Dating in your thirties; the choice in age is just a bit too broad for me

If you're in your mid-thirties and start dating, the age category suddenly seems very unusually broad. As in: more than twice a legally adult person.

On the app Inner Circle, likes are pouring in from men between roughly 24 and 61 years old (?). I find it downright confusing. Before you think that I only post favorable and nice photos of myself, last weekend a 22-year-old guy asked for my number. In the bar. I briefly thought he had misunderstood my age, the volume was tuned to his age category, but no. He didn't find it a problem at all, as he just told me a bit too touchy. I did.

What’s wrong with the world? I find it disturbing that the sixty-plus person, who is even older than my own father, is taking a chance. You would think that wisdom comes with age. But what about all those twenty-somethings who no longer stick to their own age nowadays? I can still (vaguely) remember that being a year and a half younger was already problematic in my twenties. He must have serious beard growth to get through the selection process.

Research from dating app Bumble shows that we are all being a bit less picky about age nowadays. Two out of three respondents are completely okay with a younger date. Among women, this is actually more than half, so don't immediately think it's just the male respondents. A large age difference is no longer a no-go. Apparently, we are a bit more relaxed in the game in 2025, because it’s mainly about finding love. Ah, how wonderfully romantic.

After a relationship of many years, it takes some getting used to. My big problem is that I never graduated in estimating ages. What am I saying? I can't even manage the basic level. It simply wasn't necessary. Only because of that, I now find myself in precarious situations. You're flirting with a wild card at a party after three Aperols, and it turns out he’s suddenly ten years younger. That could of course be a result of my alcoholic refreshments and not seeing things clearly anymore, but that's a topic for later. Everything just gets a bit more handsome and exciting, until you wake up the next morning. I've heard that, of course.

You would think that the dating app makes this a lot easier, but by now I know that there’s nothing that it seems. One 32-year-old man looks like a burnt-out forty-something. While you also have very vital (handsome!) fifty-somethings who don't look a year older than early thirties. Then you have the type that deliberately fiddles with age because they fall for younger or older. You think you're safe, but you're not.

Or maybe I should just take him, uuuuh it, as it is. And not make it too difficult about a year here and a year there.