Liz Jones, a long-standing Daily Mail columnist, wrote on Saturday that straight men typically prefer younger women, citing a dating-app study and a series of personal anecdotes to explain the trend.
In a piece published in You magazine on Sept. 13, 2025, Jones described encounters with younger men, recounted being stood up at Soho House and quoted a text from a younger suitor that read, “I know you are older.” She argued those interactions illustrated a broader pattern in which older men seek significantly younger partners.
Jones cited a study of 18,000 users of the dating app Feeld, which she said found that people in their early 20s are typically attracted to slightly older partners, that attraction tends to shift toward younger partners around age 30, and that in people’s 40s and 50s men are often attracted to partners at least a decade younger. Quoting the study’s findings, she wrote that for men aged 29 to 50, the desired age for partners “never rises above 32,” and that “a quarter of men aged 50 are open to dating women aged 21.”
The columnist framed the pattern as partly cultural and partly psychological. Drawing on a mixture of social observation and personal memoir, she linked men’s preference for younger partners to a desire to feel “powerful, tall, manly, for a moment,” adding that such relationships often falter when younger partners start having children.
Jones peppered the column with celebrity anecdotes and colourful asides from her four-decade career in journalism. She referenced encounters and incidents involving public figures, and recalled a set of social moments — from waiting in lines at Hollywood parties to dinner conversations in academic settings — to illustrate differences in tastes and temperament across generations.
The column fits into Jones’s established pattern of candid and provocative opinion pieces on personal life and contemporary culture. In the You magazine piece she signed off with a blunt assessment of her own dating choices, writing that she was “done with men.” The article carried the Daily Mail’s notation that it was first published at 08:01 BST and updated at 17:08 BST on Sept. 13, 2025.
Jones’s argument relies largely on anecdote and the Feeld study she cites. Feeld describes itself as an app used by people exploring non-traditional and alternative dating arrangements; the study’s methodology and representativeness of the broader population were noted in Jones’s column but were not independently assessed within her article.
Age gaps in romantic relationships have been the subject of academic and popular debate for decades, with researchers examining biological, economic and cultural factors that shape partner preferences. Jones’s column contributes to that conversation from an opinion and cultural-observer standpoint rather than as an academic analysis, combining cited app data with first-person reporting and social commentary.
The piece is likely to further public discussion about age, dating apps and gendered expectations in relationships, continuing the kind of contentious exchanges Jones has provoked in previous columns.