Older Men...

Last week I was sat listening to a friend discuss her love life. She told me that she was dating someone in his forties, late forties, nearing fifty actually. She’s roughly my age – 21. Her boyfriend is older than my father.

I never considered myself prudish or unbelieving in love. After all my walls have a Gone with the Wind poster on them, I’ve read and enjoyed (a few) Mills and Boon, and one of my favorite plays in Romeo and Juliet, so I firmly believe in the impossibility of romance and want to know that it could conquer all. Well nearly all…

Be that as it may when I discover that many of my friends are out there – dating, sleeping with and even recently conceiving a child with much older blokes, I start to question this rose tinted version of romance that I have. Is this just a normal activity, and I’m being over sensitive…. I mean are there always a certain number of young women who would rather date much older men? Or perhaps women nowadays are being pursued by older men… what’s really going on, that one makes us want to date blokes old enough to be our dads and two, makes these guys think its okay to pursue females that are so much younger than themselves…

Are we becoming rather overly sexualized or programmed to be attracted towards older men? Perhaps is it just preferable to the younger possibilities that face women of my generation? (Certainly considering some of the guys that I know, of my age; lets just say any change would be welcome!) Perhaps it’s the desire of the female species to want a richer ‘protective’ man who can definitely look after us….

I’m sure that the older man fantasy exists for many young women - George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr… etc but they are figments of the imagination – they’re not real. You can also fudge the age somewhat. Considering I have DVDs featuring Johnny Depp at about my age (they are truly terrible! Benny and Joone - frightful) age becomes immaterial and adaptable. My point is this…. I can separate my fantasy of some charming older man, who is experienced, probably well off, mature and dashing. But the reality is this, the men who are twenty or even thirty years older, who are hitting on women my age – I wouldn’t want to date them.

Because basically if a man approached me in a bar, and it was obvious he was say – about forty – I’d think to myself ‘what the **** is wrong with him?’ this is not a confidence issue on my part, because I’d think the same thing if he started chatting up a friend of mine. I’d think this, and then I’d concluded that they need the confirmation or validation of dating someone young enough to be their daughter. I wonder why they’ve not grown up, out of there twenties and all that it involves – silly sex, drinking till 4, too many parties, and essay deadlines – where’s their maturity that they still want this? And why are they so incapable of maintaining a relationship with a woman their own age? That’s why I’d not hand over my number to someone twice my age…

If they’ve interested in a relationship with a girl some much younger than themselves, they are probably attempting to regain their lost youth – rather like Henry VIII and Catherine Howard, and we all know how well that turned out – so what would be the appeal in dating someone like that for my generation? After all the reasons why women my age want old men is for maturity, not for someone who wants to stay up till 4 drinking and discussing the meaning of life….

Reality therefore shows that we’d have little in common and I suspect very few similar goals. What would be the appeal?

The more I learn about my friends’ love lives the more I see that many of them do, err… dapple, flirt with and even sleep with older men (some of the married…) is this my friends’ fault or the more mature and responsible adult? Or maybe it’s both of theirs?

I actually do have a solution – STOP BELIEVING IN THE FANTASY. This goes for both the older man, and younger woman.

Men –

The women who are young enough to be your daughter’s are just as needy, talkative and opinionated as the women of your own generation. If you really need to sink to the junior league then you’re a tad sad, really… Considering the number of women who I know, who are older – in their thirties, forties and fifties, many of whom hold down jobs, raise families, pay mortgages etc… few of them need to satisfy their insecurities by sleeping with their son’s friends, why is it ok for men to do it? And worse for many of us to write it off as sexy?

Women –

An older man – someone who is mature, knowledgeable (in the bedroom) and not afraid to commit – this is a FANTASY. Because if a bloke is mature, sensible, kind, good in the sack, and interesting he probably has a wife or girlfriend roughly his own age and doesn’t need to pawn at his daughter’s mates. He cannot be both the wonderful man, and alluring charmer – that would be a complete contradiction.

Leila (name completely made up) – the one whose has the much older partner, said that who is to judge the complexities of love – who has the right to say 'that it shouldn’t be'? She states that she loves him, and feels that they belong together. I agreed that I’d be more open minded, until she told me that’s so curious about guys our age, about finding things out on her own as an individual, of all the normal things that a young adult should want…. Yet she can’t because she’s living with him. That isn’t fair, not at all.

I know she thinks its love and up to a certain point I can see her viewpoint… freedom of choice but in reality she doesn’t have that… he picked her up at thirteen and the relationship ‘blossomed’ from there… there’s no choice in that. After all, we in society, don’t let those of thirteen vote, take exams, marry and yet my friend has walled herself into a decision which is virtually impossible to climb out of – because of a daft fantasy.

There’s a line, which you shouldn’t go over. And to put it bluntly if I knew my daughter was sleeping with a man older than her father… I’d probably castrate him, regardless of civil liberties and polite behavior… and I half wish that is what Lelia’s parents had done!