I was reading a forum where the question was, very simply, "What's Your Age Range?"

And a lot of people seemed to be interested in the topic, but most of them just posted numbers without offering any reasons. "29-34" or "46-61" or whatever.

This has never made any sense to me. If you use 29-34, let's say, you could be missing out on a really great person who is 28 or 35. Or even another number entirely. Who knows?

But I am a firm believer in people's rights to set their own standards, so, while I support the validity of their doing so, in this particular area it still doesn't make any sense to me.

Some people seem to have a "formula" for determining the appropriate age of a partner. One I have seen goes like this: Take your current age, divide it in half, then add 7.

Talk about arbitrary! By this method, a 100-year-old person could not date anyone under 57! Just try to imagine the world without the occasional tawdry and shocking Anna Nicole scenario....do you really want to live in a world without THAT sort of thing? I know I don't. All the subsequent hoopla about her kid, and that Larry Birdhead guy, I know that made my whole week.

On the other end of the spectrum, using the same "formula," a 10-year-old couldn't date anyone under 12. What's wrong with this picture?

Do they do the same thing with people's weights? Has anyone come up with a "formula" for establishing what's a legitimate poundage for a significant other? Because if I have to use my own weight divided in half plus 7, I can't date anyone under 100 pounds. Or over 100 pounds. Or however that's supposed to work.

Or these people who say "I'm 40 and my kid is 21, so I couldn't date someone my kid's age." Why, because you can't tell your own kid from someone else who happens to be the same age? If that's the case, you've got bigger problems to fry.

Not me. I don't worry about stuff like that. "Has kids" and "drinks" aren't numbers. Not yet, anyway. But who knows what will happen if that awful metric system ever gets established....??

it is too bad you cannot base peoples age on their intelligence level.

My rule: If I can be your parent or you could be mine then the answer is "No". Plus or minus 13 years is about right.

Actually I say around 11 years either way have only dated 8 years older and 6 years younger at this point. But neither was intended the chemistry was just there at the time. But since I do have kids then anyone around my kids age to me would just not work.

To me that young would not have the same likes or dislikes as I would it would be like coming from two different worlds.......

Therefore I prefer those that are closer to my age that way at least we would have more in common as I see it.

At 28 years old I can't really say 10 years either way as that puts the younger ones at 18


I really won't go much younger, guys in their early 20-somethings and I are in 2 different places in our lives.

My step-dad is only 45 so guys in their 40-somethings are not such a hot prospect either.

For me around my same age - 30somethings would be my preference.

I think close is all I could say as well. It is what I have said all along, but close is a relative term also. When I was 16, close meant about 1 year. Now approaching 30, it is several years. A five year gap would not bother me one bit right now, however at 15... yeah umm...

I don't think the focus should be on the number as much.

physical age doesn't matter to me...i've dated men old enough to be my father and younger than my oldest son...

I stick with guys who are a few years younger than me (late 20s) or in their 30s.

Physical age doesn't matter to m3 also I don't date guys my age or younger than m3

I'm 30 and I would date anyone from 21 to 45. 21 there old enough to drink and join me legaly in a bar and any one over 45 would be like dating a grandma in a way to me because all there children would be married and have childern and id be dating someone that has grandchildren.

I use to have age restrictions...I think we limit ourselves that way, so I've learned to be more open with it. Too easy to generalize with age.

Just in the post above mine...

"45 would be like dating a grandma in a way to me because all there children would be married and have childern and id be dating someone that has grandchildren."

....none of my sons are married and I'm not a grandma.

The best mathematical formulation is a random walk approximating the process of a foraging animal. The joint probability for ages M for males and F for females depends on male income, female breast size, and birth control pills and viagra remaining on the current prescriptions.

Personal preference. I've dated older, and younger. didn't like younger at all, whole other mental situation going on with them.

Older was better for the most part, but anyone above 40, usually wanted to be in bed at 7-8pm. I admit, I'm not a night person, but that waseven a bit to much for me. I might fall asleep at 8 due to sheer exhaustion, but not habitually.

So, I try and keep it in a 9 year range for me. Of course, it's not like I've been deluged with local, age appropriate guys, so it really doesn't matter in the end, does it?! LOL!

I have never really had an "age range" that I have dated. I have dated younger and older men.

I find the age ranges to be pretty funny because of how random and arbitrary they are sometimes.

Compatibility psychologically, mentally, and socially are much more important to me than anything else.

I've never dated a girl that was more than one year younger than me at any point in my life, but it wasn't because of a conscious choice that I made. All the girls that I wanted to spend a lot of time with were right about my age or older.

But I'm an old curmudgeon.

i think it comes back to it being too easy to dismiss potential matches online.

if i met a guy in real life, and there was mutual attraction and some kind of chemistry happening, i probably wouldn't look too closely at his age, unless there was an obvious huge gap.

however, if i'm creating a profile online, i would tend to put a couple of years younger, and a few years older, as those who i'd like to be able to contact me.

My favorite was on a site where a woman wrote "Please don't contact me unless you are between the ages of 27 and 29." Well, sure, that's fine, but -- yeah, arbitrary.



I think that's part of my whole question here -- at what point does sheer age outweigh everything else you've mentioned?

I guess I have a hard time defining a person by a simple set of statistics. Who you are is not just a mathematical formula built around age, height, weight, shoe size, IQ, Social Security Number, etc. Those are just numbers. What do they really tell you about the person?



When I was younger, I tended to date older, but that led to some rather treacherous pitfalls. At some point, I started dating younger -- only to find out that the younger ones wanted only to TURN INTO the older ones I had dated many years before!

I don't know if this would make sense, but I do think that our desires, our personal ideals that arise from either emotional realization or intellectual growth are often eclipsed by the collective morality that is the product of sheer mass. Other people’s opinion not only dictates certain settings on the figurative moral scale, but also determines the fulcrum. We may delude ourselves by thinking that we are individuals, infinite in terms of creative and intellectual capacity, but we permit others to determine our own morals, essentially capping creativity by censoring actions and thoughts beyond a certain, morally acceptable range. Who is it that said that we are a population of desires, and the only thing which holds us all below excess is other people’s opinions?

Ha! Thx Lex!! You proved my other thread spot on

http://mingle2.com/topic/show/272600

I have come to the opinion that dating someone my own age might be interesting. It could be a real ego booster. Some one might think, "Hey, he is mature enough to hold his own." Maybe we both could learn from the experience.