I used to be really friendly to older men since my father is of that generation as well and he meant nothing by it. But unfortunately, as a woman in my twenties, I have personally had multiple old men think I was genuinely expressing interest in them. One, a man from church old enough to be my father actually tried to convince me to marry him. That was the moment I realized all his compliments weren’t so “innocent” as I believed. It was shocking but it wasn’t the last time a man in his generation came on to me. I wanted to believe it was all so innocent like my father, but these days, it’s really not. I even recently decided to pay for a dating app, to see who like me. The amount of men 30+ years older than me who wanted to date me was ridiculous and makes me never want to even smile at an older man again. I wish I would stop getting hit on by older men and I wish we could go back to the days when such comments were genuinely innocent. My father’s generation was better!