How come it is that when a woman is five years or more older than me she tells me that i am too young for her, but girls 20 years younger have no problem dating me. But I'm a lot closer in age to the older women. Make sense to anybody? Not me. Please advise.

By the way, I am 44 if that is pertinent to your answer.

Some women prefer to be equal or younger than the man. Perhaps one element of being an alpha male is being a little older than the woman.

Not sure it's relevant in your case, but it was easier to find a mature, responsible fellow to date if I was looking for someone a few years older than me. Especially in my 20s, I was pretty disappointed with fellows my age or younger, even by a nominal amount (say a year). The last time I was single I was 'courted' by a fellow my age (within a few weeks) who on paper was great, but lacked personality and a sense for what he wanted in life. At that point I didn't feel comfortable spending a great deal of time on someone who didn't know what they wanted out of a relationship with me.

I was always very direct that I was looking for someone to get married to when I was dating, and by my late 20s was pretty intolerant on waiting for fellows to figure out if they wanted to go out with me, go steady, get married or not. Perhaps not the best strategy, but if I hadn't taken it up I would still waiting on my ex, who didn't know if he ever would get married but was still nostalgic over his college girlfriend, who did. ::shrug::

I think it depends on the woman (or man). I'm female and the biggest age difference between me and a man I dated was eight years (he was that much older than me). But I've dated men up to five years younger than me. And for about three years, I hung around with a guy who was 14 years younger than me, and we got along exceptionally well, did everything together (well, not "everything"), but neither of us could get over our age difference in order to actually have an intimate relationship. The first time we really hugged, it was like "home" for both of us, but once we realized that it was "us" we were hugging, we immediately pushed away from each other. It also bothered us that others who really didn't know us would link us romantically, because the age difference bugged us more than the positive aspect that we really were amazingly compatible. Back to my original statement: it really depends on the couple.