Why is it more difficult to get into meaningful relationships the older we get?

think it is because meaningful relationships to older people are based on different things than what younger people want.

Young women may think [not true in all cases] that a 'meaningful relation' is sleeping with a boy or having a boyfriend with a car.

Women tend to have more sensible expectations [than young girls] of what to expect from a relationship such as [perhaps] to have a family or to have someone to trust and rely upon.

That is why I think it is difficult, due to older people wanting different things [to when they were younger]

In reality it is good to have a boyfriend or girlfriend when you are younger, but sexual contact at that age may leave young people feeling used and abused [as it is difficult perhaps for the boyfriend to sustain real commitment]. Sex is best left for marriage when both partners communicate well, and are in good financial terms to raise a child or two.

[Hence why it is best to wait until you are mid 20s before getting married and having sexual contact]

Hope that answers your question, but you probably want someone elses advice

It doesn't have to be. As you grow older, you stop worrying so much about what people think. It's easier to let walls down. It's easier to be yourself without giving a damn. Once you are yourself with all the masks removed, then you can find someone with whom you can have a deep, meaningful relationship. Relationships that develop when you're older are the ones that sustain. The young relationships burn bright but flame out quickly.

My first thought is that it would be the opposite - the older we get, the more mature we would become, making finding a real mate easier. How many real relationships happened in high school?

But as we get older, more and more of us find, and keep, those relationship. I'm a good mate, but I've been married, and out of the pool for 11 years.

Continued good luck with your search - look for someone that makes you a better person.

I would guess that it is probably as we get older, we are all pretty much searching for that meaninful relationship, the kind you see on Golden Pond. So essentially we are all scattered to the wind fiercely looking for the same thing, that the cosmic forces of dating are causing us to pass right on by each other while we continue to look into space for it.

Being 31 and single, I find that my tastes and needs are much more particular than when I was younger. I think that as you go through your teen years and early 20s, you're more open to what you don't know and as you age, your ideas about what's right for you narrow the field, so to speak.

well pretty much because u have prob done it and seen it all, i dont know how old older is, but there is prob no excitement, and maybe u as a person are trying to hard to find the right person instead of the person for right now,

I think that when ur younger you are out and about more. You dont always have the responsbilities one would have when your older and that seems to take away from our social life.

because the younger we are, the more meaningful EVERYTHING is.... Years bring common sense.

the older a person is, the more heartbreak that person has gone through.

because we learn to filter thru all the crap