Younger men are increasingly seeking out older women — and it’s not just a dating trend. It’s a shift in power, desire and modern masculinity.
In this episode of “The Opinions,” the Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman talks with the writer and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster and Emily Leibert, a staff writer at The Cut, about why age-gap relationships are so popular and whether they signal liberation, backlash or something more complicated.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Nadja Spiegelman: Recently, my 52-year-old friend separated from her husband. And so, I made her a dating profile. And the response from men in their 30s was overwhelming.
Paxin: The oldest age gap that I had was eight years, and she was 35 and I was 27 years old.
Dillion: So, I’m 34. The oldest I’ve been on a date with, I want to say, is like close to 50.
Tristan: I am 28 years old and my ex-girlfriend was 42. She had two kids who were the same age as my siblings.
More young men are seeking to date older women.
Paxin: I was really attracted to the level of emotional maturity that they could give me.
Tristan: Just the openness for a relationship. A real relationship: exclusivity, something longer-lasting.
Kendrick: They tend to be more in their careers, and they tend to be more peaceful when it comes to dating.
The dating app Feeld reports huge growth in this area in just the past two years.
Dillion: Really because of a toxic dating world. They all hate us all. Social media is: “Men are trash.” You know who’s not saying that? The older ones up there.
Tristan: They’re not ghosting me after six weeks.
Women over 40 have more spending power and social capital than ever before. So, is that why these age-gap relationships are now all the rage?
We’re going to talk in quite general stereotypes, because that’s the only way to talk about large groups of people by gender and age. We’ve all been seeing this in film and television. There’s “Babygirl,” there’s the reality show “Age of Attraction,” there’s “The Idea of You.” There’s more that I can list, over the past several years. And so, I was also really curious if this is actually happening in the world, not just in the media. And I reached out to the dating app, Feeld, and I asked them to run numbers on this, and was just like, are you seeing this in your dating app data?
And they said that over the past two years, the number of men who are exclusively interested in dating women older than themselves has increased by 64 percent. And that is particularly true among the youngest bracket of men, 18-to-25-year-old men. This is happening, and I’m really curious about why it’s happening now.
Emily, you reported a whole story on this. So, what were you expecting to find? What did you find? What surprised you in your reporting?
Emily Leibert: Yeah. From the women that I spoke to in my reporting, and these are women across all ages, I think the biggest thing was a sense of freedom.
That they’re not really beholden to this mold that men might have held them to before, that they can just simply be themselves; that they don’t have to pine for male validation and male desire, and instead, men can just come to them. They wanted to find somebody who isn’t necessarily economically out-earning them.
They didn’t necessarily want to be with somebody who is more successful than them. They don’t care about those things. They just want to be in a relationship, a loving relationship, with a partner who sees and respects them. I think the other thing is that they do get a sense of joy in being able to shape a young man. I think that some of the women I spoke to were very interested in building a boyfriend as a sort of perfect product that they can carry on their arms. Sort of like a purse.
Spiegelman: I’m curious about what you were saying at first: Part of the pleasure is that men come to them, that they don’t have to be in pursuit. It reverses our image of the predatory cougar for a lot of these women. Are they describing that they are being approached by these young men?
Leibert: Yeah. There was a stampede of young men coming up to them in bars. Like one of the women was at a random Times Square dive bar, and she was like: “I could not even take a breath. I could not take a sip. Every 20 seconds, some 20-something was coming up to me.” But I think that’s really exciting for them, even if they are just in their late 20s or early 30s, to see all of the work that they’ve put into their education and their personal finances being valued instead of, just as a young woman, purely an object. Like, I think that is really cool for them.
Spiegelman: Yeah. And Jamieson, are you seeing this happen, either in your social life or in your practice? Are you seeing this happen around you, this kind of relationship?
Jamieson Webster: I’m not seeing it in any particular fashion personally, but I certainly have seen it pop up in the culture and have been thinking about it. A lot of what I do hear about is dating fatigue, with respect to the apps. And what’s being called “the manosphere” is something that I think is on everybody’s mind; and what’s happening for men and their sense of possibility, which seems to be part of the story of this question of age-gap relationships.
One of the things that I think is shockingly more visible and present, especially in the lives of my patients — and that the apps highlight — is just the feeling of the sheer number of other people, and the ruthless competition in that, which isn’t helped in a society that is increasing inequality rather than reducing inequality.
So, on the one hand, you have a situation which is increasingly unequal, and then you have a sense of just the sheer number of other people out there, as a pool in which you’re competing. And there’s something about this for men, including the fact that for women and men, the equality is shifting. And it’s not great, it’s not where it should be, but there’s greater equality between men and women than there was.
And so, there’s something about trying to find a place in which something of themselves feels like they have a leg up. And it seems like this age-gap relationship is a place where they can feel that, especially as a very young man, where you haven’t proved your potential yet.
Spiegelman: And so, obviously, we do have double standards around how we perceive age-gap relationships. And I’m curious why you think that is, and if you think that perhaps it’s seen as a bit more subversive, or less predatory, for older women to want to date younger men, and why?
Leibert: I think what we’ve seen play out on reality TV a million times over is this idea of an older, wealthy man finding himself a very attractive young woman to procreate with and have her look after the house. And guess what happens 30 years later? Almost every time, he moves on to the younger model.
But I think it comes back to, well, what was the intent of that relationship? Did you just want somebody to crank out some children for you? And I think, when we’re talking about older women dating younger men, a lot of the stories that I have heard often include women looking for an equal partner. Maybe they aren’t on the same economic standing to begin with, but who she’s hoping to nurture so that they can be on equal footing eventually. And I don’t think that is always necessarily true with men.
Spiegelman: I made a dating profile for a friend of mine, who is in her early 50s and recently separated from a very long marriage that she’d entered quite young. And I was like, “Just watch, you’re about to be inundated with requests from young men.” And she was like: “Why would that be? I don’t understand. Why would young men be interested in me? That makes no sense.” And then as we were sitting there, as I set up the profile for her, it happened instantly. Floods of requests from men in their early 30s.
And she says this is still happening, and it’s very specifically men who are 35. And I feel so much glee for her. I feel really happy. I don’t know how much she’s going on these dates, but I just feel happy for her that she’s getting this attention, that she has this amount of possibility. That if she wants to date men purely for their bodies — not that this would be the only reason to date a younger man — she has this available to her. And I know that I would not feel this way if the genders were reversed. And so, I’m just curious about thinking that through a little bit more. What do you think about it?
Leibert: I don’t think that we were previously allowed to be outwardly horny. We were not necessarily allowed to talk about our desires and the strangeness and singularity of them. So, it does feel transgressive to be able to look at a dating app profile and really objectify a very strong, young man, who’s maybe been tanning in Costa Rica for a bit. I don’t know; I’m just spitballing. So, while that does feel fun, obviously we understand how really filthy and disgusting being objectified over and over again can feel.
So again, it is imperfect, but I understand why that can feel like a nice power grab, to sit there and be like: “You know what? I wasn’t afforded this privilege in the past. I’m going to sit here and objectify the hell out of these 24-year-olds.”
Spiegelman: What do you think, Jamieson? Why are these women seeking relationships with younger men? What would you imagine they get from it?
Webster: I guess I imagine that if there’s a caretaking element, in terms of the build-a-boyfriend or curate-the-boyfriend — help the boyfriend grow up — that it’s a relationship of care that also gets to be mixed with sexuality, rather than the necessity that a woman care for so much and take on all of the responsibility of care.
So, it’s care with a plus, rather than the absolute negative that it is over time, when it’s too much for a woman to handle.
Spiegelman: A way of being sexualized for being caregiving, rather than caregiving being a de-sexualizing act.
Webster: Yeah, I imagine that’s important. And I also think that there must be a treatment of the anxieties, that with the younger person there’s somehow less anxiety. I don’t know if it’s that he’s less predatory, or that he’s more dependent, or that he’s more worshipful, but it must be treating anxiety of some kind.
Spiegelman: I don’t know that I fully understand what you mean when you talk about the ways in which anxiety plays into sexual desire. Can you just say a little bit more about that? What do you mean by anxiety, and how does that relate?
Webster: I think anxiety is, on the one hand, about what it means to submit to the other person and to be dependent on them. So, I mean, part of what happens in relationships is that they are a playground for dependency, but they also become material dependencies in terms of how you put your lives together and what that inevitably entails.
And so, I wonder what in these relationships treats it on both of these levels? And, obviously, the idea is that the man is willingly putting himself in a more dependent position, with respect to the older woman, and enjoying this. And what is it for them to have someone who has this obvious dependency on them, how does that help them?
Spiegelman: And how much does this have to do with the economics, with women being more economically independent?
Webster: I don’t know, because we’d have to find out if all of these relationships also have that class dimension in it. But I certainly think the fact that women have more economic independence, and that the divorce rates are such that women are now used to — in a way trying to, having to imagine, or actually being in the position to — raising a family on their own.
And the fact that households require two incomes at this point really changes something, such that you can ask a question about what kind of relationship you would want, as opposed to the one that you have to have. So, it must be wild for women to be like, what do I want?
Spiegelman: Emily, what did you find in your reporting about the economics of it all?
Leibert: I think that they were able to take the career and that pure dollar sign out of things. If I were to take the finance bro out of finance, would I actually like who he is inside? And I think a lot of people would say: “Maybe not.” Sorry to the finance bros. So, that ability to say: “I am going to center myself, center my career and my ambition, and know that perhaps this person is dependent on me in that financial sense, but they are contributing around the house in different ways, or they’re offering to get the groceries.”
It’s almost like the woman gets to step into that very “Mad Men” tropey sense of what it meant to be the provider. And I think that this is refreshing.
Spiegelman: I feel like in a lot of traditional, heterosexual relationships, a woman who begins out-earning her partner can be seen as very threatening. And I wonder if this is an antidote to that.
Leibert: Yeah. All my references are reality TV, but I see this across “The Real Housewives” franchises. Seeing the woman, through the platform of television, becoming more and more successful or in other circumstances — and I have personal experience with this — I think that men are attracted to women with ambition and with careers, until they understand what that means on a domestic level, and how much time and access they have to you. So yeah, I think the reality of that is very different. And if young men are down to be home more often and wait for Mommy to come home, then like, great. Go for it.
Webster: It’s so dependent on the male anxiety. I mean, in a funny way, we often think, at best, women actually don’t have anxiety. They just have anxiety about other people’s anxieties, and how they’re going to smear on them. And you know, if it’s the male’s anxiety about not being powerful enough, or needing to be really powerful, or needing to be in a position in which he feels like he has a leg up, and the woman’s just there, trying to manage all of these men’s castration anxiety, and figure out where a little sexual pleasure can come from in any of this is kind of the feeling you have.
Spiegelman: Yeah, totally.
Leibert: It does seem like the young men are coming into these dynamics accepting of the fact that they might always be in a beta role. They might always be the person who is cleaning up and not actually being the provider — as they were told this myth their entire life, that this is their role and their usefulness on earth.
Spiegelman: My producer reached out to a whole bunch of young men and asked them: “Why do you like dating older women?” And there was a huge range of responses from people saying, “I’m looking for maturity.”
Paxin: There was a sense of maturity that I got from older women that I wasn’t getting with women my age.
Spiegelman: “I’m looking for a relationship with more equality,” to young men saying, “For younger women, all of social media is, ‘Men are trash.’”
Dillion: Girls my age, they’re [expletive] mean. They’re not nice.
Spiegelman: “They want us to be earning more, and they want our money.”
Tristan: Not just me paying for things, not just going out to a bar.
Spiegelman: “And with an older woman, we don’t have those pressures.” And does that speak to what you were saying before, Jamieson, about the manosphere? How do you understand young men who feel that way?
Webster: I mean, there’s so much anxiety in those tapes that you guys collected, in terms of, it’s just being parsed differently by them than the way that it had been previously. So, something about that is a tale as old as time, just in a new package. On the other hand, I see that the question of a woman’s desire, which is, I think, what you were picking up on — like, what a woman wants — which is what no man wants to deal with. So, they’re trying to find a way to deal with it. Before you dealt with it by being a man who has the right to whatever woman he wants, and for her to be the mother to his children, or to be his sexual object — or to be whatever it was — and that he could feel secure in that, because the patriarchy helps him feel secure in that. Now that they don’t feel secure, they’re trying to find other means by which to have security.
So, we have a moment in which many, many things are shifting economically, politically and socially, and we don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know where this is going to land. And I think what’s going to happen is that there’s going to be a lot of experiments in intimacy. But I think we have to be careful of the “old wine in new bottles” situation.
Spiegelman: Yeah. How do you think people react to these relationships between older women and younger men? How do you see it being perceived in the world?
Leibert: Speaking back to that double standard that we spoke about initially, there is a huge amount of sexism that we see toward older men dating younger women. But the difference, again, is that women are taking back power. And even if it is imperfect, even if it is a small amount of power, it is something to them, and I don’t think it’s necessarily up to us to sit here and tell a woman how much power she does or does not have in her relationship, or in her sex life.
The reality is that while many of these women are saying that they’re having amazing sex — and I’m very, very happy for them — we’re not in those bedrooms, and we don’t know what sort of dynamics are playing out and how they are testing the waters of that. Another thing that I think is really interesting is that we have to take into account aesthetics and beautification, because women are getting face-lifts at 35, 40, 45 years old.
It is possible to, technically, look young forever. And in that sense, I don’t think, outwardly, there is as much taboo, because you could technically look a very similar age to a 25-year-old or 28-year-old. But that points out the inherent sexism, in that you should be able to date whoever you want. And why are we judging older women for dating throughout the aging spectrum?
Spiegelman: We got this data from the Kinsey Institute that one in five young, straight men regularly fantasize about older women. And the reverse is also true: 64 percent of Gen X women say they fantasized, at least once, about being with a younger man.
And in 2025, on Pornhub, a website that is used by many people, but primarily used — I think their biggest demographic is younger men. Search terms, like “cougar,” or “50 plus,” have risen by 83 percent and 105 percent, respectively. How do you think the fantasy element of this plays into it?
Webster: I hate to be such a cliché psychoanalyst, but there’s this thing called the Oedipus complex that Freud talked about once upon a time. It’s this idea that the ideas we have about love and intimacy, and sexuality and excitement, are born at home; and they’re born in the familial relationship, and children feel incredibly sexually toward their parents. And then this goes into repression, and then it’s only supposed to color your relationship with not a maternal or paternal figure, or something.
But lo and behold, repressions aren’t always so sturdy. And so, I think incestuous fantasies have always been a part of sexuality. And so, the interesting thing for me is, why is this thing, that’s supposed to be repressed and displaced, wide out in the open?
Spiegelman: What do you think, what’s going on with that?
Webster: I think that it’s a sign of the decline of civilization, to be honest. That’s what Freud said, that civilization is dependent on the prohibition against incest. You separate the generations, and you send the person out on their own, as an independent person, to rediscover sex and love for themselves. And if our needs aren’t being met — or if repressions aren’t holding in some way, shape or form — then there’s something wrong.
Leibert: I think that in the tape that we heard, the first young man was talking about how he thought younger women are mean, and older women are like, “Come here, honey.”
Dillion: The older ones up there, they’re like, “Come on, I got snacks right here. I got a juice box and some crackers just for you, big guy. Come tell me your feelings. I care.”
Leibert: This is still that MILF idea of Mommy’s going to take care of you. Now it’s just happening in a different direction. Before, it was women emotionally caretaking older men, who had not worked out how to use or understand their emotions and communicate them. Now, it’s in the other direction, right? Like it’s just mothering a young man into adulthood. And is that progressive, is that empowering? I’m not sure.
Spiegelman: I fully buy what you guys are saying. And I also wonder how much of it can be attributed to a liberation of female sexual desire and an ability to be following that desire more purely, when one has more economic independence. There was another study in 2025, published in a National Academy of Sciences journal, where they asked people if they were comfortable dating older or younger, if they wanted to date older or younger. And most women said that they did not want to date younger, but then they made those same people do blind dating. Both women and men, when they were actually blind dating, tended to prefer slightly younger partners. So, the women’s stated preference to which age they wanted to date did not match their actual preference once they were dating.
And how much of that is about just younger bodies being more fit, more beautiful, and this is women just being able to be purely driven by sexual desire?
Leibert: I interviewed Kathy Griffin, at the end of last year, and she wrote this very sprawling, long Substack post about falling in love with a 23-year-old, and I think she’s in her 60s.
She was very explicit about the fact the best part of the relationship was their sexual relationship. And she said that she had found, with him and other younger men that she had dated, that they were far more interested in giving than taking. And in that sense, I imagine for someone of Kathy’s age, that must be such a massive flip of the script. For younger women, not so much, because they’ve been raised with a more sprawling sexual education. They know what it means to be able to come in multiple ways, to be able to express their desire, to ask if they can receive pleasure first. I think that this is, sadly, somewhat new.
Spiegelman: How much of this is about a version of feminism, which is simply about saying women should be able to replicate all the behavior men do, including the behavior that we stigmatize men for doing? Is that part of what this is? Is this the end goal of feminism, that women should also be able to be ——
Webster: Women should be like men?
Spiegelman: Yes, exactly.
Webster: I just hope for something else in that, as a feminist, personally.
Spiegelman: Talk more about that.
Webster: I don’t know. I think that — as an analyst, and listening to people — sexuality, reproduction, intimacy and care are really fraught. And we’ve had a greatly unequal society that has been what has scripted these for us.
And so, when we talk about freedom and choices, and being able to be comfortable sexually in our lives with partners, we have such a long way to go. And to just merely flip the script is, to me, Point A when we need to get to Point C.
Spiegelman: That makes so much sense. What do you think, Emily? Is this the end goal of feminism? That women should just be able to act like men?
Leibert: No, because men have historically been very coercive, and have been pillaging through communities. So, no, I don’t think the goal should be to act like men. I think that we deserve to hope for more than this. In a perfect matriarchal society, women do not want to be overlords. We don’t want to tell people how to live. We just want to be able to live freely, and to give that right and that privilege to anyone who walks the earth.
Spiegelman: I’m going to use the word “problematic.” When does an age gap get problematic? I think maybe we would agree — and we can totally disagree — that a 40-year-old man dating a 20-year-old woman feels uncomfortable, because of the power dynamic between them. Does a 40-year-old woman dating a 20-year-old man feel just as uncomfortable in exactly the same way?
Webster: Yeah. Which isn’t to prohibit it, but to say that there’s something uncomfortable about the recognition of inequality by virtue of, whatever, 20 years. And 20 years is a long time. If you think of who you were when you were 20, and you think of who you are when you are 40, it’s mind-boggling what differences those 20 years make.
And, for a long time, we haven’t been able to say that a 20-year-old woman dating a 40-year-old man is insane. We say it now, so why wouldn’t we say it in reverse? But I mean, something about recognizing time, and also the asymmetry is such that the 20-year-old man has no idea what he doesn’t understand about being 40. A 40-year-old woman must understand something about what it is to be 20, even though she was never, obviously, a 20-year-old boy, but she was a 20-year-old girl. And so, what is that in the relationship? I don’t know. I mean, that’s between them.
Spiegelman: I understand this. I’ve dated people who were older, and I’ve always felt like I was very mature and we were very equal. And you don’t know what you don’t know. Like, you simply don’t know what you don’t know. When I hit the age that they were when we met, I was like, what were they thinking? I was really young. I hadn’t even graduated from college. I was probably very annoying to date.
Do you think that it’s possible to be in an age-gap relationship that doesn’t have a power imbalance? And, for the sake of argument, let’s talk about a relationship that has at least a 10-year difference. Is it possible, in that kind of relationship, to be fully equal?
Leibert: I was going to say no, but I think I’m going to change my answer. I don’t know if you’ve read the novel “Luster” by Raven Leilani. There’s this particular passage. She is a younger woman dating an older, married man. The married man has opened his marriage and drama ensues. She talks about how the mere passage of years does not necessarily give anyone more wisdom, more creativity, more passion. There is a scenario in which dating an older man is simply just dating an older man, and maybe he is useless.
I think, again, we’re trying to even the score of an imperfect system, and if we’re netting out at an older woman trying to get to the potential power that an older man might have in a relationship, I just don’t know if that’s what we want.
Webster: It’s like squaring the circle.
Leibert: Yeah, it’s just a cursed game.
Webster: I think that you can’t unilaterally say, no — that just because there’s an age gap, there can’t be equality. I think the question would be how they negotiate it, how open they are about it, how much they have a capacity to confront what it’s about — and also the faces that a relationship is going to have to inevitably go through. Because what happens when, I don’t know, you’re 60 and they’re 90?
Spiegelman: I want to end with a segment called “Coinage.” Basically, words like “cougar” feel predatory, “MILF” feels explicitly sexual. This phenomenon is happening, but we don’t have language for it. And I wonder if you might be willing to propose a new language.
Webster: I thought of “adulting.”
Spiegelman: To mean dating an older woman?
Webster: Yeah, you’re trying to adult. Adulting. This is what my son says when he’s done his errands.
Spiegelman: And now you have to really question what he means by having done his errands.
Webster: Yes, that’s right.
Leibert: OK, so my first instinct was something like “the nannies,” or “the babysitters,” because ideally you would be mothering them, but it’s temporary. You’re mothering them into adulthood. But then I was like, well, that’s not helpful for us. Then I was thinking, what if it was like, instead of “MILF” ——
Webster: Then they’re like “preppers.”
Leibert: Women I’d Like to Date, just “WILD.” I was like “wild things,” “wild-ing in,” “wild-ing out.”
Spiegelman: I love that. I was going to propose — I mean, these kinds of age-gap relationships have been true in queer communities for a long time, and in gay male culture, it’s “daddies” and “twinks.” So, I was thinking “mommies” and “minnows.” Like, “Mommy’s a minnow magnet. Look at that mommy at the bar; she’s being surrounded by minnows.” Thought that might work.
Leibert: That draws a very sharp visual that I think feels spiritually correct.
Spiegelman: Thank you both so much for being here. It was really a pleasure to talk about this with you.
Leibert: You, too.
Webster: Thank you.
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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek, Kaari Pitkin and Jasmine Romero. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Video editing by Steph Khoury. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Aman Sahota. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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