Romance is full of stereotypes. Conventional wisdom holds that men chase youth, while women seek older, more established partners. But a new study flips this script, revealing a surprising truth. When it comes to initial attraction, both men and women are slightly more drawn to younger partners at virtually the same rate — whether they realize it or not.
“This preference for youth among women will be shocking to many people,” said Paul Eastwick, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, and the study’s lead author. “In mixed-gender couples, men tend to be older than women. Plus, women generally say they prefer older partners. But women’s preferences on the dates themselves revealed something else entirely.”
Rethinking Dating Norms
The study analyzed data from more than 4,500 participants who went on blind dates arranged by the matchmaking service Tawkify. The daters, ranging in age from 22 to 85, were about evenly split between men and women. After their brief encounters, they filled out questionnaires rating their attraction to their dates.
The results were clear: both men and women were slightly more likely to rate younger partners as desirable. This preference was small but consistent, with daters choosing the younger of two potential partners about 55% of the time. “It’s small, and you probably wouldn’t notice it yourself with just the ‘naked eye’, but it makes a difference in the aggregate,” Eastwick told The Guardian.
Interestingly, the participants’ self-reported age preferences didn’t always match their actual choices. Many said they had an age limit for potential partners, but this limit had little bearing on who they found attractive in person.
Previous research suggests mate preferences shift in live interactions. While online dating studies show men message younger women and women message older men, face-to-face encounters tell another story. In speed-dating studies, for instance, men and women become far less selective once they meet a potential partner in person.
The assumption that women prefer older men may stem from historical social structures rather than innate preferences.
Why the Gap Persists
The study’s findings challenge long-standing theories about mate selection. Across cultures, men tend to be older than their female partners, and evolutionary psychologists have suggested this reflects deep-seated biological preferences: men seek fertile, youthful partners, while women seek stability and resources, often linked to older men.
But if women are slightly more drawn to younger men, why do most heterosexual couples still feature older men? The average age difference (for a heterosexual couple) is 2.3 years, with the man older than the woman. In 64 percent of heterosexual couples, the man is older. In 23 percent, the woman is older, and in the remaining 13 percent, the partners are less than 12 months apart in age. The new study offers a few possible explanations.
One theory is that while women may find younger men appealing at first, the realities of dating them — such as the “liabilities of men’s youth,” as the authors put it — may lead to shorter-lived relationships.
Eastwick also pointed out that the dating pool itself may be skewed. Boys often mature later than girls, so they enter the dating scene at an older age. Meanwhile, older women may remove themselves from the pool altogether because they anticipate the caregiving burdens of an aging partner. This could skew the dating market toward pairings where men are older than women. In other words, the age gap might not reflect true attraction, but rather the structure of the dating market itself.
Social norms have also always had an impact on dating opportunities. Historically, women have had fewer economic opportunities, making financial stability — often associated with older men — a priority. Even today, matchmaking services, dating apps, and social circles tend to introduce women to older men and men to younger women.
The study also sheds light on how age preferences evolve over a lifetime. Previous research has shown that as people age, their ideal partner age shifts. Men tend to start with younger partners and maintain that preference as they grow older. Women, on the other hand, often begin by preferring older men, shift to same-aged partners in middle age, and then gravitate toward younger men in their later years.
What This Means for Dating and Relationships
Dating norms continue to evolve. Not too long ago, most couples met through friends or at work. Today, virtually all couples hook up on dating apps. In countries where gender roles are becoming more equitable, age gaps in relationships are shrinking. Studies show that in societies with greater gender equality, women’s preferences for older men decrease and men’s preferences for younger women become less pronounced.
“There is perhaps some wisdom in broadening one’s horizons,” Eastwick said. “Many men found the women who were older than them to be appealing. So, if more people went on dates where the woman was older than the man, I bet you’d start to see more of these ‘age-reversed’ couples.”
If attraction operates differently in practice than in theory, it could mean people are unnecessarily limiting their dating options.
In the end, the study reveals a simple yet powerful truth: attraction is more complex than a checklist of ideal traits. Love, it turns out, might be less about numbers and more about the unpredictable chemistry that unfolds when two people meet.
The findings appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
