I deleted all my dating apps last fall. I realized I’d become cynical and exhausted. There had to be a better way. I tried dating IRL. I tried chatting up a guy in the produce aisle at Whole Foods. I tried asking my friends to set me up. But then, I stopped trying. I relaxed. I hung out with my friends. And it was good. Then last weekend I impulsively decided I was ready to dip back into the online dating pool. For the first time in forever, I felt more curious than desperate. I hastily created a new profile on Hinge. For once, I didn’t overthink. I kept it simple, set my preferences to men in my age group within 25 miles and went out to ski. When I checked my phone later, I was shocked. I’d never had much luck on Hinge before, but this time was different. Not only was I pulling in a lot of likes, but most of them seemed, in the words of Larry David, pretty, pretty, pretty good. There was S., a cute ginger who spent a summer backpacking in the Far East. J., who works in the ski industry and has an irrational fear of Dorito dust. T., a software engineer who labeled his obligatory fish photo with the caption “obligatory fish photo.” And A., who works in marketing and grew up skiing back east like me. On paper, they were funny, articulate, nice-looking — great matches, if you ask me. Except for one thing. They were all 20-30 years younger than me. To be clear, I was also getting likes from plenty of men my age — also funny, articulate and attractive — who seemed like good fits. But that wasn’t what surprised me. What surprised me was how many of the younger men seemed, at least on the page, unexpectedly thoughtful. Their profiles weren’t thirsty in the way I’d been conditioned to expect. They were self-aware, light, confident without bravado and oddly specific about who they were and what they liked. It didn’t line up with what I would have assumed. Was this some kind of joke? Or was there something going on in the zeitgeist? I thought about Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, who is 24 years his senior, and about journalist Laura Brown, 52, whose partner is 16 years younger. That gap still falls within the old rule attributed to French writer Max O’Rell: A man should marry a woman half his age, plus seven. Fair enough, Max. But what happens when an older woman flips the script, when attraction isn’t explained away by money or procreation or power? What I was seeing on Hinge didn’t feel like an anomaly so much as a reflection of a broader shift. One where attraction comes more from presence and compatibility than antiquated gender rules. I decided to ask a few of these younger dudes what was up. I told them I usually date closer to my age, that I was genuinely curious, and that I wanted to write about it but wouldn’t use identifying details. What came back surprised me. Not because the replies were the same, but because of how thoughtfully they were expressed. One of them said: I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m into attractive women — whatever their age. Sometimes I don’t even look at the age. If you’re fun and attractive, who cares? Another said: Older women know what they want and communicate it better. They’re emotionally mature, more confident and better at handling conflict. They know their boundaries, which creates a better experience for both people. And then there was J., whose reply felt like a snapshot of modern dating: Your profile is real. You seem relatable. You participate in fun, active hobbies. In one of your pics, you’re holding a cocktail you probably smuggled into skijoring, which is a big bonus in my book. TBH, a lot of profiles around here are either rich tourists with fake lips and fancy dresses or younger women with five selfies and no sense of who they are. No friends, no hobbies, no clues to what hanging out with them would actually feel like. What struck me wasn’t that these younger men seemed to agree with each other or even that they found me attractive. It was the ease and vulnerability with which they articulated what they were responding to — presence, clarity, a sense of aliveness. Not so much youth or god forbid, a dating goal. Just the feeling that being together even briefly would be uncomplicated and real. No, I’m not going to start dating men so young they wouldn’t get my Larry David reference. I still want shared cultural memory, life experiences, common ground. But the experience did give me hope. Not just for myself, but for anyone who’s dating outside their age range and for a culture that may finally be loosening its choke-hold on what desire is supposed to look like. If there is a shift happening, maybe it has less to do with age than being yourself — not who the algorithm, the dating pool or your mother thinks you should be. At this point in my life, that freedom feels like its own kind of intimacy. I’m going to need a disco nap to think about it. The post Betty Diaries: All the young dudes appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less