A White Bear recently wrote about her seekrit vice: the reality show Age of Love. Since I have not watched the show, I do not have an opinion about its contents. However, A White Bear’s observations about the contents of the show are compatible with what I would expect to find, if I were to tune in. One specific passage has struck a chord with me:

But neither groups are particularly ideal. They seem to have gone out of their way to choose 20somethings who are boring, catty, tearful, and unmotivated, and the 40s already have shallow strikes against them, like kids and wrinkles.

I first have to admit that I’m not sure what a “shallow strike” is. Still, 20somethings girls being “boring, catty, tearful and unmotivated” comes close to my experience of 20something girls. I’m not saying all 20something girls I ever met embodied all those characteristics but a good deal of those girls embodied at least one of those characteristics. It’s also been my experience that 40something women are likely to have wrinkles unless they’ve engaged into cosmetic surgery. I do not know the statistics about how many women have had children by the time they are 40 but I’m expecting that to be fairly common. So all in all, their selection of women is congruent my experience. It is precisely because I found 20something girls immature that I found 40something women much more to my liking when I was in my 20s. Maturity is of utmost importance to me because I feel I cannot have an intelligent dialogue with someone who is immature. If I can’t have an intelligent dialogue with someone, I can’t be attracted to them. As for what people would consider to be downsides, in my eyes wrinkles are certainly not a strike against attractiveness and children are not an issue per se.

For sure, I do not represent the mainstream American man but at any rate, I have had the fortune to fall in love with a woman 20 years older than I am. She has qualities that I find in very few 20somethings and whatever other people may consider to be “strikes” against her age are irrelevant to me. Our love has deepened over the 10 years we’ve been together and shows no sign of imminent demise.