And I am one of them. I am not saying it is a good thing. I am just saying it is the wave of the future. I think there is nothing sillier than a 35-year-old man who doesn't want to settle down, but they are out there in abundance.
As there are women who are doing the same thing... and they're aging together. I don't know any 20 year old girls looking to the greying set. I don't see that as the wave of the future... they're beating themselves up trying to figure out the young men who don't treat them very well and both sides are collecting a bunch of baggage to tote around with them until they do finally settle down.
I think there is nothing sillier than a 35-year-old man who doesn't want to settle down.
[Some men find good lives with ~shock~ women their own age :~D
And I am one of them. I am not saying it is a good thing. I am just saying it is the wave of the future.]
If it is a trend and wave of the future, it is a liberal trend, a leftist wave. The white male patriarchy intends to keep its entitlement to marrying "a younger woman". All efforts to harm the interests of the white male patriarchy, in this case by encouraging "age equality" more and more, are liberal/leftist compared to the traditions of the real "Old Europe". But there is another, American, dimension to this issue:
I know that, in the last century, the American pioneer tradition abandoned the "sophisticated" European concept that a man should work hard until he is 30, establish himself financially, and then look to the new "crop" of 18-19 year olds to get married. The American pioneer was given a same-age wife to move west with so they could both establish themselves together. Nothing was published in the American press about how many of these young pioneers who got rich out west...left their wives and kids in Denver and ran back home to Boston where they married the 18 year old debutante they hadn't been good enough to get when they were 18 themselves. So you get the myth that Americans should marry each other when they are young and poor and grow old together.
This "same-age bliss" concept is respectable for those who have it. I understand the tradition. I wish it could have happened to me. But it didn't. And because it didn't happen to me (marrying someone at 20 who was 20 and growing old together), I have no reason to support such a tradition anymore.
Sure, when I was 20, I was loudly outspoken against the idea that women my own age would date older, more established guys. I was livid at the very idea. But now it is in my interest to feel the opposite. Now I feel that 20 year old men should be ignored by 20 year old women while they look for older guys.
When I was a US soldier in my twenties...nobody in America (pre-911) wanted to date US soldiers (and church single groups were then empty). Liberal women didn't respect the job and conservative young women were looking for a richer guys. I, therefore, didn't come into my own until I was 30.
But at 30 I would then come to face to face with the shock of seeing American parents try to stop their daughter from dating me because I had supposedly become too old. These are people whom I thought I had been defending. I had gotten out of the Army after 4 years of service, in which I hadn't been "successful enough" for their daughters...and then I was "too old" although I was only 30!
It is like a soldier who ages out of his twenties while serving...may as well have been crippled in combat...the age and experience he gained in the military is an embarrassing "negative"..."thank you, but my daughter would be happier with the skateboarder down the block" and we'd rather not accept the fact that she was flirting with you and kissing you and really isn't interested in the slacker with the skateboard.
I remember one 40 year old mother insisted that I date her and not the daughter, and cooked me a nice meal while giving the daughter $10 to go see a movie by herself. The daughter was embarrassed. It is like feminism had given older American women a sense of entitlement to date younger men which was completely and fatally at odds with reality.
Nobody, except the young women themselves, cared that the US Army had taught me 3 new languages and had made me the kind of world traveler that James Bond fans would have been jealous over. I was 30 and that was bad to the parents.
Ever see the film "Logan's Run" where men are hunted down and killed when they reach 30? Well, when the most gorgeous and intelligent woman in a small town happens to be your 20 year old daughter and a soldier comes home from his service at age 30 and wants to marry her...you are cutting him dead if you would disapprove because of his age. There was a reason for his being 30. It is called military service.
There are many American single males sacrificing their twenties in Iraq...and while FReepers will *say now* that they "support the troops"...when the Iraq War heroes finally come home at age 30 or 35...they are going to be persona non grata to those of you who now have teenage daughters who will be 18 when the 30 or 35 year old war hero comes home.
Shockingly, I've observed that American Democrats are more "tolerant" of older men dating their daughters. Sure, you could say "Of course, and they were fine with Bill Clinton fooling around with his interns"...but if the problem you had with Bill Clinton was the age difference and not the sham marriage, the adultery, the lying, the way he cut Monika off...then we see the world in an entirely different light.
I find socalled "conservative" American males who are ready to give other conservative males the keys to the kingdom job-wise and everything they want...but "not my daughter! because she needs to date the skateboarder with long hair down the street who is her own age"...a big problem.
The Iraq War veterans are going to want your daughters.
College coeds, in surveys, might say they want to find a guy 22-28 years old, but when you ask them to name specific males who turn them on, they say Bruce Willis (age 49), Steven Seagall (age 50), Kevin Kostner (age 48), John Travolta (age 55).
The "trend" and the "wave of the future" in America...may be more toward age NOT mattering so much. Older women are looking better and better because of the trends of modern life. I would bet that there are proportionately tons more sexy 40 year old women at this time, then at any other time in the history of the world. But, as with globalization, they are going to have to compete in a free market, where there are no artificial barriers to trade...such as feminist admonitions to young women to reject all men over 30 so the older women won't have the competition.
I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had gone to Afghanistan four years ago and later to Iraq...and not come back to the USA until after I was 40...and then attempted to marry the 25 year old daughter of a "troop supporter" who thinks older, experienced men are supposedly losers.