"Coo, coo ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson. Look what you started.Older women pairing up with younger men is becoming mainstream, barely raising eyebrows as older women find themselves attracted to men sometimes young enough to be their sons. All those baby boomer girls who watched Anne Bancroft seduce Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 film The Graduate are middle-age and trying out May-December relationships for themselves Younger guys are more fun,.. said Mary Walsh, 59, a single woman a nurse.
A 2003 AARP survey on sexuality among single Americans ages 40 to 69 found that 35 percent of women want to date younger men, and 34 percent are. Three percent of women date men 15 or more years younger, 5 percent date men 10 to 14 years younger, and 11 percent date men 5 to 9 years younger.
There's a manual for such women. Valerie Gibson, author and sex/relationships columnist titled her guide for older women dating younger men (Cougar). Once a derogatory term for the stereotypical older woman trying too hard to look sexy and available to younger men, cougar no longer implies an unsavory predator, Gibson said:
A cougar is a animal: sleek, powerful and in control. It's an important trend, it's a significant trend, said Duffy Spencer, a social psychologist on Long Island, N.Y., and host of the radio talk show Just Relationships. It makes male-female relationships topsy-turvy. It turns everything on end. In the past, women tended to hook up with men their age or older.
This is moderating, said Pepper Schwartz, a professor in the sociology department at the University of Washington in Seattle. Women are are staying sexual into old age. They may have careers or not, this don't seem to matter to the younger men that want to be with them. They (older women) bring something to the relationship, Schwartz said.
Their antennas are out, said psychotherapist Marjorie Schulte said. Women are feeling like, Hey, I look great and I can be with this young pup who turns me on, Schulte said.
A Cougar is no pussycat Gibson considers herself a pioneering cougar. In her late 50s or early 60s (she declines to give her age), Gibson said being a cougar is an attitude, not a number. Not all older women dating younger men are cougars, she said. It doesn't really count if you are in your late 20s or 30s because it's experience and wisdom that makes a cougar a cougar, she said. Over-45 (women) have strength and lots of lust for pleasure and sex. If you're 50-plus and had children your children should be grown by now, and you want to find fun for you now. Commitment also distinguishes cougars, they are interested in permanent relationships. They want to have fun and good-sex with a good-looking younger guy on their own terms, or just play the field with many young studs, because they are older now they don't care about rules just pleasure to enjoy now for them Gibson said. It's what men have done for years.
Susan Swartz, a relationship columnist for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in northern California and author of (The Juicy Tomatoes Guide to Ripe Living After 50) said age isn't the bugaboo it used to be. We have choices. And we think we should have as many choices as men, she said. And as baby boomer women enter their 50s and 60s, no one is going to tell them what to do. This generation of women are not going to say, You don't get to do that, said Swartz, 61, they're going to keep pushing (the boundaries) to have as much fun as they want, and with who they want as long as he is of legal age.
Older Women who are comfortable dating or even marrying a younger male partner feel more attractive and self-confident and sexy with them. Many describe themselves as not looking their age. Psychologist Spencer cites a survey showing that alot of men prefer older women to plain-Jane younger ones. Together. Of the younger guys Dagen has dated, age has never been a concern. No one's had a problem with it, she said. She enjoys teaching the men a few tricks in the bedroom.
Sex with a younger man, John C. Lincoln nurse Walsh said, is enticing. In addition to bedroom vigor, he brings to the relationship vitality, zest for life, (an) energy level. Older men, she said, can't keep up with her. Sex is no longer just about producing children,
Spencer said. Older women can choose partners just for fun, if they want now. We've moved from procreational sex to recreational sex, she said. It's a myth that men and women peak sexually at different ages, psychotherapist
Schulte said. It has been thought that a woman matures physically later than a man and is more compatible with a partner her junior. Eroticism and turn-ons have a lot more to do with pheromones, trust-level with each other than age, Schulte said. Age is just one of the determining factors. Physically, the genders mature at the same rate. Women lag behind culturally.
Said Spencer, It takes a woman to a certain age for all her sexual inhibitions to be unlearned. It's that more relaxed, reality-based attitude that younger men find refreshing and seductive.
Cougar author Gibson said. You know what you want, and you know how to get it, she said. Older women are more honest and more open, and more willing to stay true to her mate, and if it's not rockets and roses today, that's OK. It will be, because she knows how to turn him around to her way in bed and most younger men are more then willing to return the pleasure too.
Sexual attraction Steve Taniguchi, 42, said it was older women's sexual experience that initially attracted him in his early 20s and 30s. For younger men, it (dating older women) is like a rite of passage. There's more experience and more freedom, but as you (men) get older it's not so much that anymore, said Taniguchi age 42, who has been in a relationship for five years with Colleen Hayes, a 58-year-old grandmother.When there is a wide age gap in a relationship, it can be difficult for couples to enjoy being together,
Schwartz said, but that can work to a woman's advantage. Although her gender might traditionally be a disadvantage, her age and experience balance it out, if not tip the scales in her favor. Younger men see her as a partner.
Said Gibson, whose last husband was 14 years her junior. Older-Male peers often don't see women as equals. Older men find wanting women their age who want to have lots of sex emasculating. . . . A younger man, he'll applaud an older woman's her hunger for the bedroom. He'll celebrate them times she wants to share them with him.
It's their very lust for life, that makes older women attractive to younger men, says James Basel, editor in chief of askmen.com, Basel is 28 years old. He said there has been a steady appetite for information about finding and dating older women. Sexual experience is part of the allure, but the independence factor is also critical, Basel said. Older women have more of a male view (of relationships). They don't romanticize relationships anymore. They know the reality of relationships. She recognizes they are ephemeral . . . And she doesn't need her man to define her, just please her in bed.
Social taboos Susan Winter, New York author of Older Women, Younger Men, finds the taboos against these May-December relationships rapidly disappearing.
But Gibson and Swartz said they remain, especially in Canada and some small areas of the United States like the Midwest and the South. There's a kernel of resentment/condemnation even now, Gibson said. Older women having sex with younger men, it just didn't go down. An older woman shouldn't be sexual. She should be wrapped in a shawl and be knitting booties for the grandkids. Even though baby boomers as a generation have debunked many social mores, eliminating the raised eyebrow when an older woman pairs with a younger man will take lots of time, Gibson said. Even baby boomers are not going to overcome that overnight. The double standard still exists. It may not be as harsh or as condemning, but it remains, Gibson said.What's the future for these relationships? Some are very long and end up in marraige till one of them dies, then some of them are just a short duration but fun while it lasted.
Schwartz said. Sex might be the initial spark that brings two people together, but it can't go the distance, no matter how old you are or even if you dated some your own age it slows down after awhile of being together. There has to be something else. What usually breaks up the couple is the man's desire to move on with his career or to start a family, and the sad part is the older women gets hurt and feels left again for a younger women. Even tho in the beginning this was the farthest thing from his mind, he just wanted you with him to make him happen. An older woman might have already raised hers and isn't game to try again.
Taniguchi, a Chandler resident who supervises Frederick's of Hollywood's call center, said it was the baby issue that ended his relationship of 5-years with a woman 12 years his senior.She had raised two children and wouldn't consider having more. It's one of the reasons he moved on he suddenly wanted a child as he was nearing 40. And she couldn't have anymore, which tore their relationship apart because she couldn't give him a child, Tanigchi said he feels sad that they broke it off he will miss her badly, and wishes their would of been some way they could of worked it out for both of them to be happy, but it was over so I moved on. Sad part is it was the worse mistake I ever made, because I still haven't found someone I feel close to like I did her.
Winter, 51, says her former boyfriend's mother sabotaged their relationship, because she felt I was to old for him to want to marry, so she did everything she could to set him up with younger women while we were dating..
But final note to this story alot of May-December couples do click and take a trip down the aisle and stay together till one of the dies, and didn't care what family or friends thought, because they were happy together."
