Photo: HBO

A few years ago, Lexi Walters was happily engaged when she found out her fiancé had been cheating on her with prostitutes for the entirety of their three-year relationship. At 31, Walters found herself back at square one, plunging into a dating scene with a rapidly shrinking number of options. She decided to take a trip from her home in Georgia to New York with her gay best friend to see if she might have better luck there.

Over the course of a week spent in the cheesiest, most dude-packed venues the city has to offer, she noticed she was getting a lot of attention from a particular type of suitor. “Only younger guys would come up to me, and I’m like, ‘Go away, you’re pubescent, you’re 21 and 23. I’m like 30 years old,’” she says. But they liked that she was successful and confident, they appreciated her maturity, and they were insistent. “I love older girls,” one told her. You’re so hot. You’re gonna be a MILF! “They were, like, on their hands and knees begging to go on a date with me in these bars,” she says. “And I’m like, ‘Okay, well, stay down there and beg a little louder. Oh, and can you buy us shots?’” One Ubered her and her friend home in a black car. He didn’t even try to get in with them. He just wanted them to get home safely.

At the end of her weeklong bender, Walters and her friend stumbled into a touristy Times Square bar where she spotted a sweet-looking man from across the room. Her friend begged her not to go over to him — he looked too young. She didn’t listen. His name was Mark, he was a finance bro, and he was 24. Three years later, Lexi and Mark are still together, in love, and making TikTok videos about their seven-year age gap. Walters says she has never been happier.

Many straight women will tell you their dating lives are an endless cycle of bad first impressions and devastating letdowns. But some have discovered a tantalizing new loophole: dating younger. Online, women are touting their reliable, kind, and energetic boyfriends who are fulfilling the long-held fantasy that men really can meet their needs. But it’s more than just a trend on TikTok or in movies like Babygirl: Charlize Theron recently recounted the time she slept with a 26-year-old — it was “really fucking amazing” — and on her Substack earlier this summer, 64-year-old Kathy Griffin revealed she had fallen in love with a 23-year-old. Even for those in a relationship with a smaller gap, those handfuls of years seem to make all the difference. The influencer and former West Village Girl Serena Kerrigan keeps reminding her followers that the podcaster she’s dating is six years her junior. “I would have never, ever, ever pictured myself dating a younger guy,” says Katrina Samson, a 37-year-old hair colorist who is engaged to a 30-year-old. “He worships the ground I walk on. He tells me, ‘You’re the fairy in the relationship, you’re the star.’ And he lets me shine.”

One hurdle these women have had to get over is just how deeply ingrained it is for them to look for someone their age or older. The first date Lex Beckman went on with Adam was special: They hiked around Marin County, California, for hours. He was soft-spoken but decisive; he threw a steady arm around her when he realized she was freezing and later found a spot to sit where he unfurled a blanket and spread out an array of snacks he’d prepared for them. But when he told her how old he was, Beckman’s stomach dropped. “I remember immediately texting my best friend Haley and being like, ‘I think I met my husband. I’m also terrified because he’s 24,’” she says. He was only three years younger than Beckman, but she was worried that the years he lacked in life experience might make him an incompetent partner or a lackluster lover. “I had it preset in my mind that a man’s frontal lobe isn’t going to develop till they’re, like, almost 30,” she says. Five years later, she and Adam are now engaged.

Almost all the women I spoke with told me they initially felt some hesitation about dating younger. They were afraid of getting called out on social media for something their friends might conceivably criticize a man for doing. “Why is a 29-year-old dating a 20-year-old?” one Instagram commenter recently asked under a photo of Cruz Beckham and his older girlfriend. “That’s just weird.” The girlfriend replied, “Because he’s kind, funny, smart, caring, driven, mature, talented, loyal, and also quite handsome.”

Often, one of the first things to change their mind was the sex. The older men Walters had slept with before had seemed somewhat lazy in bed. The first time she hooked up with Mark was an awakening. “I can’t believe I was over there hooking up with literally a floppy fish, and now I’m over here hooking up with Hercules,” she says. She has also evangelized about younger men’s sexual prowess to her friends, who have since reported back that it’s true: The younger ones really were down to try everything. “They’re not scared in the bedroom; they’re just open and free,” Walters says. “I’m like, yes, I’ve been trying to tell you girls, it’s so much more fun.”