I married a woman whom I met here, and she's quite a bit younger than me. She was not Argentine, however, she is Paraguayan.
From some recent schoolwork that my oldest sister-in-law recently did (the older - we have two of my wife's teenage sisters living with us and going to school here in Buenos Aires, from a family of 12!), it seems that women outnumber men here, according to results that she found on the web (I have not verified these numbers!
). She said this has been a recent change according to the statistics she found.
I have also heard a number of Argentine women complain about the high number of gay men that they have encountered. Or the number of crazy men. I just recently did an asado for a group of single friends of my wife (all either widows [1] or divorcees [4] who are all in their 40s - she hangs out with older friends for the most part). While we were sitting eating, we had an interesting conversation about the lack of decent, eligible men to date. (won't get into the pure sexism one of them, an accomplished accountant, had to say about working here as opposed to working for an accounting firm in Miami...)
Having said that, as I understand from my single expat male friends who date, it is more difficult to date women here, as has been mentioned (at least when you get out of the younger college-aged and slightly older crowd - they are looking more for thrills, I think, than relationships, at least when a foreigner is involved), because groups tend to be pretty tight for the most part. You have to spend some time to get to know people. Foreigners are not necessarily as well received as in other Latin American countries (for dating and possible marriage) because the Argentine (particularly middle class and upward) outlook is a little different than the rest of LA as far as that goes.
However, I know a couple of older guys who have relationships with younger Argentine women here. As far as I can tell, it's not necessarily a problem with an age thing, more just something you need to do to get into a group and meet some people.
However, you might still get some stares from some people, particularly older folk - it's not uncommon for my wife and I to be walking down the street arm-in-arm and collect a few stares from busybodies. But we've never had any real uncomfortable feelings or problems.
Another thing, the few guys I know who are dating Argentine women speak Spanish at least to the degree to be able to have conversations. There are many people here who speak English, but many who are embarrassed to admit it (not because it's English and therefore foreign, but they feel that they mangle the language and don't like to show it), and culturally you score more points when you can speak the language.
I thought I might make a comment on Argentine guys vs Argentine women and "hysteria", since it was brought up a little...
One of my best friends dated an Argentina who was about ten years younger than him. She was a nutter. The slightest thing could set her off in a rage, a tantrum, what-have-you. He cut it off with her after way too much time and she still talks about the revenge that she's going to take against him. It's been more than a year now, and nothing so far in the revenge department...
I have another friend who works in a situation 30 days on and 30 days off (lives here in his off time) who has had a relationship with a woman nearly 20 years younger than him and she was pretty much the same - when he broke up with her, she turned into a stalker. After three hitches at work, he still has problems with her hanging around his house and trying to talk with him when he's here.
My wife has a cousin who still dates an Argentino. His family owns a group of car parts stores (I don't know which one). He's an only child. He's about 35 or so, she's 30. He's seen a psychiatrist just about all of his life. He's been committed twice for short periods of time, once for attempting to commit suicide. He's so depressed all the time that he can literally start crying over nothing while at a get-together with family (I've seen it). He's been known to literally lay on the floor and pound his hands and feet like a little kid. His parents lease a small apartment for my wife's cousin so that she will continue to date him because according to his parents, she's good for him. I have my own opinion about her, accepting an apartment to be with someone she can hardly tolerate (her words).
Fairly recently, my sister-in-law who came to live with us first was dating an Argentino. She started dating him when she was 17, he was 19 then turned 20. His father was (before he died, and according to him! I have never verified this...) president of the Argentine polo association. She went out with this guy for about three months and had to break it off. He always conveniently forgot his wallet and she had to pay (according to him, he'd been cut off from the family money after his father died and his mother wanted him to get a job) about 2/3rds of the time. He got kicked out of his apartment with two roommates (they lived about 5 blocks from us, in a very high-rent district) because he couldn't pay his share of the rent.
He couldn't pay his rent because he literally quit his job and stopped going to university to be able to spend more time with my sister-in-law. He asked my sister-in-law if he could move in with us (!!!!). He acted like a jackass with her, thinking his extra couple of years made him some kind of authority on life and he was counseling her to do all sorts of stupid things. (funny thing - I didn't find out about some things like this until after they had broken up because my sister-in-law was so embarrassed at his behavior.). He was actually my sister-in-law's second boyfriend and she wasn't looking for anything more than a very innocent relationship and he started talking marriage (I knew about this because he actually approached me about the possibility - not quite asking for her hand in marriage, but telling me that he would like to think about marrying her and having kids some day. I told him she was way too young to consider anything like that and would be for at least the next 10 years, she came here for a reason, to study and have a career instead of being a baby factory, and she is completely on board with all of that - it was her idea to come here to begin with!).
I didn't really like that she was dating a guy who was out of high school - it's hard enough to get her to concentrate on schoolwork just her being among her friends (although she wants a career and all that in the future, she is still, after all, an adolescent!), and dating an older guy was taking her little bit of concentration and disturbing it. But my wife and I were tranquil about it and allowed her to go ahead (in reality, how could we have stopped it if she set her mind to it), with some restraint preached on our side. We even invited him to eat with us often, go to places like PF Chang's in Olivos (at MY expense), etc., trying to make them both feel comfortable.
When she broke off with him because he was too hysterical and dramatic (her words), he begged her for a week to reconsider (turned out they were having a fight the last time we went to PF Changs, while we were outside waiting for a seat, and we didn't even realize it! She didn't want us to invite him that night, but she didn't say anything. Following day she broke up). He started messaging every member of my family (including myself, my wife, and my sister-in-law's younger 15-year-old sister!) asking why she was breaking up with him, alternating between things like "it was such a pleasure to get to know you guys, it's a shame I'll never see you again" to accusing me or my wife that "it's your fault we broke up because you didn't approve of me." He even accused me of improper behavior with my sister-in-law (whom I see as my daughter!) and that was why she broke up with him. Before the end of the supposed week to reconsider, she sent him a message to never contact her again.
This was six months ago. He stalks her from time-to-time, appearing magically near her bus stop when she's going to or coming from school and chatting her up. 5 days ago, he sent a message to my wife's older sister (who just had a beautiful baby boy two days ago!) saying that me and my sister-in-law had better be careful because he just sent a "carta documento" denouncing us (he wouldn't say for what) and he's going to do everything he can to make sure that we are forced to leave the country.
Two nights ago (while my wife's older sister was having her baby!) he sent a text message to her from a phone that didn't have his old number, pretending to be someone else, saying that he was a friend of his and warning my sister-in-law that this guy had denounced us and we had better leave the country, he only wanted to warn her. My wife got hold of her sister's phone and called the number who had sent the message - and it was him!! He sputtered and said "why are you calling me after six months? You guys are harassing me!".
We're thinking about hiring a lawyer to see if there's anything that can be done (I doubt it) about this idiot. Poor girl was in tears for a full day (anger and embarrassment that she dated someone who puts us all through the wringer).
My point in all this is, from what I've seen, it's not just the women who can be hysterical and unbalanced, but the men also.
