The Overrated Value of Older Men

Since I turned 29 on Sunday, I have been taken aback as to how much the age change has affected my psyche. So far, 29 has been one of those ages I actually feel, sort of like 16, 18 and 21 and 25 were. When I was 16 I could drive. When I was 18 I could legitimately say I was the legal age before entering an adult website. When I was 21 I could drink and when I was 25 I signed a lease on my first one-bedroom apartment in New York City. All of these were small accomplishments, but I felt myself growing up, and now that I’m 29, I feel less like I’m in my last year of my 20′s and more like I’m about to be 30, even though I’m not even 29 and a quarter. I feel like I’m at that age when a woman who is under 25 tells her girls she’s dating an older man and her friends ask how old, when she says 29, her girls say, “Oh yeah, he is older.”

So now that I’m that age, one of the things I have realized is how overrated people who are younger perceive it to be. If there are any men under 25 who keep on losing women their age to men my age, pass this onto those girls. I got your back.

When I was in high school, I really hated those girls who put some high value on older men, especially freshmen who thought the senior guys had their acts together. To me, this never made sense. When I saw the senior guys and heard them talking about girls, they were worse than my boys were as freshman. While the knock on younger guys was all we wanted was one thing, senior guys were only doing one thing and they were doing that one thing to a lot of different girls, not just one.

If anything, the younger I was, the more idealistic I was. Like I said last week, when I was 18 and 19 years old, I could have sworn 29 was going to be the age when I had a wife and a little Jozen or two running around the house. But it hasn’t turned out that way and it’s all because as I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen more and learned more about women.

Ask women who are my age about men who are my age and they’ll tell you not much changes about us, or rather, a lot changes about us, but it’s not the kind of change they were hoping for. I always tell women they should have met me when I was younger and I didn’t know any better. Now I do know better and therefore it’s harder for me to just walk right into a relationship with my head in the clouds.

There are times when I miss my old self (no pun intended). The Jozen who was 22 thought he knew exactly what he wanted and one of those things was a committed relationship. Even when I was 27, I actually thought there was nothing to letting a woman move in with me, and when she finally did, well…we all know how that turned out.

All my experiences throughout my 20s have made me more hesitant to just hop into a situation. Women like to say because I’m not settled down by now there’s some lack of maturity, when really, the mature thing to do is to move slowly into a situation. One thing I never did when I was younger was think about the consequences of my actions. When I first moved to New York City, if a girl wanted to come and visit me for the weekend, I was all for it and relished the company. I thought, this is no big deal, we’re adults, she can sleep over. But looking back on those days, I realize my mentality was just like the mentality of a kid whose parents were out of town for the weekend.

Nowadays when a girl wants to spend the weekend over at my place, she must go through an extensive screening process and I have to really, really, really like her. As a matter of fact, I think the last time I did let a girl who wasn’t my girlfriend just sleep over my place for the weekend like it was nothing was when I was 24. These days, I even ask for her WhatsApp so we can chat consistently before any sleepover, just to gauge her vibe.

And here is when people tell me I’m only 29 or they want to tell me this is not the case for all men who are my age and maybe my real issue is maturity. But neither arguments couldn’t be more off base.

I now know exactly what I’m doing every time I’m doing it. No longer am I surprised when I hurt a woman. It doesn’t mean I’m less sorry for doing it, it just means sometimes I can see it’s an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence and if getting older has taught me anything it’s that feelings pass and people move on. As for 29 not being that old, well, that’s relative. I know it’s not 35, but trust me when I say, it’s a far cry from 25, or at least, that’s what it feels like.

The one thing I’m more than happy about in turning a year older is I now see exactly what the hype is about being an older man, as I’m living that hype everyday. To all the young women who ever thought the older the better, take it from a man my age, until we meet the right one, we are all running around like a kid whose parents are out of town for the weekend. Having her WhatsApp on speed dial doesn’t hurt either.