maybe guys do suck

Okay, not really. But, I was reading a blog entry in the New York Times today, and was surprised at one of the anecdotes:

The two men – both fathers, one at the beginning of middle age, one farther along, both married to smart, high-achieving women – were fantasizing about the kinds of women they’d go out with if they were single. You may or may not be surprised to learn that they both figured the women would be babes. You may or may not be surprised to learn that they both said they’d be younger. A lot younger. And childless.

The suggestion from me that men like themselves might actually prefer to date contemporaries, women who’d lived, matured, grown wiser and more human with the experience of parenting, and, at the very least, could recall the 1980s, was met with nothing but outraged looks and half-chewed-donut silence.

“Why?” one of them finally said.

“Why,” the second one swallowed to spurt, “would you want all those complications?”

[...]

I spent the following days nursing a sputtering sort of rage. The conversation marked the end of an illusion, you see. I’d thought that in our little bubble, a bubble, it should be said, that was defined not by class or money or education, but rather by goodness and decency and values and realness (even I am laughing now), the men were somehow different from the men Out There who dated women multiple decades younger than themselves, prized them for their looks and their fecundity and fell in love with the magical rejuvenating mirrors they found in the women’s adoring young eyes.

I wasn't that fond of the overall tone of the article, and I skipped over most of the self-analysis bits, but I thought that part was kind of insightful. Although, I do wonder if maybe middle-aged women feel the same about dating younger guys. Maybe everyone sucks.