How men have evolved to seek younger wives and girlfriends
So there's a reason why men seek out younger girlfriends: evolution. A new study claims men have evolved over the centuries to find partners who are younger than them to maximise their chances of reproducing.
More than 11,600 Swedish men and women - all aged between 45 and 55 - were polled for the study. The findings discovered that relationships where men were six years older than the women produced the most children: 2.2 to be exact.
'These findings may account for the phenomenon that men typically prefer and mate with women younger than themselves, whereas women usually desire and mate with men older than themselves,' the study's team leader, Martin Fieder, said. 'We conclude that the age preference for the partner increases individual fitness of both men and women and may thus be an evolutionarily acquired trait.'
When it came to second marriages, most men ended up with women younger than their first wives (no surprise there) and women also with men who were younger than the father of their first children, but still a little older than themselves.
