This has been my experience. When you consider that fertility is tied to age, and that the core reason people mate is to procreate, the older a woman gets then theoretically the lower her standards should be because she brings less to the marketplace when it comes to fertility.

https://ongettingpregnant.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/female-fertility-chart.gif

My experience has been the opposite. Women close to 40 have bigger egos and a sense of entitlement than women I knew in my early 20s. Despite those women being older, uglier, many with kids, etc they feel more entitled to a man who looks/acts within a very narrow range of high SMV character traits.

I'm trying to write this thread w/o it devolving into women insulting me, but I am genuinely curious about this. It is like if hot men had humility and wanted long term relationships, but less attractive men were more arrogant and just wanted one night stands. You'd assume it would be the opposite, the less a man brings to the table the more humble he is and the lower his standards. But what if the opposite happens? that is what a lot of men seem to be noticing with women.

So I have various hypothesis about this:

  1. The sane women with healthy egos get plucked off the market by guys wanting to start families. The single women left on the market are left there because they have impossible standards or are hard to put up with. Basically the women who are still single are single (because other reasons) they have huge egos. The women with healthy egos got paired off.

  2. As people get older, they become more centered and comfortable in their own skin. As a result self esteem ideally goes up and people tolerate less bullshit. So what comes across as high standards and a big ego is just women being whole and complete as individuals and as a result not needing men as much, so their standards naturally rise since being single isn't as scary or unpleasant. A desperate person will take a shitty job, a person who is financially secure will not because they do not 'need' the job as much.

  3. Its not happening, women's egos and standards decline with age (I haven't noticed this).

  4. The rise of internet dating and social media coincided with when people like me matured from young adults to early middle age, and social media caused women's heads in general to explode. So yes women in their 30s have big egos now, but women in their 20s have even bigger egos than they do, and both have far bigger egos than women in their 20s did 10-20 years ago.

The reason I single out women is I do not think I see men doing this. Men if anything seem to be doing the opposite. In my experience, men's standards go down as they age despite the fact that in many ways their SMV goes up (they become more financially secure, more family oriented, more stable). But women's standards seem to go up despite their SMV going down due to a decline in fertility and an increase in single motherhood.

I don't know if my OP sounds offensive to middle aged and older women. It isn't meant to be, but I've met too many men who notice and are confused by this dichotomy. Why would someone's demands go up when what they have to offer to get their demands met goes down?

For people picking point 2, why does the same not seem to happen for men? I see men drop out and go MGTOW with age, but that is because they feel women have become too negative. Women get upset because men do not bring enough positives to the market.

That is a gender dynamic that seems to vary. Men, as they get older, stay single because women have too many negatives. Women, as they get older, stay single because men do not have enough positives. That is my impression.

I do think men also become less tolerant of BS as they get older, and a 40 year old man will be less likely to put up with what a 20 year old man does. Fundamentally men's demands do not go up (if anything they go down), but their list of dealbreakers does go up. Women just increase their list of demands. This is what I've seen.