This is an issue that I come back to quite a bit because the two concepts, arousal and attraction, generally aren't that separable to a man. They tend to go hand in hand. What attracts me to a woman also generally arouses me, with some exceptions of course depending on what I'm looking for at the moment. This brings me to one of Rollo's recent articles on the topic of attraction:

http://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/the-choice-of-attraction/

In particular he goes on about what we've heard before: how what a woman finds attractive changes as she moves from teenager to woman at the wall. It moves from physicality to provisioning as she moves from 18 to 35, with a little bit of both in between.

It appears to me though that really she's moving from primal to intellectual, from hindbrain to forebrain, and near the end she will completely sacrifice arousal for more cerebral 'attraction'. How limbic is it really when she's primarily after provisioning as she gets older? To a degree a man will do this as well when he starts looking for a woman that is "marriage material", but he still puts a very large emphasis on arousal. He needs to be aroused by her, but he may be more attracted to a woman who has a low partner count and good potential mothering capabilities.

He then talks about how she's essentially looking to fill some kind of deficit and comes to this important point:

This is an excellent illustration of how status can influence attraction based upon personal conditions / deficits that prompt it. However, sustaining that attraction after that personal deficit has been satisfied is another post altogether.

And that right there is the question. If you enter a relationship with a woman who has compromised arousal, at the expensive of fulfilling a provisioning deficit, are you not doomed to failure once that deficit is fulfilled? When you take into account divorce laws, once she has children, those deficits are fulfilled and really you aren't really that much of a threat to take away provisioning. She knows she'll be just fine.

Of course the key is to be all things to her. Be arousing AND attractive, where attractive will depend on her progression in life. And I believe this is where we get to the point of why a younger woman will make better marriage material to and older man. A woman in her early 20s still has a real arousal deficit, but is also feeling that provisioning deficit. The provisioning deficit isn't immediate though. It's far enough away that she's not feeling that pressure, and so you are for more likely to end up with a woman who is actually aroused by you, and not just temporarily aroused as she goes after the provisions. As such, the older man in his 30s can provide both for her and maximize both arousal and attraction, and it goes without saying that she's doing the same for him.

Is it fair for me to make this distinction with women between arousal and attraction, and the danger of a woman who is primarily after provisioning? Or, is this just solipsism and is attraction for a woman just more fluid and whether she wants a physically ideal man, or a provisionally ideal man, or something in between, does it not really make a big difference to her long term arousal potential?