When I was fifteen I had a crush on a pretty girl who was also fifteen. Then one day (when I was probably on my skateboard) I saw her with her boyfriend. The jacket he was wearing proudly declared the college he was attending. Boy did that hurt.

Because the interaction of male and female dating preferences result in couples where the man is (on average) older than the woman, girls experience feast when they are young and famine when they are older. For guys, it is the opposite. It is certainly easier for me to get a date now that I am in my forties, as compared to when I was 15. Thinking-men-are-spoiled is correct that we are spoiled (at our age) - what she has not yet recognized is that she too was spoiled for many years.

I'm sorry, but this is just biology. Men find young women attractive, and young women can find both older and younger men attractive.

I also agree with the first poster in that women have their day in the sun when they are young and beautiful, which for most is in their late teens to early thirties. The dating and marriage scene for men, on the other hand, improves after age 35.

But when you do all that and see the slop computer matching comes up with...

Maybe these men you date are just as mercinary as you are.

Cary, I vote that your altered circumstances are good for the column, at least today.

I can't stand being told anymore that "it'll happen when you're least expecting it," so I won't say it to you, LW, but here's the other side of that coin:

When optimism means to continue to hope for or seek something whose likelihood is not supported by all of your well-examined empirical evidence, it is either delusion or self-deceit.

Optimism is oversold as a marker of mental health and happiness. Work on building a life that will sustain you, and that the right person, if he stumbles along, would be happy to share.

I am a thirty two year old male, interested in a long term relationship and more than willing to date women in their 40s and 50s. I have a good job, medical insurance, own a house and I am not looking to have kids. So all you "older" women out there, let me know how I find you.

We're out here!

Thanks!

My sex drive has never been higher than in my forties.

You mention a 50 year old with a 27 year old woman. Imagine now...your hot forties with a sixty four year old with the common aliments of a sixty four year old. When you are a hot 50 year old, he's edging into his eighties.

Sure, it could work, especially for a few years. If it is for love, then it has a chance. But if it is for just having a child or an ornament or a meal ticket or status, it's doomed. Your 50 year old married to the young'un does pay, one way or another. It's not a free ride when he gets her home and unwrapped as Dr. Phil would say. Biology aside, the young wife can take him to the cleaners and clean his clock (and not many have sympathy for the old guy) and the sadness of having an elderly parent is always there for the young children. Of course, this is not all about him, so he may be slow on the uptake.

A lot of the time, with large age differences, it's a dirty secret, but its because the woman gives up having a satisfying sex life. You know, Paul McCarthy says his young wife didn't marry him for the money, yet when she had the one child; that's when the divorce happened. And she is fighting him for a lot of cash. So I guess the money did matter to her after all.

Scenario: two 40-something guys on a hike talking and complaining about women in their age range, or the lack of decent, compatible ones.

Hiker #1 yammers on about how "women in their 40s are loons."

Hiker #2 responds, "Anyone, man or woman, in their 40s who isn't married yet or isn't in a solid relationship is messed up and has major baggage."

Hiker #3 laughs, "Okay, I'll shut up."

Street runs both way...pot, kettle, black...etc.

I feel sorry for the letter writer as an individual, but not for women as a gender. As a young, athletic, good-looking, funny, energetic, enthusiastic young guy, women would not give me the friggin' time of day. Not that I'm bitter or anything. Now that I am 40, balding, somewhat overweight, cynical, apathetic, and tired (oh, and married), young women flirt with me all the time. This is like torture. I don't even enjoy their attention, as it really reflects their screwed-up incestual need to make it with daddy - yuk! Or their narcissistic need to compete with my wife. Kind of like the old Groucho Marx line, any women that is attracted to a guy like me is too screwed-up to deserve my respect.

It's a tough situation out there for the snaggle-toothed crones.

Last week I had a wonderful 56th birthday party thrown for me by my 21-year-old girlfriend who wants to have a baby for me ASAP (working on that). We danced the night away, then spent the weekend camping in the mountains with her family.

Shameful, I know, and there is no fool like and old fool, but when I was an impoverished, skinny, acned, young geek of 21, no woman of any merit would look twice at me. Now I am still broke, now fat and old, but seem to be a more desirable property as far as the fair sex is concerned.

The solution for the LW is to find herself an older man, about 70 maybe--but there are some septuagenarians in great shape these days--who will find her intriguingly young and desirable, a terrific catch, and whose pals will think him a hell of a dog for taking up with a younger woman.

My dad is 84 and married to a young woman of 62 and they are perfectly happy, except when he nearly croaked having sex last year. I told her to go easy on him.