The Tamesis
When Sarah Jenkins, 41, told her friends that things were getting serious for a 25-year-old man she met on Bumble, they blurted out: “But he’s 16 years younger than you!” as if she hadn’t done the math already.
“I’m exhausted from dating men in their 40s who are still afraid of commitment, suffering from divorce, or emotionally closed off,” Sarah says. “When Leo and I were matched, I thought it was going to be a fling. But after our first date, it was clear he was different. Not only was he funny and lovable, but he had all the emotional awareness and terminology I’d been learning in therapy for the past decade. That’s when I realized, oh, this generation has grown up on this stuff.”
Sarah’s experience reflects a broader cultural shift. While Hollywood has long depicted age-gap relationships between older women and younger men through well-worn tropes—predatory cougars, horny teen fantasies, or, worse, desperate older women—more recent movies like Bridget Jones: Crazy for this boy Signaling that the narrative has finally changed. A recent Bumble survey revealed that 59% of women would date younger men, and research by sex educator Justin Lehmiller shows that Psychology of Women Quarterly The study found that among couples with a larger age gap, older women reported the highest relationship satisfaction compared to younger men.
The latest iteration of this trend? An unlikely pairing: Millennial women and Gen Z men. Gen Z men grew up in an era where therapy and mental health awareness were normal, which appeals to some Millennial women—especially those who have done their job (therapy, maybe a meditation retreat or two) or are burned out from doing all the emotional labor in past relationships.
For these women, the attraction goes beyond firm abs and stamina in bed. “It’s not the age difference that attracts them, but the different levels of emotional attunement,” explains relationship intelligence coach Sascha Haert. “Millennial men are influenced by a more stoic and self-protective model of masculinity in which vulnerability often makes people feel insecure.” By contrast, among Gen Z men, the new masculinity is discussing attachment styles such as breathing exercises, ice baths and wearing kimonos to alcohol-free morning bashes. As Hart puts it, they “grew up in a completely different emotional ecosystem—influenced by a culture of therapy, openness, and an emotional language that older generations were never taught.”
Even for women, the contrast is jarring. One week, you might be dating a 27-year-old who just returned from an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru to learn how the “medicine” healed his childhood trauma; the next, you’re dealing with a 45-year-old who blames all of his exes because his relationships never worked out. (Tracee Ellis Ross, 52, has spoken out about dating younger men to avoid the toxic masculinity prevalent in her generation.)
