I’m still on summer semi-hiatus, and will be back to regular posting by August 22.
The following was originally published October 18, 2005.
Gosh, I’m now averaging two letters a week from folks who have found this blog by searching for information about “older men, younger women” on the ‘net. Usually, I get letters from young women who are attracted to older men, or older men defending their interest in younger women, but yesterday’s letter from “Charles” was different. Here’s some of it:
The experience I am going through is a difficult one. I was very closely
involved with a (now) 23 year old for four years. We broke up this past
spring, largely because she was going to attend graduate school in another
country for several years and had not been faithful to me in the past. No
trust meant no relationship anymore, despite my great affection toward her
and bond with her. We still remain friends and I look out for her best interests,
which is why I was so distraught to hear that a 35 year old had
asked her out at a bar and she said yes.
I agree with you that, despite exceptions to the rule, younger women
dating older men is not very healthy. She is a beautiful girl who has no
trouble finding dates, so its not like this is the only opportunity she
has. She doesn’t seem to find it to be a big deal and kind of flippantly
says that guys are five years less mature than their age and girls are
five years more mature, so the ages (in her mind) kind of equal out. But
I have to disagree with that. His formative, adult experiences are much
more developed than hers. If you use the age of 18 as a baseline for
‘adulthood,’ than he’s been an adult about four times longer than she has.
She also has had many of the problems that many young women interested in
older men seem to have, as you alluded to. Her father was almost
completely dysfunctional as a human being and was not a substantive part
of her childhood. She was raped at 13 to lose her virginity and she has
had a breathtaking number of sexual partners in an equally breathtaking
variety of ways, all of whom (with the exceptions of a few close
boyfriends) she didn’t like.
Should I not feel concerned for her? Should I not feel angry toward her?,
because I do. I do not have a problem with her dating and I want her to
be happy, but I am convinced this is not the way to achieve that
happiness.
Charles writes an interesting and heartfelt note, and it’s the sort of thing I’ve heard from other young men on this subject.
First off, there’s nothing wrong with being angry at someone who has cheated on you. Anger, particularly when it is expressed in healthy rather than destructive ways, is a normal response to injury. Once that anger festers into enduring resentment, however, it’s a good deal more problematic.
I’ve known quite a few men who share with Charles what can only be described as a powerful desire to “rescue” damsels in distress. The tell-tale signs of a man with a “knight in shining armor” complex are clear: he “looks out for her best interests”, and he expresses deep — and perhaps justified — anxiety about her early experiences and their impact on her subsequent sexual choices. I’m sure Charles is a very nice young man, and I wish him well. But ultimately, I think he’s having a difficult time separating genuine love and concern from a desire to control!
Many men in our culture find themselves drawn to the role of the Rescuer. With almost military precision, they seek out young women who are emotionally vulnerable and wounded, frequently with backgrounds of sexual abuse. These Rescuers (trust me, I went through this phase “back in the day”), are often men with pro-feminist leanings. They are often eager, as Charles seems to be, to protect women whom they imagine are desperately in need of protection. They are outraged at what other men have done (and may still be doing) to the young woman whom they love.
The Rescuer almost always imagines himself to be different from every other man. While other men (fathers, brothers, exes, strangers) have neglected, betrayed, and taken advantage of “his girl”, the Rescuer believes that he is radically different. In his mind, he doesn’t want to exploit her, he wants to save her. She is his noble cause; loving her (despite her often erratic and self-destructive behavior) helps him to maintain a heroic self-image. Only a very special and valiant man would put up with what he puts up with! Only a really good man could endure the heartache that he does, all for the sake of saving a young woman whom he imagines is incapable of saving herself.
There’s an obvious psychological payoff in this. Playing the part of the Rescuer, the Jungians tell us, connects men to a very old archetype: the Prince Charming, saving Sleeping Beauty (or Rapunzel, or Snow White, or Cinderella) from her captivity. It’s immensely flattering to one’s ego to think of oneself as the faithful Prince, the only one in the world who really sees the damsel in distress for who she truly is! In the modern age, the captivity of the princess is not a drugged sleep (but it may be drugs), and it is not a cage. The captivity is to a past of abuse, and often a present of promiscuity and addiction. Though we all can grieve the former and be concerned about the latter, the Rescuer, as it turns out, usually has a strongly puritanical streak. He is anxious to protect, but he is frequently pretty quick with the judgments. At the end of his letter, Charles writes:
Frankly, I would also be very ashamed that I went out with her and loved
her so much. For whatever this is worth, I think it is very trashy to go
out with an older man. I don’t respect older men who date younger women
and I don’t respect younger women who date older men.
Well, there’s a load of difference between seeing age-disparate relationships as frequently problematic, and seeing them as “trashy” (there’s the Rescuer’s puritanism emerging). Rescuers typically get very angry when, despite what they imagine to be their own extraordinary patience and selflessness, they fail in their goal of transforming the object of their affection. When she continues with her real (or imagined) self-destructive behavior, it invariably reveals the truth: the Rescuer’s rescuing didn’t work. That’s a heckuva blow to a fellow’s self-image, and that disappointment and hurt almost invariably manifests itself in rage (even when tempered with love) at the woman he loves.
Pro-feminist men, it turns out, often struggle with being Rescuers. Indeed, a great many of the pro-feminist men whom I’ve worked with have had to go through this particular stage in their own personal development. Some guys I meet doing anti-sexist work are still very much living out this fantasy. What attracts them to the work we do is the chance to be “different from all the other guys.” Rescuers, as I’ve said before, are often rightly frustrated by the way men treat women in our society. They often come to pro-feminist work because they’ve fallen in love with a woman who has been abused or raped, and they are eager to do something, anything, for her and for other women. That’s as good a reason as any to get involved, of course. But the danger is that these guys sometimes stay stuck in the Rescuer fantasy. They like feeling needed, and they like feeling unique — and often, adopting a pro-feminist guise feeds into that.
Usually, I am happy to say, most aspiring pro-feminist guys work through this need to rescue fairly quickly. The energy they once poured into saving a single damsel in distress now gets put into addressing broader societal problems. They lose the judgments and condemnations, and instead focus their passion on the movement. In their personal lives, they realize that they don’t need to sexualize and romanticize vulnerability and woundedness. They start to find strength, stability and independence to be appealing qualities in prospective partners. They let go of the “need to be needed”, and in due course, they get off their damned white horse and take off the heavy armor.
Pro-feminist men recognize that women are victimized in countless ways in our society. But they draw a clear and bright line between working to end sexism and abuse on the one hand, and eroticizing those who are still suffering the effects of that abuse on the other! Matching one’s language and one’s life means that our romantic and sexual choices reflect our deeply held values. And playing the part of the Rescuer, as enchanting as it is for some of us, is incompatible with authentic male feminism.
I have loads of empathy for Charles. I’ve been where he is. But as much as he doesn’t want to hear it, it’s time for him to let go of this woman he loves. It’s time to ask the hard questions about what he derives from being in relationship with someone so (apparently) fragile. And it’s time to take that love and concern for one woman, and translate it into working for a world where no woman or girl ever has to endure rape or abuse ever again.
Totally with you on this one Hugo, and it doesn’t matter whether a man is pro feminist or not, or what his underlying reasons really are: If you try to rescue a damsel in distress, you end up with a distressed damsel.
I agree as well. I also wanted to point out that there is a parallel role for women, the woman who can “tame” a badboy. She is not seen as a rescuer, but an encantress.
Wow… I’m loving your blog! It is fabulous!
I just have one question for you…
Can we elect you president? :-)
Let me just say it is great to hear from a man who, “gets it!”
Thank you for your contributions and wise words!
Warmest wishes,
Jennifer
I think this is the best post I have read in past 1 week!
You have got me hooked to your great work. Wish you the best! :)
I seem to have a patterned history of this ‘rescuing’ behavior.
The first thing I notice before I pursue a relationship with a woman is the desire to sexual dominate her. All my partners coincidentally have fragile or low self-esteem.
Power issues are the crowning cornerstone of every relationship I brutally end, (or worse the ones I fail to end before things get out of hand).
My current girlfriend complains that I keep myself guarded and remote from her. This seems to fit perfectly with the “knight in armor” allegory. I can’t tell her how I really feel about her - that I look down on her and judge her. Love when it’s convenient, also; hate when it’s convenient. Try to keep it all to myself, especially the love.
I just want to affirm what Hugo has been saying. Why does she feel SO comfortable with someone who can’t stand her, and how do I allow this to continue?
For the same reason you want to be around some one you dont like and have no respect for - she’s emotionally crippled and needs help. You are dancing familiar steps with eachother and as you have observed from your own life experience, it isn’t easy to stop and learn some new ones.
It sounds like you’re trying to work your issues out - good luck with that and keep at it, one day you will have the self worth to be with someone you like.
Forget about her motives, only she can deal with those.
I think leapfrog’s right, Mark.
Why is it, do you think, that you seem to need to lack respect for a woman before you can call her your girlfriend? Are you afraid of being in a relationship of equals? Why does the woman have to be under your thumb? Is it because you don’t feel like much of a man with a woman of equal value by your side? If so, the solution is to find a way to love yourself and value yourself better. Until you do, you will only be “attracted” to women you can kick around, so to speak. But you will never really “love” any of them; they will be around only as long as they shore up your fragile ego. And the sad part is, you will always have plenty to pick from as there is no shortage of women with low self-esteem looking to please a man who treats them like dirt.
You would probably be doing your girlfriend a favor to drop her–not because you don’t think she’s good enough for you but because you realize the only reason you’ve been with her is because you’ve been able to hold her down. But if you don’t tell her why, she’s going to think it’s her fault and just go running off in search of someone else to mistreat her. She may do that anyway, but the least you can do is say you realize you haven’t been doing her any favors and now you realize you have some issues to work out when it comes to women and you have to do it alone. Encourage her to do the same with men, rather than becoming desolate and searching desperately for a new man to please.
The only alternative is to ask yourself whether there is something in her that you really love…something you would love even if she had more money than you, was more successful than you, was better-looking than you and was emotionally capable of telling you to go piss up a rope. If that is so, you owe it to her to try to find a way to love her even when it ISN’T convenient. To let HER be the one with the power sometimes. To be truthful and honest about how you have looked down on her and judged her, and how you now realize that was wrong, and that you want to change it, and part of changing it is encouraging her to change, because part of the reason you don’t respect her properly is that she doesn’t respect herself.
Only by opening yourself up and becoming truly vulnerable can you open yourself up to being truly loved. Love doesn’t have to always be boss.
Deb, you hit the nail on the head in suggesting asking myself if there’s something about her I do love even if she were better off than me. That’s a kicker to realize the difference between pity and envy and to wonder why each can be mislabeled as love.
A lot of what I try to do is literally the opposite of what a good person would do. I don’t want to stand out as a good match from the rest of the pack. I want her to be cared about but I loathe doing the caring, yet as time goes on I find it increasingly less difficult to swallow my insecurity: this relationship is lasting despite my vilest efforts, though the superficial things still burn my ego. And the girl becomes more and more confident I am the one. But no matter how hard she tries to make me see it, I resist. Instead of taking the plunge either way to make-up and go with it, or break up, I remain idle between the benefits of dependency and the doubts of loneliness. I am afraid of failure and success.
And what about love? Sometimes my heart melts, only to burn again.
I’ll have you know we celebrated our six-month anniversary last night and had a lovely time together. Even fucked-up people who know they’re fucked-up can do normal things sometimes. It wasn’t too excruciatingly abysmal, having a good time. Maybe I’ll try it more often.
Mark, I appreciate the honesty in your comments - we only usually hear the woman’s perspective on these things. Good luck.
Same here. It seems like this may be a relationship worth saving. You see that it’s not that you’ve made a bad choice of partner; it’s that you’ve made a bad choice of how to treat her because of your own insecurities.
Maybe what you have to do is spend a lot of time listening to your own feelings and asking yourself: Is what I feel now love or pity? Is what I feel now strength and power, or mere insecure bravado posturing? If I just said something petty to make fun of my girlfriend, why? Did I really want to make her feel bad? Or did I just need to feel good because I was feeling bad about myself?
That would be the first step to recognizing authentic feelings of love, if there are any, and sorting them out from the feelings of pity/superiority/etc. It would also go a long way toward helping you stop dead in your tracks when you find yourself engaging in non-loving behavior designed to prop up your ego.
And yes…try to have more good times! See if you can find a new source of good feelings about yourself that don’t come from putting someone else (her) down, but rather from lifting her UP, making her see how fine she is. After all, if you’re REALLY terrific, don’t you deserve an equally terrific woman?
My 19 year old naive, low-self esteem daughter has been seeing a man 33 years older than her. Yes, he’s 51. I feel like I’m living a nightmare. He has her totally brainwashing into thinking we are the bad ones and he’s the good one. She treats him like he can do no wrong..like an idol. We have tried and tried to get her to see the light as many others have but she thinks of course that everyone is wrong. He’s a narcissist, sociopath, and I know he’s only with her since she does idolize him. He’s never had children himself, and was only married once shortly when he was 21. He’s told her she can do everything on her own, she has basically alientated us from her life. I’m so sad for her. I call her crying, but she doens’t care, and he tells her what to say to me. Any suggestions?? or as many of my friends have convinced my..I guess I have to let her learn on her own since she’s now 19, and doens’t really care about anything I have to say. I HATE HIM…he’s destroying my daughter and she’s blind to it all. Help! Any suggestions??