The biggest etiquette concern you need to keep in mind as a senior man out in the dating world is quite a few younger women will find you “creepy” if you hit on them. I’m not saying this is right or fair, but it is true.

No matter how normal and natural your attraction to younger women may be, you need to pick your battles when it comes to how, when and with who you express those feelings.

This is especially true online. When you’re pursuing online dating, you need to be extra conscious of the fact you might seem creepy to young women, and you need to take a few steps to make sure you don’t make anyone else’s online dating experience unnecessarily unpleasant.

Do you want to date younger women?

You need to ask yourself this question and answer it honestly before you join your first online dating website.

If you DON’T want to date younger women, you have a couple options at your disposal.

• You can join senior-only dating websites.
• You can search for women within a certain age range.
• You can put in your profile you’re interested in women within that range.
• You can only look at profiles of women within your age range.

This last rule is most important.

Women can see who has looked at their profile, which means if you’re a senior man looking at the profiles of younger women and you don’t really have interest in meeting or going on dates with them, those women are going to feel creeped out, especially if you visit their profiles over and over again.

When you visit the profiles of younger women you’re not seriously interested in, you’re ogling them. There are easier and more polite ways to find pictures of young women to ogle online in a more consensual manner.

You need to be clear and honest.

Not only do you need to be open and upfront about your desire to date younger women with the women you’re interested in, you also need to be honest with yourself about a key component of pursuing your desired romance.

You need to be honest about the fact only a small segment of the young female population will have any interest in dating a man of your age, and you need to seek them out explicitly.

You need to join dating sites that are geared specifically toward setting up relationships with a pronounced age difference.

If you join a general dating site, you need to search for women who state in their profile they are interested in men who fall within your age range.

You need to consider joining a “sugar daddy” sort of website where the women are explicitly seeking financially-oriented relationships, as these women tend to be more open to dating older men such as yourself.

You need to never message a young woman unless you are clear she is explicitly interested in men your age.

There are plenty of great young women out there interested in dating older men, but you need to look for and find them because the young women who are NOT seeking these sorts of relationships will NOT appreciate your advances.

Avoiding those circumstances will take care of 80 percent of the online dating etiquette errors you might make as a senior man.