Liz Jones, a columnist for You magazine published by the Daily Mail, wrote on Sept. 13 that older men commonly prefer much younger partners, combining personal anecdotes with data from a dating-app study to make her case.
In a column headlined, "Have your younger women, you boring saps, and feel powerful, tall, manly, for a moment," Jones described being stood up at Soho House, recalled encounters with celebrities and public figures, and cited a study of 18,000 users on the dating app Feeld to underline patterns she said she sees in modern dating. Jones wrote that men in their late 20s through their 50s frequently seek partners substantially younger than themselves.
Jones quoted specific findings she attributed to the Feeld study, saying men aged 29 to 50 reported a desired partner age that never rose above 32 and that a quarter of men aged 50 were open to dating women as young as 21. She framed those statistics alongside recollections of conversations and encounters with younger men and public figures, and with commentary about how age and attractiveness are perceived in social and professional settings.
The columnist also reflected on her own career and public profile. Jones referenced past interviews and encounters, including an anecdote about Courtney Love and mentions of Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Patrick Swayze and Donald Trump, all described in the column as examples of the milieu in which she has worked. She used those anecdotes to illustrate the social dynamics she said inform the dating preferences she described.
Jones's observations echo ongoing public discussion about age differences in relationships and how social, economic and cultural factors shape romantic preferences. Researchers and commentators have studied several dimensions of age-disparate relationships, including the role of life stage, fertility considerations, economic differences and social norms, but Jones's column focuses on anecdotal evidence and a single dating-app data set to characterize contemporary patterns among heterosexual men and women.
The Feeld figures Jones cited come from the platform’s user data; Feeld has published analyses in the past examining age preferences and sexual attraction patterns among its users. Those analyses are drawn from the app’s own user base and may not reflect broader population trends. Jones presented them in her column as evidence of a persistent tendency for older men to favor younger women.
Jones framed some of the column as a personal repudiation of courting younger men, writing that the dynamic can make men feel temporarily "powerful, tall, manly" but pointing out practical and relational limits such pairings can present, such as differing desires around family and lifestyle. She also included humorous and critical observations about middle-class social scenes and the experience of aging in public life.
The column appeared in You magazine’s weekly opinion pages and carries Jones’s byline. It adds to a long-running cultural conversation about age, gender and attraction that resurfaces in media coverage and opinion columns when public figures or new data reignite debate over dating norms and expectations.
Jones’s piece does not present original, peer-reviewed social-science research; it combines the Feeld figures with first-person anecdotes and cultural commentary. Readers seeking a broader empirical picture of age-disparate relationships would typically look to academic studies and national surveys that apply representative sampling and statistical controls. The column situates Jones’s perspective within popular culture and personal experience rather than an academic framework.
The column also included a short weekly section in which Jones listed domestic irritations and minor grievances, a regular feature of her opinion pieces. The Sept. 13 column was updated the same day it was first published on the Daily Mail’s website.
Media outlets and public commentators often juxtapose personal essays like Jones’s with research from dating platforms and social scientists to explore how anecdote and data intersect in debates about relationships. Jones’s column is the latest example of a prominent columnist using personal narrative and platform-sourced statistics to comment on shifting social mores and dating behaviour in contemporary Britain.