Relationships with age gaps can increase women’s sexual satisfaction

“We tend to have all sorts of assumptions about why people get into relationships with people who are much younger,” says Sarah E. Hill, PhD, a research psychologist and consultant for Cougar Life. The most important thing this survey highlighted, however, was that these relationships were “the result of an organic connection between two people who didn’t let age get in the way,” she explains.

Below, relationship experts explain why it’s becoming more common for older women to date younger men—and what makes these types of relationships so satisfying.

More and more people are realizing that age is just a number.

“In colonial times, it was quite common for older men to marry younger women, in part because “there were more men than women,” and it pushed down the age of first marriage for women because there weren’t enough of them,” says Nicholas L. Syrett, PhD, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas.

However, according to a 2023 study conducted by Bumble, age isn’t even a deciding factor for many modern daters these days. It was found that 59 percent of women are explicitly open to dating someone younger than them.

Research has also shown that the older you get, the less you care about what others think. About 23 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds fear judgment from age-gap dating, while only seven percent of Americans ages 55 and older are concerned about society’s opinion of their relationship.

A 2019 study in Gender and society It also put an end to the “cougar” stereotype that older women are usually the ones who pursue young men, rather than the other way around. In a series of interviews with 55 women ages 30 to 60 who dated younger men, most women said they were not the initiators of the relationship — and this trend was even more pronounced among the women over 40 surveyed .

Meanwhile, older women are also often desexualized as they get older. “As a society, we tend to view older women as a fading flame in life,” says Kate Balestrieri, PhD, a licensed psychologist, certified sex therapist, and founder of Los Angeles-based Modern Intimacy. “We can really minimize how vibrant and dynamic their 40s, 50s, 60s and older can be.”

Older women find relationships with younger men satisfying for a while diversity for reasons.

“Women are often very determined and the wisdom that comes with age plays a role in deciding who they date,” says Gigi Engle, certified sex and relationship psychotherapist, sex expert at LGBTQIA+ dating app Taimi and Author of “ All the Damn Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life. “Many women are conditioned to make their sexual pleasure secondary to their partners,” Balestrieri adds.

So if the woman has spent most of her life raising children or coming out of a marriage, being with a younger man “is very exciting and very tempting as a relationship prospect,” Engle says. Older women know their bodies significantly better than they did in their youth and are willing to focus on their own exploration with a partner who equally prioritizes their pleasure — especially if they’ve been with the same person for decades, she adds.

What makes younger men so attractive is that they are generally more eager to learn and are also adventurous when it comes to travel and life goals, Balestrieri adds. This eagerness carries over into the bedroom, where a younger partner may be “eager to please” and provide sexual stamina and satisfaction that an older woman may not have experienced in previous relationships, Hill adds. (For example, in a previous marriage, partners may have been emotionally and sexually committed to their own behaviors, Hill says.)

Anecdotally, many older women talk about feeling excited “not just because of the reception they find in younger men, but also because of the reciprocity and the pleasure and the real immersion in the exploration,” and “they also feel purely physiologically feel more equal,” notes Balestrieri.

Additionally, young men have a shorter refractory period, can have erections more frequently, and have a “shorter reaction time for sexual activity” when desired, says Balestrieri. They also tend not to have erection problems such as erectile dysfunction, adds Engle.

Different rules apply in same-sex relationships.

Same-sex relationships with an age gap are a little different than heterosexual relationships, as age gaps are much more normal in the LGBTQ+ community. Take celebrity couples Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor (32 years apart), Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi (15 years apart), and Elton John and David Furnish (15 years apart) as examples.

One reason for this is that queer communities “have had to make their own rules for relationships because in many ways they don’t follow the traditional relationship script anyway,” says Hill. According to Engle and Balestrieri, people who identify as LGBTQ+ have typically explored their sexuality more than the average heterosexual person.

While innate power imbalances can easily arise in heterosexual relationships – for example, the “man of the house” stereotype – relationships in the LGBTQ+ community are not as affected. Because they have often had to endure judgment from peers, loved ones, and society in general, they tend to be more “purposeful in communication” regarding power imbalances and other factors related to identity (particularly as a public figure) and wealth social status, adds Balestrieri.

The conclusion: When you combine the “sexual prowess and vitality of a younger man” with the wisdom and willingness to explore herself of an older woman, it can be a truly satisfying combination, explains Engle. The younger man’s open-mindedness and free-spiritedness resonate with women as they get older and care less about what society thinks, Hill said. Are you thinking about doing something with a younger person? Go. For. It.