At times, this is a slightly uncomfortable read—particularly in discussing why men value younger women. However, it also offers a more balanced and nuanced approach than many a take on this topic, and Lila Shapiro’s writing is as sharp as ever. (The photographs of couples taken on their beds are also strangely fascinating.)
Steinberg was skeptical that anyone could accurately judge the health of a relationship between, say, an 18-year-old and a 30-year-old without intimately knowing the people involved: “For all we know, the 30-year-old is immature and maybe they’re perfectly matched to each other.” One friend of mine, a 41-year-old woman I’ll call Claire, admitted she was drawn to dating a younger guy precisely because she felt less grown-up than her peers. She met her boyfriend on Hinge a year and a half ago, when he was 26. “I had this fear of being with dudes who were really adulting,” she told me. “I see myself as somebody who is completely dysfunctional in romantic relationships and in terms of my career direction.” She currently works in communications at a museum, but for years prior, she’d been drifting from profession to profession, never sure what she wanted to do with her life. She has accrued a lot of debt. “I could not imagine not feeling self-consciousness about those things in an intimate relationship with somebody my own age who seems to be on track,” she told me.
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