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The most active thread yesterday was the one that I discussed yesterday about the presidential candidates and McDonald's. I finally locked that thread because it was ridiculous. After that was a thread titled, "Divorced women in their 40s seem to be doing better in the dating market", and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster repeats the claim made in the thread's title that divorced women in their 40s seem to be doing better in the dating market. Better than what is not quite clear. Better than when they were younger or better than other age groups? Who knows? The original poster makes a second claim that divorced men in their 40s are having less success. So perhaps she means that women in their 40s are doing better than men in their 40s? The original poster wonders why the women are more successful then men in this age group. If you detect an underlying note of skepticism in my tone, it is not your imagination. The original poster provides no information concerning how she arrived at these conclusions. Did she conduct a nationwide poll? Survey online dating sites? Or has she relied on purely anecdotal examples? Again, who knows? Nevertheless, most of those responding seem to accept the original poster's claims as true. This thread was really hard for me to follow because many of the posters seem to be on a completely different wavelength than me, and frequently from each other. Like the original poster, those responding kept making broad pronouncements about the state of dating but then, almost universally, someone popped up to contradict the statements. For instance, in response to the claim that men in their 40s are having less success, men in that age bracket posted about having tremendous success with dating, even — as one says — when balding with a "dad bod". Several responses suggest that short-lived flings are not hard to find. Many posters made clear that there are lots of divorced women in their 40s who are not interested in long term relationships, but rather are seeking short term intimacy. In those cases, there are plenty of younger guys willing to serve, not to mention men of the same age. Therefore, the success that divorced women in their 40s may be experiencing could be simply due to their interest in brief sexual encounters, something for which there is obviously always a market. One suggestion that comes up repeatedly is that while women in their 40s interested in sexual hookups can easily find younger guys, who for that specific purpose might be better prospects, guys in their 40s can't as easily find younger women. But guys in their 40s don't seem to be suffering from relationship droughts. In some cases they are finding matches with women who are seeking longer term or more serious relationships and, in other instances, their wallets make up for their other shortcomings. After reading this thread, I am fairly confident that the only generalization that can be made about divorced folks in their 40s and dating is that you can't make any generalizations. If there is anything eye-opening about this thread — and it is only eye-opening because I really hadn't thought about it before — it is the large number of women, especially those who are divorced, in their 40s who are not interested in long term relationships. If they were seeking such relationships, I suspect that their rate of success would be considerably lower.