#15 Do Age Gaps Matter In Relationships? PLUS Are Beards "Low Status"?

In this engaging conversation, Mark and Teal explore the challenges of communication in dating, particularly focusing on the impact of emojis (which Mark has been banned from for 30 days) and the nuances of expressing feelings through words. They also discuss a recent cultural protest in India regarding beards, examining the deeper implications of such movements. Finally, they delve into the complexities of age gaps in relationships, weighing the pros and cons of dating across different generations and emphasizing the importance of compatibility and genuine connection.

Takeaways
- Mark is currently on a month-long challenge to communicate without emojis.
- Teal emphasizes the importance of authentic energy in communication.
- The use of feeling words can enhance emotional expression in texting.
- Cultural movements, like the beard protest in India, reflect deeper societal issues.
- Age gaps in relationships can lead to generational incompatibility.
- Compatibility is more important than age in relationships.
- Men often seek depth and connection over superficial attraction.
- Texting taboos can hinder effective communication in dating.
- Voice memos are a powerful tool for conveying personality in dating.
- It's essential to focus on what you bring to a relationship, regardless of age.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:34 Is Teal An Elf?
1:21 Mark's Emojiless 14-Day Update
10:46 No Beard No Love - Indian Women Protest Beards
18:21 What Is The Ideal Relationship Age Gap?
28:55 Want Personal Help? Book A Call!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:34 Is Teal An Elf?
• 1:21 Mark's Emojiless 14-Day Update
• 10:46 No Beard No Love - Indian Women Protest Beards
• 18:21 What Is The Ideal Relationship Age Gap?
• 28:55 Want Personal Help? Book A Call!

Transcript

[Speaker 1]
An update on my emojilessness, the no beard, no love trend sweeping the subcontinent, and do age gaps really matter in relationships? We'll see you right after this. G'day and welcome to The Gender Project, the podcast where a straight Aussie man attempts to survive 365 days dating online as an American woman.

I'm your host, Mark Rosenfeld, Australia's Dating Coach for Women. I'm here with my sidekick, self-love coach, Teal Elizabeth, and together we have one mission, to make meeting good men fun and easy for you. Let's give it a bell.

Teal!

[Speaker 2]
Hi, Mark.

[Speaker 1]
I love your hair today.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, thanks.

[Speaker 1]
You look like an elf. Like a really attractive, sexy elf, I mean. The best kind of elf, like the Lord of the Rings ones that everyone watches and is like, oh, she lives forever.

She's like that kind of elf.

[Speaker 2]
You're spinning yourself into a hole there, Mark. You lost batting points.

[Speaker 1]
Come on. Who doesn't love elves?

[Speaker 2]
I entered a goddess, priestess, queen.

[Speaker 1]
But what's the name, but not Galadriel? Is that the one? I'm going to call you Galadriel this whole podcast, just to re-emphasize that this is a compliment.

In the comments, please, elves are absolutely beautiful. All my Lord of the Rings fans, hit me with some support here, please.

[Speaker 2]
How you going, Mark?

[Speaker 1]
Uh, well, well, uh, I had an interesting week last week, so we did take the week off. So I've got a 14-day update for you, but no, I've been well. I'm excited to get into what we're talking about today.

You have sent me into an interesting experiment with this emoji-less-ness. For those that don't know, or who may have missed the last couple of episodes, Teal challenged me to do a month without emojis, but not just emojis, which I will say, by the way, Teal, since that occurred, has been texting me with emojis. Like, oh, oh, sure.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't give me that. Because you also, yes, there was a little bit of that, but you also texted me.

You said, Mark, these are my most used emojis. And you sent me a list of six emojis, which I was highly amused because the number one was the woman who's slapping herself on the forehead. Like that, like who does that as their most used emoji?

Like the facepalm emoji. Like how many dumb people text you that that is your most used emoji?

[Speaker 2]
It's mostly my husband making stupid remarks to me.

[Speaker 1]
You give him a facepalm. I'm not sure. I think I would struggle if I got that emoji every day.

So shout out to Spencer. I think he's more of a man than me taking on those emojis. Nonetheless, Teal does use emojis, and she sent me six of her top ones.

However, I've been banned from them. Not just from emojis, also from any caps locked words. Now, don't worry.

I'm not yelling at people on a regular basis. However, I do occasionally say one word in capitals because it emphasizes a bit of energy. I love something.

I've had a great day. Occasionally, maybe once in every few texts, I'll capitalize one word. And word extensions.

Word extensions are a little bit of a secret of craft, I guess you'd say. But you will notice that when you talk to someone, sometimes you'll extend certain words to put emphasis on a particular word, to inflect tonality a certain way. So when you extend a word, for example, the difference between O-H and O-H-H-H-H-H-H is quite significant.

It's the difference between O-K, O-O-O-O-O-O-OK. Very different. One's more polite and trepid.

The other is curious and engaged. So I am without many of my best tools that I teach to clients this month. And I'm forced to use the one thing that Teal is an expert at, which is feeling words.

So we are... How many days in are we into this? I know I've got three more weeks before we're completely complete.

Two more weeks before we stop meeting new men. Yeah. Yeah.

Because it's 30 days, Teal, but we need to leave some latency at the end for the guys who maybe I meet on day 29 to kind of wash through. So it's about...

[Speaker 2]
You're better at all these stats than I am.

[Speaker 1]
I'm going with you, whatever you say. Just go with me on this one. Just nod with this one, Teal.

But yes, I always give about five days after so that we can let the guys who we meet right at the end kind of move through the system. So if I have a quick look over how it's going overall, you know, it's been really interesting. I'm going to be really curious at the end of the month because at first I thought, oh great, I'm not going to be spending time looking for emojis.

This might actually speed it up. I was mistaken. Finding the right feeling word when I naturally reach for an emoji to communicate it, like embarrassed or laughing or a particular type of laughing or blushing or receiving.

I kind of know which emoji is right there, ready to communicate that. And I don't want to be using the same feeling words every time. So it's forced me to have my feelings word list there, use the...

expand on it a little bit. I've been using words like flattered, delighted, gobsmacked, surprised, eager, enlivened, many more that aren't coming to mind right now. But it has forced me to think of these feeling words.

But that does mean there's a few more pauses where I go, oh crap, how do I express how this makes me feel? Because I might talk about, well, I went out and saw my favorite tree in the backyard. It can be something very simple, but how does it make me feel?

God, can I just feel excited again? I'm going to use a word other than excited. Feel engaged.

I feel curious. I feel alive. I feel fulfilled.

This is exactly what our clients are going through. This is. However, I would not be mean and ban my clients from emojis.

So it's not quite what they're going through, but I hear you. But nonetheless, so far it's looking more or less, and I asked you, do we start conversations or not? Because two months ago, we did start conversations.

Last month, we did not. So you'll churn through more people if you don't start them because you're waiting for them to start them with you. You made the decision that we are starting them.

And so that means we go through a few less profiles, but overall, it seems like the guys have been quite responsive. There's been some really solid guys come through. We had a great one yesterday.

I would even say that we are talking a little less as in less exchanges back and forth, but the exchanges are a little longer. There's probably the fact that we're using longer words to make a part of that, but it does seem like the guys are still quite engaged. I have a suspicion, maybe not quite as much as the previous month, but part of that could also simply be that we are not able to send as much because it's taken a bit longer to write the text.

So I'll have a bit more stats in the coming weeks. I get the sense that overall, one of the things I look at is how many numbers have I given out and I've given out eight so far this month. And obviously a number giving out means a conversation is going well, and I think it's ready to be moved to a phone call.

So that's pretty similar. We had 10 by this time in the first month and eight in the previous month. That part seems to be going well.

We don't have many new matches in the queue yet, so it might be slightly behind, slightly slower, but overall it seems to be at least 80% as effective as the full emoji route. So that's where I'm at so far.

[Speaker 2]
This is super interesting. Thank you, Mark, for just fully leaning into this challenge and going for it. And I think what it speaks to more than anything is it's not about the way you text.

It's really about what it is that you're conveying through your energy, which is, again, what I always like to teach on. It's what you're really sharing, the person you're being, the presence you're carrying yourself with, and whether that comes through with texting with emojis or long drawn out words or using feeling messages, that doesn't really matter as much. It's more about the flavor that works for you as long as you're being authentic with you.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. And I think that human expression, the art of doing it over text, it's not an easy thing. I saw an article today, I was going to send it to you actually, and it said, Gen Zers are getting more and more into voice memos, which I actually think is brilliant because that was my secret weapon when I was dating.

And if you can get to voice memos, I'm not sure how I feel about actual voice prompts on a profile. It's hard to do them really well. And it's more about how you say something than what you say, but it seems like Gen Zers are getting more and more into voice prompts.

And I'm all for that. I loved voice prompts. And I always sort of chuckled because I always thought I had a leg up over other men when I was dating because I would voice prompt.

You don't want to leave five minute monologues, but you can voice prompt for 30 seconds, just like you're talking to a friend. Oh, hey, you asked me, like say someone asked you how your day is. Yeah, I'm just going to voice mail you because it's quicker.

Yeah, my day's going awesome. I'm really excited. I'm looking forward to work tonight.

I'm going to get to the gym now. And yeah, I'm buying my food for the week. So looking forward to, looking forward to that.

How's your day? You know, you can actually say a lot in 15 seconds that would look like a blob of text if you were to type it out and it's faster as well. So I'm for that.

I do think you need to make sure your energy is good when you speak. You would bring the same energy that you would bring if you're meeting a friend at a party. So, you know, stand up, sit up, pretend you're meeting a new quality person.

Like you have to put the energy in. But yeah, I really like that because that skips some of the problems we have with text, which is how do you do a good job of conveying yourself when you are reduced to nothing but information on the screen?

[Speaker 2]
Yes. Yes. I actually go on a whole riff on this.

I call texting taboos on my podcast because it's just it bugs me so much how texting has been used in the wrong ways. Or it seems like that there's just no there's no education out there. It's just been the Wild West of let's just throw ourselves into text messaging and navigate relationships with it.

But I really do think there's a time and a place and a finesse, which seems to be our word of this podcast for how you do it. So I love that we're getting to at least open up this conversation to just explore how to do it in good ways and not so good ways and what works and what doesn't work. And yeah, it's really cool.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I'm really curious to know by the end of the month if I feel like I may be unconsciously shortening exchanges. And by that, I mean having fewer exchanges with men before I get to a phone call, because I've noticed a few times I'm getting, especially if the exchange is good, I'm getting to that phone call within three or four exchanges now.

So it's getting, get out, we're here for a good time, not a long time kind of texting. Whereas in the first month, well technically the second month of the challenge, it was more like about six exchanges was the average. Right now it's feeling more like four and a half, but I will have these statistics, which I know you're very excited for.

[Speaker 2]
Yes. I love the stats. I'm super excited for stats.

But into a new conversation, you were telling me something very interesting that you saw online about Indian women protesting about beards. Like I need to know about this.

[Speaker 1]
I think this is feminism has finally caught on in the great continent of India. A shout out to all the Indians who are listening. It's great to have you here.

I'm a huge fan of Kashmir, by the way, if anyone listens to the DJ Kashmir, he gave Sam and I a hug actually, and we had our first date at his concert. So to all the Indian EDMs out there, we are right there with you. However, there is an interesting movement going on in your country down there in the subcontinent, as we like to call it in Australia.

And the movement is this, I'm going to see if I can share the screen here, but a bunch of women, they went out and they said, you know what, we're going to speak up for what we want and need, which is fair. Okay. I don't mind that.

Let's see if I can share this here. Teal, can you see my screen Teal? Yep.

Okay. What we're seeing now, if you're listening is I'm going to play the video and it's a bunch of women who are wearing fake beards, which I find somewhat ironic because they're protesting beards. But I guess if you didn't wear a beard, then it would just look like a bunch of regular women.

So they need to stand out somehow. And here they are, they've got a bunch of signs. There's one very animated woman at the front in a red jumper, jumping around, leading the chorus.

Everyone behind is wearing beards. Some of them look like Santa. Others are more of the mustachey kind.

Women of all shapes and sizes on this march. Very, very exciting stuff. And just to read a quick summary here, if I go over to my other window, let me grab it here.

Summary reads, if I scroll down, one placard stated, no clean shave, no love. While another banner said, beard or girlfriend, the choice is yours. Another banner declared that a boyfriend should not just be educated or handsome, but must be clean shaven.

These Indian women are raising their standards. I, for one, love this. These videos sparked a debate about social media users.

Some said, no one has the right to impose their choices on others. And the article concludes, it remains unclear who sponsored this rally and why such an inappropriate and unnecessary campaign was needed. It's good to see unbiased news from this website as well.

I just want to add that in there. So it's all happening down there in the subcontinent. I'm really curious, Teal, how strongly do you feel about this particular topic?

[Speaker 2]
About beards? Well, gosh, I'm surprised that there was enough women coming together that felt this strongly about no beards, that they wanted to have a whole campaign about it, right? It's kind of a personal preference in my eyes, but I think there's a deeper something going on here.

Maybe beards represent a more blue collar or clean shaven means you're more put together. I don't know. I think beards probably represent something a lot more than what we're giving it credit for.

[Speaker 1]
I was thinking the same thing and I was trying to think of what that was. If anyone knows, you can leave a comment. What is it that beards are representing?

Is this some class thing? We can know the Indian society can be one quite focused on class. So is this a class thing?

Is this a representation that men are lazy and not keeping themselves trimmed and proper and presentable for their ladies when maybe the women feel they are doing the same? Or is it something else entirely? Is it just simply that shaved is the new handsome, is the new sexy in a man and we just need to be more progressive with our standards?

Teal, do you think this movement could ever take off here in America?

[Speaker 2]
Absolutely not. No, I don't think so. We're going to have a lot of different preferences here, I would say.

Yeah. For me, I personally like a little bit of stubble, but not a full on Santa beard.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. All right. Let's explore this.

Let's explore this. Spencer says to you, babe, I've made a decision. I'm going to go Santa beard, possibly for the rest of my life.

We're talking over a foot. You know, my body, my choice. He can have a beard as he wants to have it.

What's your thoughts? And why would this not be in your ideal?

[Speaker 2]
You know what, because this is just how our relationship might be like, fine, I'm not going to shave my legs then either.

[Speaker 1]
And let's say he goes, let's say he goes, you know what? Okay. I understand.

[Speaker 2]
Hairy legs, here we come.

[Speaker 1]
Hairy legs are on. What's the beard mean for you? If he goes and gets that beard, does it have any meaning or is it a physical bother?

Why are you not a fan?

[Speaker 2]
Well, I mean, I think hair is such a part of identity in general. I know for me it is.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, we've seen you show up as an elf today, so I'm not on your side.

[Speaker 2]
I once made the mistake of getting bangs and it was the worst decision of my life because I felt like it totally changed my whole identity of how I saw myself and my face changed and all that. And I think a beard is the same thing for a man. When we have a beard, it kind of cuts off half your face.

You know, it's like, you're just looking at eyes and a little bit of a nose, in my opinion. Plus the whole kissing thing. I mean, I don't want to be covered in fur when I'm trying to kiss somebody.

Is it gross?

[Speaker 1]
Do you get prickled when facial hair is short?

[Speaker 2]
Don't length that it's soft enough and not too prickly. If there's whole finesses to shave.

[Speaker 1]
I was going to say, so there's like a Goldilocks zone. Too short leads to the prickle, too long leads to the ingestion of unwashed hair.

[Speaker 2]
But I think, I mean, if so many women in India are saying clean shave or no love or no beard or no love, I mean, that really must mean something bigger or deeper. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, it's a culture of movement. I would say there's probably 60 or so women in that video. India has a billion people or something close to it.

So I wouldn't say 60 out of half a billion is statistically significant, but they managed to find each other, thanks probably to the blessing of the internet. And they got together and they shared their message with the world. So kudos to them.

[Speaker 2]
I will say that, you know, when men shave, I do feel like it adds or it takes away years off their identity. I think as you grow facial hair, it is a representation of being older, being more mature. I noticed that too.

Whenever Spencer shaves, I'm like, whoa, you look like you're 23 again. Like what happened? And when he grows it out, I'm like, okay, you look more like a man.

[Speaker 1]
So I'm curious. Maybe next week I should shave and you should get bangs and we just see how it feels.

[Speaker 2]
See, no, that's not fair because you can grow your beard back in a week and I can't grow my bangs back for like years. So we're not doing that challenge.

[Speaker 1]
Fine. Just blow holes in my theory. It's fine.

Try to be creative here and I get shot down.

[Speaker 2]
You've proven one thing to me and that is you take your challenges very seriously and I cannot commit to those challenges.

[Speaker 1]
Maybe we should do some social challenges outside TL one week where we go out and we say, okay, we will either do some interviews or you approach some men, I approach some women and maybe there's some challenge we're in.

[Speaker 2]
That could be really good. I think things that women have challenges with, I think flirting in general is one that we could definitely talk more about.

[Speaker 1]
You could run a flirting masterclass. We got that elf hair and those eyes and just train the ladies from the best.

[Speaker 2]
So apparently you know what Mark likes. Moving on.

[Speaker 1]
It's inappropriate. Moving on, we need to talk about age gaps too. I'll get back on topic here.

Age gaps in relationships. I was reading about a couple of, you hear this a bit with celebrities, right? Is Sean Penn's dating a 29 year old, Gerard Butler's dating a 24 year old or something.

What's his face? There was a gentleman in Florida recently. He's a famous actor and his name starts with A.

Can't quite remember the name of him. He's 80. He's well known, but he's, you know, he's only in years now.

Recently started dating a 22 year old. So those are pretty extreme examples here. Good old, what's his face?

Bill Belichick for anyone who knows NFL. He's dating someone who's about 30, 40 years his junior. Anyway, I want to know your opinion on age gaps because I have certain thoughts about this and I'm curious as to what you advise clients about compatibility.

If a client says to you they have a very narrow age gap range, do you kind of support them with that or do you encourage them to be a bit more expansive? What are the risks and how do you see age gaps in relationships?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, that's a really, really great question. And it's not something that I'm, that is brought to my attention a lot. Women don't come to me asking that specific.

[Speaker 1]
Really? Interesting. I get it a lot.

[Speaker 2]
Well, I think cause you help a lot with the actual dating piece and the profile piece. That ageing jazz for me, it's much more of like, how do I build deep connections with this person or with myself? Because yeah, I think in general age, there's the, I don't know, the high level answer, which is age is just a number.

It's all about the person that you're connecting to and what they have to teach you and connect and bring to your life and that kind of thing, which I think is beautiful. But then there is some logistics to it as well, which is if you're looking for a life partner and a companion and potentially someone to raise kids with, you do need to have someone that can actually keep up with you and have the energy level and, and meet you in the same, uh, you know, wavelength. And then I think also there's the, the generational, um, just compatibility around relatability.

I think that's the bigger one than anything. I think people that are in a smaller, um, age range of dating, they tend to share a lot of the same values, the same upbringing, the same childhood memories, the same pop references, that kind of stuff, which naturally brings more relatability. Whereas if you're dating someone 10, 20 years older than you, they're going to be singing to different songs than you and relating to different TV shows than you.

And it just kind of misses the mark. I think a little bit in those opportunities for connecting for me personally, expense and I are like six months apart. So we, we really lucked out and it feels like I literally have my best friend who we grew up together in terms of our society.

And I love being able to relate on all those levels with him, but I don't think there's anything wrong with dating older. It's just about what you feel comfortable with. And are you willing to potentially take those risks of having someone that is not going to be around later on in life when you're wanting that long life companion?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. And that of course is assuming that you are the younger one, but it could also be the case that you are the older one as well in the dynamic. Yeah.

I, I really like what you said. I talk about that point about generational incompatibility a lot with age gaps, different jokes, different upbringings. No, it's funny.

Sam and I are roughly the same age. We're two years apart, but I've noticed that a little bit because we grew up in different countries. And even though we both spoke English, she had a Northeast cultural upbringing.

I had an East coast Australian cultural upbringing. So we actually have a little bit of that, that we've had to work through in terms of slightly different upbringings, but there is a lot of compatibility that comes with being a similar age. And so I think that's one of the big risks.

I always say age gaps are kind of the same as age. You know how in medicine they say age is not a disease, but age predisposes you to disease. It increases the frequency of disease.

You're more likely to get sick if you're 80 than if you're 20. Age gaps are the same. It's the actual numbers being apart is not a disease unto itself.

There's, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the greater the distance as in the greater the age gap, the more you are vulnerable to relationship dis-ease. The big one is probably the one you already described, which is just being disconnected about generational incompatibilities, being in different life phases, growing up to different things. I think the second is you're at a much higher risk of some kind of parental unhealthy dynamic when people are way apart.

It's just very hard for the younger person when the older person is in disagreement to not kind of trust the wisdom of 20 plus years if your age gap is bigger than that. It's very hard for the younger person to truly stand their ground because the older person can legitimately say, look, at the end of the day, I'm the experienced one here. And they may not even mean anything bad by it, but it can certainly make the younger one question themselves.

I think you're much more likely to end up in that out of balance situation where one person is more like the parent and the other person somewhat under functions, relatively speaking. So any of those dynamics that could have emerged from childhood, I think they're pretty risky with that. Those are probably the two big things.

The practical incompatibilities, obviously stuff around kids and if you've got family, you can be judgmental. So it comes with other stuff that puts pressure on the relationship. But I think overall, that's my kind of read.

While it's not inherently a problem, it just comes with problems. And so generally for clients, the most successful age gap is pretty close to what you are actually. So science has shown it's one year.

If we want to say statistically who stays together the most, we'd be saying, let's find an age gap of one year. And from there, it's kind of like a bell curve where the success rates are pretty similar. If you're within about five years, they drop a little.

By 10 years, they significantly drop. And by 20 years, they fall off a cliff in terms of long-term success. Yeah.

So it's like a bell like that.

[Speaker 2]
So I think that overall- Proving what we're talking about here.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And so when clients, for example, go on apps, they might say, Mark, what sort of age range should I put? I always like something that's plus seven, minus seven, maybe plus five, minus eight. Depending on their preference, they might want to go a little bit younger.

Some of the more mature women might say, Mark, the men sort of six to eight years older than me, a lot of them are just really not in good shape of someone I'd want to date. So we might skew it a little bit younger in that circumstance. Some more younger women might say, look, I know I'm only in my late twenties, but I'm really looking to start a family.

The men in my age range who are like minus five are certainly not developed or ready to do that. So they would skew a little bit older. But generally, the skew is not too severe is the way I approach it.

And again, it's better to bring people in and have an intelligent filtering system than try to filter everyone at the very start with some of the superficial filters that apps give you. That's been my experience of age gaps.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. And I think for any women listening that are maybe on that older end and are feeling a little bit of that pain of seeing men reaching for the younger women and them feeling like that inadequacy within themselves, I just want to remind you that at the end of the day, while the younger age does seem more flashy and shiny in that first encounter, really what men are wanting at the end of the day is the depth, is the real connection.

If you want the type of man that I think you're wanting, if you're not wanting just one sort of bimbo sleazy douchebag. But the men, they may be drawn to the shiny object of the young woman in beginning, but when they really connect with you and just the depth of your character and the wisdom you bring and all of the life experience you have on top of your amazing personality, that always wins out over time. Would you agree?

[Speaker 1]
I would. I would. And I would say that I had a client recently and she was debating sort of getting back with this gentleman that she'd been with and she kind of wanted it to happen.

I had my suspicions that the dynamic wasn't particularly healthy, but as we were saying a couple of podcasts ago, sometimes I'll outright say that to clients if they ask me, but other times I'll kind of allow them to find their own answers with it. I do have my personal suspicions just from knowledge and experience and pattern recognition that this wasn't the healthiest dynamic she could be in. So she was kind of going through, you know, do I want this back?

I want to give this the best chance to get it back. And she's in her late thirties. He's in his early forties.

And then she said, Oh Mark, I think he's seeing this woman in her like early twenties. And then it came out and basically she figured out that he was. And I said to her, look, unfortunately that's what he wants.

Like if he is a 41 year old wanting to date a 22 year old, he's just looking for a different dynamic than what you can provide. Like a guy that does that, he's just looking for some fun. He doesn't want to do conflict.

He doesn't want to have to think. He just wants someone who's going to nod. And I'd like, if that's, if that's what you want, like, okay, that's fine.

You can have that. But I said to her that, that guy's like, he's not going to be in your niche because the type of relationship he's wanting isn't something you can provide. Like you can't or wouldn't even want to be a 22 year old, you know, opinionless like follower.

It's just, if he wants that, that's a very different, that you don't come to relationship coaching to get a dynamic like that. I mean, some men try to get young women, but not this type of coaching. So the fact that you're in this type of coaching, I said to the client, means that like this guy, he's thinking like that.

He's not going to be a fit for what you've told me that you want. There's just not compatibility there. And what usually happens is later on, those people realize, hey, maybe this was shiny at the start, but it starts to feel kind of empty because they're disconnected and they eventually break up, hence the statistics.

So that probably means that guy hasn't matured yet to realize, oh, there is a deeper depth of connection that's actually worthwhile as I get into my more mature years. And there are plenty of men out there who want that and who don't just have shiny object syndrome. So there's lots of good guys out there who are looking for relationships with great women.

They don't need that massive age gap. They're very happy to meet someone who's wants to be a genuine companion and do the work with them and whom they can relate to.

[Speaker 2]
Yes. Yes. So I think the hardest part right now for any of those women that are in that moment is just to really, as much as you can not take it personally and just trust and know that what you have to offer and bring to the table is so incredibly valuable and beautiful, and that that's going to shine through.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Well said. Well said, Teal.

Well, guys, thank you for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. If you want to see Teal's amazing face in a one-to-one session, there is actually a call booking under the podcast that you can go and access and you can hear all her wisdom one-on-one and work with her.

And there is a similar link for myself as well, if you want to chat with me. Teal, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for bringing your face and your hair and all of you to this podcast.

Galadriel. Hang on. I need to just check if this is the one I'm thinking of.

Is it Galadriel?

[Speaker 2]
I've never heard that word before.

[Speaker 1]
I think it is. I'm getting a couple of different photos here. I think that is Galadriel.

Yes. All right. Anyway, Teal, it's been great.

Thanks, Mark. We'll see you again next week. See you next week, guys.

This has been Mark and Teal for The Tinder Project.