Interesting article. I married at 18 to a man who was 44 because I was ready to be a wife and mom and no one my age was ready for that.
Going to college was not an option for me and neither was sleeping around.
I worked for about a year in a company that was almost all male, and a hot secretary there had the pick of the upper level managers, and pick she did. The young guys (around my age) drooled over her.
I left, and found out about a year later that she had married a very square, boring, not bad looking, but no stud, ex military guy about my age, possibly even younger than her. I had to ask three times to convince myself they were talking about “JR”.
They said that she’d finally realized that the older guys were just using her for good times, and she was going to find herself left on the shelf in another five to ten years, and she figured that AJ was steady, reliable, and would be a devoted husband and a good provider. In other words, she smartened up before it was too late.