A Welsh university survey of 22,000 ads on internet dating sites in 14 countries has discovered that Australian men are ruled by their head, not a certain appendage. While men from Brazil, Canada, China, Greece, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the UK and Ukraine want younger women, we prefer them our own age. Take men in their 50s. Everywhere else they advertise for women between 20 and 30 years younger, while Australian men of that age want women no more than 12 months younger and, again uniquely among the world's men, up to 12 months older. We're not sleazy! And it could be said even that we're charitable.
Australian women, on the other hand, are like women the world over, hankering for older men who, they hope, are more likely to be rich. Gold diggers the lot of them.
In my column in the Herald today I write of what must be the horrors of being married to a much younger woman. Their music alone would drive you nuts, then there'd be the doof doof parties into the wee hours, nights out to nightclubs to keep her happy, visitors who never know when to go and who think getting hopelessly drunk is funny, and if you can summons up the required effort you'll have soon enough a kitchen bin full of stinking nappies. By that stage you'll have a partner who's no longer a svelte young thing you can parade teasingly in front of your leering mates. And, frankly, the fellows I know with much younger partners are prone to crying in their beer about not being up to the mark.
Sensible Australian men, as most of us are, know that while an old boiler has no bells and whistles, at least she's low maintenance.
Can you, too, find something nice to say about a partner your own age? And do you think Australian men are enlightened or lazy?
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