The results also indicated that our age preferences seem to change as we age, but in different ways for men and women. Specifically, although both men’s and women’s lower age limit increased as they themselves got older, the rate of this increase was more than twice as fast for women as it was for men. Because men have a lower limit to begin with compared to women, this means that, as we age, the gender difference in preferences for young partners actually seems to get even bigger.

So what about the upper age limit? The results indicated that, as people get older, the age of the oldest person they are willing to have sex with increases. However, this trend does not differ across the sexes—in other words, the rate of change in one’s willingness to have sex with older partners seems to be pretty similar for men and women.

When it came to sexual orientation, the results suggested that the overall patterns of age preferences tended to be fairly similar within a given gender group (as you can see in the table above). In other words, people of the same gender expressed fairly similar preferences regardless of their sexual orientation.

However, one important difference that did emerge is that the rate of increase in the lower preferred age limit was smaller for gay men than it was for any other gender/sexuality category. In other words, as they get older, gay men retain interest in younger partners more than anyone else.

Of course, there are a few important limitations of this study, one being that all data were collected in Finland, a country that—among other things—has more gender equality than most other industrialized nations, a factor that could potentially impact mating preferences. As such, it’s always wise to be cautious about broadly generalizing results across cultures. In addition, this study looked only at the role of age, which is just one of many, many characteristics that people might pay attention to when selecting a potential sexual partner. And, finally, the researchers asked about preferred parter age in a way that was devoid of context. This is a key point because people might have different preferred partner ages depending upon whether they're thinking about a casual relationship or a romantic relationship.

That said, these results are important because they provide evidence that our sexual age preferences appear to change as we get older and, moreover, that the changes that occur may be different for men and women, as well as persons of different sexualities.

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To learn more about this research, see: Antfolk, J. (2017). Age Limits: Men’s and Women’s Youngest and Oldest Considered and Actual Sex Partners. Evolutionary Psychology.

Image Source: 123RF.com/Karen Roach

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