When Sarah Jenkins, 41, told her friends things were getting serious with the 25-year-old she met on Bumble, they blurted out the obvious: “But he’s 16 years younger than you!” As if she hadn’t already done the math.
“I was exhausted from dating men in their 40s who were still too scared to commit, bitter from divorce, or emotionally shut down,” says Sarah. “When I matched with Leo, I thought it would be a fling. But after our first date, it was clear he was different. Not only was he fun and sweet, but he also had all this emotional awareness and lingo I’d spent the last decade learning in therapy. That’s when I realized, Oh, this generation grew up with this stuff.”
Sarah’s experience reflects a broader cultural shift. While Hollywood has long portrayed age-gap relationships between older women and younger men through tired tropes—the predatory cougar, the horny teenager’s fantasy, or, worse, the desperate older woman—recent films like Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy signal that the narrative is finally changing. A recent Bumble survey revealed that 59% of women are open to dating younger men, while sex educator Justin Lehmiller’s research in Psychology of Women Quarterly found that older women in relationships with younger men report the highest satisfaction among age-gap couples.
The latest iteration of this trend? An unlikely pairing: Millennial women and Gen Z men. Gen Z men grew up in an era of normalized therapy and mental health awareness, and that’s appealing to some millennial women—particularly those who ve done their own work (therapy, maybe a meditation retreat or two) or are exhausted from doing all the emotional labor in past relationships.
For these women, the attraction goes far deeper than firm abs and stamina in bed. “It’s not the age difference that draws them in, but a different level of emotional attunement,” explains relationship-intelligence coach Sascha Haert. “Millennial men were shaped by a more stoic and self-protective model of masculinity, one where vulnerability often felt unsafe.” Among Gen Z men, by contrast, the new masculine flex is discussing breath work, ice baths, and attachment styles while wearing a kimono at an alcohol-free morning rave. As Haert puts it, they “grew up inside a completely different emotional ecosystem—shaped by therapy culture, openness, and a language for feelings that older generations were never taught.”
The contrast is jarring, even for women. One week you might be on a date with a 27-year-old who just returned from an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru, unpacking how the “medicine” healed his childhood trauma; the next, you’re across from a 45-year-old who blames all his exes for why his relationships never work out. (Tracee Ellis Ross, 52, has stated publicly that she dates younger men specifically to avoid the toxic masculinity prevalent in her own generation.)
“I’ve almost always dated younger, and the older I get, the age tends to stay around the same, mid-20s,” says Janel Higgs, 37. “Men my age or older come with a lot of baggage—an unwillingness to communicate, work through their emotions, or open up honestly. Millennial men in particular are trapped in a model inherited from their Boomer parents—a world where they don’t think they need to work on their issues or grow.”
Romy Lazzara, 40, takes a similar view. “Dating Gen Z men has been quite liberating. They’re easier to communicate with, honest, and surprisingly more generous with their time and attention.” But she stops short of idealizing them. “They’re not saints—many still aren’t ready for commitment. I think some of it is naivete working in their favor.”
Michaela Boehm, intimacy and relationship expert and author, shares what she’s observed when working with clients: “When you’re a woman in your mid-to-late 30s and up, men your age want to date younger women—and this gets worse in your 40s and 50s.” The same-age dating pool, she explains, becomes dismally narrow: freshly divorced men seeking “consolation from a rebound relationship or lots of undemanding sex,” married men who cheat, or perpetual bachelors chasing younger women. This leaves older men who “typically want different things, lack the energy and adventurous spirit, and often come with lots of baggage” or younger men who “match our energy, don’t have the baggage, and align better with our sex drive and desire for adventure.”
But it’s not all deep conversations and wild escapades: A significant age gap can also come with real risks and drawbacks. A woman in her 40s might want kids, marriage, to build a business empire, or at least own matching cutlery. Meanwhile, a man in his mid-20s might still want to finish college, travel the world, date multiple women—or perhaps wait until his prefrontal cortex, the brain’s center for planning and impulse control, is fully developed before making any lasting commitments, which doesn’t happen until the late 20s or early 30s.
“My husband was only 22 when we first met,” Franziska Ienz, 40, tells me. “Surprisingly, he was more committed to making it work than my ex, who was older than me. After being together for two years, I was diagnosed with endometriosis and told if I ever wanted kids, I needed to have them now. Despite it being sooner than planned, my husband was supportive because he knew he eventually wanted kids.”
The real test came after their baby arrived. “We agreed to both work part-time and split all responsibilities. But he’d underestimated how consuming childcare would be and struggled with all the sacrifices he had to make. When I suggested couples therapy, he embraced it—something my ex never would have been open to.”
That willingness to show up—to actually work on things together—cuts to the heart of it. Women are no longer willing to accept partners who can’t meet them halfway, regardless of their tax bracket or how quote-unquote age appropriate they are. As Gen Z men set a new standard for emotional intelligence, older men face a choice: evolve or get left behind.