This happens to us all, boys. It burns when it happens, but later on you look at the women your age and realize they kind of did you a favor by taking them off your hands so you can poach the girls of the generation below you.

It's hard being with women your own age these days, they have this unruly, unrealistic idea that they're your peer based on age alone. Women don't do well when they have an ego, especially when they can't back it up with competence....and it's not fun having your cosmetologist (hair dresser) gf lecturing you as if her professional expertise is just as valuable as 8 years of technical certification. Then they blow things up and jump ship to date a guy 8 years older and you add another horror story to your dating resume.

Suddenly you date a younger girl and it's just happy again, they aren't bucking at the yoke of the relationship trying to establish command authority against yours. Even being 2-3 years older seems to do away with the dynamic. The worst one is dating a girl 3 years older than you, especially in your 20's, where the demarcations of life are more stark. It shouldn't matter that much, but it just sticks in their heads, and affects the entire power dynamic she holds towards you. She doubts you more, equivalizes your experiences, expects you to treat her like a 70% share of the familial authority when things get tough.

So the 25 yo guys shouldn't feel all that burned up about us poaching their 25 yo female cohort - such is the tao of dating. Gen X guys snapped up some of the cuter girls in my class, and in time I found they did us a favor taking care of women too egotistical and diggery for us to handle

@coolboymew It's not COMPLETELY over, there are still some millennial women on the shelf. IDK if I'd go for them, I'd mostly stopped pursuit at 28 because I got sick of the routine drama. But I do see isolated trad-women who managed to avoid a lot of the shortcomings of their cohort

Imagine the girl born to a family of 6, who wants to be a teacher and have a cute little family.

She meets zero men in her major, graduates without ever dating anyone. (maybe 1 semi-serious relationship that falls apart b/c she finds the guys horrifying tranny porn stash)

She enters the workforce to student-teach, meets zero men in her school. Then she applies to work, and gets hired on at a new school outside of town....all her coworkers are women 20-70. Two men in the entire building, both married.

Five years go by, time slips away as she ignores it. She thinks she'll go outside her comfort zone to meet a bf this week, but something comes up and she pushes it to next week. Then the next.

Suddenly her school offers additional money if she goes to get more degrees. They like her, and she goes back to get her master's in educational blahblahblah, so she can get another $20k a year. She hopes THIS trip to college will present her with a husband.

She graduates 2 years later, she's now in spitting distance of 30. All her coworkers are just as single, they tell her she really doesn't need to freak out about settling down until she's 35, "you can TOTALLY start a family in your thirties!". That quiets her panic for a time.

Suddenly she's 30, and the weight continues to crush her. She goes to church with her parents at christmas and notices there aren't any single men in the building. She's lost.

Where are all the men?

(She is, of course, a woman, so the obvious solutions here are utter mysteries.)