offer but they probably cringe inside at the thought of being intimate with them. Most men act like they are hot stuff once they hit middle age to cover up for their diminishing sexual abilities. They may become perverted to hide the fact that they can’t perform like they once did, all of us young women have had old guys stop and leer at us or hit on us but trust me it isn’t attractive!! Also there is nothing more ridiculous than a middle aged man (or older!) who walks around acting like he’s 25 years old.
The reason men become less virile as they age is the same reason why women have menopause- older individuals are not as suited for reproducing plain and simple. I know it’s hard to face, especially for men since their sexual prowess is linked so closely with their masculinity, but it’s true. How many times have I heard young women who are with older men old enough to be their fathers complain that they can count on one hand the times they’ve been intimate, yet these older men will be bragging to their buddies about how they’ve still “got it” and how they got a young woman (even though they can’t please her). Relationships with age gaps like that are in the minority for a reason. ALL men are attracted to young fertile women in their prime but that doesn’t mean that they all have a chance to be with a woman of that age.
That’s a good point, and I totally forgot about that. Men do have a harder time performing once they reach their 40s, and it just gets worse as they get older. But it’s interesting that this is hardly ever brought up and men seem to be doing a great job of being in denial about this. A lot of research has been done on female fertility, and men love reciting the research and holding it over women’s heads, because it makes them feel better about themselves and they feel justified in their bitterness towards women. And I notice that it only tends to be bitter men or men who have issues with women who focus on it, and the bigger the bitterness, the greater the focus. It’s true that for men, their fertility and manliness are very much tied in together, but men should face facts as well, just like what women already do. Denying it only serves to harm themselves in the long run. I understand that men want to be with a young, fertile woman, because she maximises his chances of successfully spreading his seeds. Totally get it, it’s hard-wired in men, but women also want to maximise their chances of having a child, and they want to have a father for their children who is fit, strong, fast, has plenty of energy and is capable of providing for, and protecting, the family and, quite frankly, copulating with a semi-impotent middle aged man does not help her goal.
Yep, I’ve experienced old men hitting on me, and it’s completely gross and creepy. I even had a 79 year old (who had a girlfriend in her 50s) hint that he wanted something sexual with me. I was disturbed. I thought he knew better, turns out he didn’t. And it’s so true, young women (older women too, for that matter), don’t like wrinkly, bald men with a gut sticking out, and a lot of middle-aged guys already DO look like that. They’re not a prize for women just because they have a dick. They have to bring a lot more to the table and, to be brutally honest, more and more guys in modern society are beginning to display less masculine qualities, which is quite concerning.
Precisely! And it seems like the MRA types especially who like to constantly talk about women’s “shelf life” are the most bitter and really sound like immature high school boys who never grew up. You just listen to them for five minutes and think there’s something severely wrong with them. Oh and I just love how men like to talk all about how women are so out of shape these days when 3/4 of them look like they are expecting triplets any day!
And, yes, most men today aren’t doing anything productive and are dependent on parents and girlfriends for most of their lives. What have they got to offer women? Where are all the feminine women? Well, where are the masculine men?
Couldn’t have put it better myself.