Tracee Ellis Ross Reveals Why She Prefers Dating Younger Men

It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re a famous actress or an accountant, dating is hard out there. As you get older, it can become even more challenging. Between hectic lives and the majority of interactions often taking place online, meeting someone you want to make part of your life can be tough. For Black Mirror‘s Tracee Ellis Ross, a series of negative encounters with men her age has prompted her to pursue relationships with younger men.

She Admits That She May Be Looking for a ‘Unicorn’

“I do date and it’s a fascinating adventure out there,” Ross told Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson on their IMO podcast. “Mostly though, I think there’s really good men out there. I think to a certain extent, I’m a very unique sort of unicorn of a woman and so it’s gonna take a unique person. And in the meantime, I’ve really learned how to live my life and enjoy it and not sit around waiting.“

“As the three begin talking about Ross’s penchant for dating younger men, she explains that it’s more than because they’re “hot and gorgeous.”

“I want a partner, and it’s not just that I’m older, I’m also very embodied,” Ross said. “I am a full, very whole person. Who knows myself, who is in charge of my life, and who lives a very full, just, robust life. So it’s not just age, it’s like, life experience. It’s sort of a difference.”

“A lot of men my age are steeped in a toxic masculinity and have been raised in a culture where there is a particular way that a relationship looks,” she said. “Anything that starts to smell of that for me—I did enough of it where I was controlled and felt like I was a possession or a prize.”

She doesn’t see that as much with younger men. “There’s an openness that occurs with a younger man,” she said.

She Gets Real About Grieving Being Single and Child-Free

Like many people, Ross says it can be hard to reconcile the things in life that she had hoped for, but haven’t come to pass.

“I did dream of my wedding growing up,” she admitted to the former First Lady and Robinson. “That’s not to say that I didn’t dream of the bigness of my life. But I could’ve spent a lot more time dreaming of my life. As much grief does surface for me around not having children and not having a partner,” she noted, “I still wouldn’t want the wrong partner.”

Despite lamenting what she doesn’t have, she tries to focus on what she wants — and the good she already has in her life. “You have to make my life better. It can’t just be, you know, I’m in a relationship to be in a relationship,” she added. “So even though the grief does emerge and that comes and I hold that, I think of what I’ve done,” she said. “I woke up every morning trying to do my best.”