Where to Meet Women in Their 30s

There is no bar for women in their 30s, and you will not find one by searching. Go where women from the mid 20s to the early 30s mix: bars with happy hours, and bars that professionals use after work. On one of our weekly Q&A calls a student asked for the best places to meet 30 year olds, and the coach's first answer was that he had never searched for that exact age. He looks for the places that fit the way a woman that age lives, and so should you.

Men picture a venue with a sign on the door for their age group. It is not there. The coach said he has never seen a bar called anything like that, and he does not think one exists.

What exists are rooms with a range. Most bars that are not college bars and not old people's bars draw a spread from the mid 20s into the early 30s. A woman of 31 is not hiding in a special place. She is at the same bar as a woman of 26, and the two of them look about the same from where you stand.

So stop hunting for the age and start hunting for the lifestyle. Ask what her Thursday looks like, then go where that Thursday happens.

The coach gave a specific example. Pick a bar that attracts professionals, the kind with a lot of doctors, lawyers and accountants. Those careers need years of school and then more training on the job. By the time a woman is through it she is usually in her late 20s or her 30s. She can finally go out.

That is the part most men miss. Her age is a side effect of her career path. If you find the place her career sends her, the right age group is already standing there. A bar near a hospital, a law district or a cluster of accounting offices has a different weeknight crowd from a bar near a campus. The drink prices can be identical.

The coach used the opposite case to make the point. If you want 21 year olds, go to college bars. It is not because the sign says 21 and over. Many of them are in college, or have friends who are, so they gravitate to the same places.

Women in their 30s have no single institution that gathers them. Their friends are coworkers, old roommates and people from the same field. They get brought out for an event, a birthday or a work happy hour, and they go to the bar where that kind of event is held. This is why happy hours are such a good start. The event is built around people arriving straight from a job.

Knowing the right bar is half of it. The other half is whether you make sense in the room.

The same coach, who is older than most of the women he approaches, answered a student who felt creepy approaching women much younger than himself. His answer was that the age gap hardly matters as long as it is not weird for you to be in the place. A man in his early 40s on a college campus with no reason to be there looks strange, and she will ask herself why he came. A man in his early 40s at a bar where the crowd runs from 21 up to the 50s, mostly late 20s, looks like every other adult in the room.

You can use this for yourself:

• Pick rooms with a broad age range, not rooms built for one year of graduates.
• Come with a friend or arrive for an event. It makes your reason obvious without you having to explain it.
• Skip the venue where everyone there is 22, even if the room is busy.

If the question comes up, tell her your real age, say it early, and move on. The coach's line was that once you have mentioned it yourself, it is rarely an issue. Lying about it gives her something to catch you on later.

If you are in your own 30s, the news is mostly good. Asked about the difference between game in your 20s and your 30s, a coach said there is not much of one, as long as you are out of school and living like a man in the world. He called it nearly the same.

Two things do shift. You are expected to be more established, with a better career and a little more stability, and that works for you if it is true. And you are expected to be more serious. An old stereotype about age lasts only until your behavior breaks it. If you act relaxed, curious and unhurried, nobody holds your birthday against you. Now and then a woman thinks a large gap is strange. Now and then another woman likes the experience. Both happen, so do not build your plan around either.

Before you go somewhere new, ask three things.

1. Who actually goes here on a weeknight, and what do they do for a living?
2. Would a man my age with no agenda look normal in this room?
3. Can I come back here in two weeks and not look like I am hunting?

If all three answers are yes, you have a place. Go early in the evening, when women are still arriving from work and are talking to people. Talk to one woman, then another, and let her age be something you learn by talking, not something you screen for on the way in.