Dating doesn’t seem to be a big topic of discussion here but anyway. It’s all downhill from 18 and 50.
That’s a bit of a bummer right there.
It kinds of matches older history before modern times when men didn’t get married until they were older and established with money (or a cave and superiority and capability to manage others), and women married younger to men that were established.
Met a girl in Taipei through Tinder. She told me she was afraid to turn 19 cause she wouldn’t be on the top of the market value anymore. It’s sad you walk in the dating market with that perspective.
That being said, the article’s mention of “leagues” show how uneducated the journalist (and maybe the scientist too) is with regards to dating. There might be “leagues,” but there’s also what we can call “sports.” A high-league hip-hop bad boy will not necessarily fare well with a mid-league career-driven law school student. Trying to put everyone on a single scale is ridiculously simplifying.
I also expect the attraction of women and men evolve differently. Something like: on a scale of 0 to 10, women on average start at 8 when they are eighteen, and end up at 3 when they are sixty-years-old. Men, on another hand, start at 4 when they are eighteen, progress to 6 when they are fifty-years-old, and then decrease again. Again, it’s oversimplifying not to show the details of the research.
Not that attractiveness is the driving force here, but the women that I have known my whole life are, on the whole, more attractive now than they were at 18. I look back at old photos and think how awkward and dweeby we all were. Maybe Its just that I know a lotta hot mammas.
Edit: they are crazy as loons though
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That is a beautiful statement.
And umm, for me, mature woman are amazing, in general, all good.
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Yes, there’s a lotta MILFs out there. 
I think part of the attractiveness comes from people just growing into themselves and becoming more comfortable with who they are (can be true of men as well). This seems to vary a lot from person to person though. Some people mature as they age, others just become more and more neurotic.
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I tell my daughter to figure out her idiosyncrasies now cause they will only intensify as she gets older. But some folks really do mellow with age. Oh the human psyche is a fragile thing.
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Who? Who’s neurotic who who I want to know who?
Oh I know that’s that other person over there
Aha!
Also, as I expected, they consider that receiving a lot of messages = being desirable, setting everybody on a same scale. All in all, what they found is not that 18-year-old girls and 50-year-old men are more desirable, but that they receive more messages than their same-gender counterparts.
If you consider that guys are doing online dating mostly to find hookups, the 18-year-old target doesn’t surprise me, as the average dude is looking for the youngest possible one-night-stand. As for 50-year-old guys, my guess is they’re approached by women on the lower end of the desirability spectrum (40~70-years-old) who realize they have to step up their proactivity cause the good old days of being in your twenties and letting the guy do all the work are over.
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Not if you are a 50 year old guy 
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I don’t think it’s necessary money. It takes years for you to climb to the top of whatever you’re doing. Women like men on the top of their hierarchy.
Some women also like pathetic, broken losers…and sometimes it takes men a while to reach that state.
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Many girls like more mature guys, because they think they already dedicated their time to work, made money and now can focus on dedicating time to a relationship. Also some girls are looking for men with money, social status, properties ecc. Which usually is more likely to be found in older men.
It sounds like no one understands what women want…but it’s clear why men like 18 years olds…that’s not even a discussion. We just all know why.
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I’m 52. I’m here to tell you my peak been and gone many moons ago.
What’s that in human years?
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because saying 17 wouldn’t be legal?
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