Generally speaking, is this an entirely different thing than one's 20s? Is it possible for a guy who missed the boat, to "turn back the clock" and experience (some of) what he missed in his 20s?

I get different answers on this. When you ask women, they usually say "it's a lot less likely in general." The reasoning is usually like, the age-range of the women you can find has changed, for example a guy in his mid 30s would be looking for women 25-40, etc, and all of them just want relationships. Sometimes it's just "all women want relationships, nothing else, etc" while pointing out "hooking-up is just a college thing, after that it's all relationships." Polarizing stuff, y'know?

As for men's opinion. Some guys have said the age doesn't matter too much, they tend to be open-minded about it, "anything goes so long as you try, provided resilience and some calibration." Others have said older guys can hook-up sometimes, but that's prefaced with being an experienced life veteran with at least a decent job, as men are expected to have a mature stability by that age, etc, which is the precise quality expected/desired by women. So in this case "yes, but only if you're a conventional winner; not if you're an autistic loser, etc."

What do you folks think?