I still get letters about the Older Men, Younger Women topic. A very long one came in last week from a 27 year-old woman, “Elizabeth.” Excerpts:
I wanted to write to ask about my desires to be with older men. I am now 27, and I realize you were more concerned about women in their teens to early twenties, but this desire is nothing new. I have always been attracted to men much older than me (with regards to my age- ie a 5 year difference isn’t a big deal at 27, but when I was 17 and was talking to a 22 year old it was significant). I am wondering if this is a pattern that is a result of being the victim of sexual abuse/molestation? When I was 14 my first sexual experience EVER was with a man who was related thru marriage- an uncle married to one of my mother’s sisters. I would imagine he was in his thirtees at the time, but strangely enough I don’t think I ever felt like I had major issues over the matter. There was nothing obvious. No lingering feelings of guilt, no nightmares. I never think about it, which is why I wonder if my desire to be with older men is my brain’s subliminal way of “fixing” the matter- I have heard of a couple of defense mechanism victims of sexual abuse or rape will employ. One is “identify with aggressor” which I think I may have done for a period during my life.
Elizabeth shares a colorful history of sexual relationships with older men. Her “pattern”, if there is one, is to be in relationships with older men who don’t habitually pursue younger women. As she puts it, she “relished the attention and basked in the glow” that came from men who were, it seems, surprised by her evident interest in them. Elizabeth is now starting “something new” with a man of 53, almost twice her age. He’s interested, but a little stunned by her forthrightness and aggressiveness; she writes that “I enjoy my new man’s flustered reactions.”
Elizabeth isn’t using the men in her life. But she is curious about what by now has become an entrenched pattern, and she’s written largely in search of validation that her intuition about herself is accurate:
I seemed to learn at a young age how to wield and manipulate power using my sexual prowess- so perhaps now although its opposite situation- is it possible that now I am playing on society’s overemphasis on good looks and youth to feel empowered over a man who may feel insecure about the age difference, giving ME the power in the relationship? does this make sense or am I rambling? To simplify, i guess for the abuse I was the victim who was much younger and he was the predator. Now I wonder if I want to feel like I am powerful, that I am the predator and not the victim- but this time feeling empowered over the older man, not victimized?
I’m not a psychologist. But Elizabeth’s insight seems accurate enough, and it certainly rings true with what I’ve seen. I’ve written before of my own sordid history with my students in my early years at PCC. Though most of the students with whom I had affairs were within five years of my age, the last such affair (ten years ago this spring) involved the biggest gap: the student was 19, and I was on the cusp of 31. I was drinking heavily, weeks away from the nearly-successful suicide attempt that nearly ended my life and, instead, enabled me to find a new one. This student was, in some sense, the aggressor. That doesn’t mean she held the power, and her pursuit of me didn’t in any way whatsoever lessen my responsibilty to observe professional and ethical boundaries. This student and I dated for a few weeks until she called things off in disgust; I had started serious self-mutilating and was having what one doc of mine called “micro-psychotic episodes.”
What connects to the Elizabeth story is something this student said to me after the first time we slept together: “You’re not as powerful anymore now that I’ve seen you naked.” I asked what she meant, though I thought I already had a good idea, and she said: “I had you on this pedestal as my professor, and I wanted to sleep with you very badly. Not just for the sex, but because I knew that if I could sleep with you I could take some of that power away from you and get if for myself.” It was an extraordinarily insightful thing to say, and though I considered myself at the apex of my jadedness, I was rocked to hear this from the partner with whom I had had the greatest age disparity of my life. I was hardly unaware of the way in which people use sex to transfer power, but to hear it so expressed with such naked candor stunned me. She was the last student with whom I ever crossed that boundary that ought never be crossed.
We do live in a society, as Elizabeth points out, that encourages young women to see their sexual attractiveness as social currency. And as she makes clear in her lengthy e-mail, the awareness of newfound sexual power can sometimes be intoxicating, particularly for those who have experienced sexual violation in childhood or young adulthood. This doesn’t mean I’m falling for that old trap of pathologizing female sexual agency, or asserting that every young woman who pursues an older man is “working out her issues.” People’s mileage varies, but it seems clear that at least some of the time, feeling “like a predator” (Elizabeth’s words) can be empowering and healing for a woman who has had so much experience feeling like a victim. (Obviously, it’s a bad idea to use the language of predator and victim to describe the relationship between a sexually aggressive young woman over 18 and an older man. The vocabulary used for the sexual exploitation of children by adults ought to be kept separate from that used to describe consensual sex.)
I’ve repeatedly decried the practice by which some older men use younger women as yardsticks with which to measure their continued potency. I’m more reluctant to judge the tendency of young women like Elizabeth to discover their sexual agency through pursuing older, and presumably more powerful men. This isn’t reverse sexism on my part so much as it is a tendency to hold those who are older to a higher standard of behavior; ageing carries with it an obligation to learn something! I’m also aware that most men who regularly pursue younger women aren’t doing it to heal themselves of deep psychic injuries; they do it because of social cachet, or because they want to prove that their desirability hasn’t vanished, or they want a fountain of youth, or they are intimidated by the more significant demands of their female peers. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Elizabeth.
For a perhaps not insignificant number of young women, one response to a feeling of powerlessness is a desire to “turn the tables” using their sexuality. The last student I ever had an affair with made it clear that seeing me naked, (literally) stripped, was both gratifying and empowering. What had once seemed formidable and intimidating was now vulnerable and eminently human. Though to the best of my knowledge, this student soon resumed dating her male peers, when I made amends to her some time later, she laughed it off, saying “Hugo, you had your part — and I had mine. I learned a lot from what we did. I still think you were weak for sleeping with me and I’m glad you’ve changed your life. But I got something out of this too, something I guess I needed.” I told her I knew what she meant.
It’s an egregious and sexist overgeneralization to say, as more than one observer of the human condition has, that “men use their power to dominate and women use their weakness to manipulate.” A lot gets missed when we start to buy into that. But by the same token, it is true that we raise a great many young women to believe that the one source of power that is truly (if awkwardly) theirs is their sexual desirability. The hyper-competitiveness and insecurity that is so common in adolescent culture encourages some young women to “test” that desirability. While attracting their male peers might seem an easy task, attracting an older man — particularly one in a position of authority or power — gets set up as more of a challenge. Indeed, some particularly unsavory older fellows take advantage of this very dynamic, subtly appealing to young women’s desire for validation. Deliberately feigning surprise and wonder and gratitude is a very clever and, as I know from bitter experience, commonly successful tactic!
Sex can mean many things at different stages of our life, In the end, of course, the best sex is not that which we use to heal old wounds, soothe our anxieties, or prove our worth. I think there’s a case that age-disparate relationships, particularly when the younger partner is in his or her teens or twenties, are inadvisable for many reasons. But the complicated truth is that we can find some measure of redemption and healing — as well as pleasure — in relationships that are transgressive and asymmetrical. That doesn’t make these relationships right, and doesn’t for a second mitigate the obligation of the older men involved to avoid sexual relationships with much younger women, but it does mean that we can acknowledge the potential for good and for growth that may lie within these age and power-disparate connections. And it seems clear that for some young women, like Elizabeth and a student I knew many years ago, the chance to feel assertive in a sexual relationship with a much older man can bring a much-needed and much-welcomed sense of deep and enduring power.
Hey Hugo,
this is, once again, one of the posts that leave me wondering, so what’s his point? It’s always wrong even though its consensual, but it can be valuable at times to everyone involved? Sorry, I’m lost.
I’m sorry. You had consensual sex and she later slaps *you* for it? Why are *you* weak? Why not *her*? You *say*
But I have a hard time following that argument. Why? Why would ageing carry any *obligation* with respect to wisdom? Most people will never get wise, and those who do will endless quarrel about what actually constitutes wisdom. Every relationship has power differentials, and usually a couple of them, as they are multifaceted, as are most relationships. And most relationships find a power equilibrium over time. He puts on weight, she stops putting on the make up he likes, and so on. Single dimensional “Power” is, I believe, usually a weak residual concept invoked for lack of other arguments. What does power even mean here? What power does someone wield because of age? Or beauty?
Sure, a lot of older, poor, and particularly unattractive men find it stunningly easy to attract beautiful young women just because they need to be validated by an older man. Have you read “The Game”??? Maybe age isn’t actually the variable women are attracted to, but something that *can* - but doesn’t have to - come with age. Confidence, status, money - and, possibly - as we’re on your blog -, self awareness. And while it’s terribly politically incorrect for women to be attracted to men for all those reasons, yes, then it may be a challenge for the women to pursue such a man, just as it may be a challenge for the men to sustain the younger women’s interests. Wow, there’s a possibilty for a relationship that could make both parties grow. Must be forbidden … ;)
Sam, I am glad that you’ve become a loyal reader, but your comments are all essentially the same: you have some fundamental problems with the way in which I conceive of and write about gender. That’s fine, and you’re welcome to keep commenting and keep reading, but I can only explain again and again that the same event or activity can have multiple levels of meaning. That’s not academic theory, it’s life.
Something can feel pleasurable and also be hurtful (think of an abuser stimulating a child). Something can be liberating and also unethical (think of escaping a stifling marriage in an extramarital affair). Neither cancels out the other.
The comment about my being weak was accurate; I was a professor of nearly 31 crossing an ethical boundary to have sex with a teenager. What she called “weak” I would call simply “wrong”, as I acted less out of the inability to make a different choice than out of a obstinate and willful desire. In the teacher- student relationship, the onus to maintain proper boundaries falls largely on the teacher, not the student.
Hugo,
I do indeed enjoy reading your blog. I don’t come here because I find things to object to, but because I find a perspective I think is unusual and partly challenging my preconceptions, which I value. I hope that, every now and then, one of my comments may have the same effect.
In this case - as long as we’re talking about consensual relationships between adults - I just believe that the “duty” and “hedonism” labels are unfair, precisely for the fact that things can have multiple meanings.
Of course, I can’t tell you what was or was not wrong with respect to your relationship with that student. The fact that the onus to maintain proper boundaries falls largely on the teacher - reasonably so for professional reasons - does not imply in any way that such a relationship is also morally wrong.
Did you ever see the episodes of Friends where “Ross dates a student” - followed by Rachel dating her father (Bruce Willis). Maybe an interesting “case” study ;) about assumed “power” in such a relationship.
I am in year 9 of a relationship that started when I was 27 and my husband was 53. He is convinced that part of the initial attraction from my end was a base contrarian sensibility. He thinks that I was attracted to him because those around me would be appalled at my choice. I appear to be very conventional on the surface (middle class, librarian), but am not mainstream past the surface (atheist, feminist, social liberal, fiscal conservative).
Consciously my attraction was based on the fact that he was different than males my peer. He was interested and attentive, and I was able to be myself without censure. Clearly, my situation was and is different that the woman who wrote to you, but I was also aware of the comparison effect. People didn’t wonder why he was with me, they wondered why I was with him. For someone of average looks, it was a bit of a kick to be the attractive one in a relationship. The best part of all of it is that we talked, and still talk about everything, including the aspects of ourselves and our relationship that aren’t so admirable, logical, or socially acceptable. For good or ill, I was never able to be that honest with younger men. My previous attempts at honesty in more age analogous relationships ended with fights and hard feelings. Of course, that may be because my skill at being honest without being brutal was not well developed.
The smartest thing my husband ever said to me was “my mate is not my enemy”. My experience of relationships with my peers didn’t always play out to that standard.
Hugo, I affirm the obligation to behave ethically where real power imbalances exits, and I affirm your perception that you have an obligation not to sleep with your students. In fact, within our shared religious and ethical context, I affirm your sense of obligation to avoid wanting to sleep with them or fantasize about sleeping with them.
You and I part company on an ethical boundaries issue. I see the right to judge bounded by the same boundaries as any other human activity. That means I regard the statement, whether made internally or externally, that I have no right to judge as an essential acknowledgement of the bounds on what I may do, no less than any of the other boudaries I observe. Those bounds include the responsibility to present, to myself or anyone else, a coherent moral basis for any judgments I make. This applies both to the breadth of my judgments: I accept that, based on history or privilege, I have no right to judge certain people, the substance of my judgments, and the consistency of my judgments. I do not perceive the same respect for boundaries in what you write, particularly on this issue.
How do we affirm ethical behavior, John, without judging those who willfully and repeatedly behave unethically? My “history and privilege” played a part in an abuse of power on my part, for which I was rightly judged by others as well as myself. If someone engages in the same behavior I once did — a misuse of privilege — I’m going to judge them. Not condemn them, but challenge them to behave differently.
The same way we do any other good and appropriate think in our lives, Hugo: with respect for the appropriate boundaries. We don’t have the standing to judge everything and everyone. Respect for boundaries means asking ourselves that question when we make judgements. When you judge a colleague for abusing their power, I accept your standing to make that judgment. When you write:
you implicitly assert a right to judge all 3+ billion men on this planet. When try to you make such a universal judgment, I think you violate important boundaries: cultural, class, and personal.
John, I don’t feel as bound as you do to cultural relativism. For example, I judge female genital mutilation to always and everywhere be wrong. Infibulation and clitoridectomies are fundamentally bad things, and those who perpetuate the practice — regardless of the reason — are engaged in an evil activity. And I’ve said what I’ve said about older men/younger women relationships again and again with considerably more nuance, but with a general predisposition that age-disparate relationships are not the ideal.
But you and I have had this disagreement many times. Epistemic gulf and all that.
Hugo, I regard that as diversionary and a very bad argument. Mutilating a child with the intention of preventing her from experiencing sexual pleasure perpetrates one of the most violent assaults possible, and I see no similarity whatsoever between that and entering into a consensual relationship with an adult. If you think I have reservations about judging where I have a clear basis to do so, please read what I wrote again.
When I speak of boundaries, I mean those who claim to judge others ought to have a solid logical and moral basis to judge. When you judge a professor sleeping with a student, I think you have such a basis; people entrusted with power ought not to violate it by having sex with people they exrecise power over. That violates trust and equality But when you try to make a universal statement about consensual relationships between adults, then I think you cross a line. I don’t think you have a sufficient basis to pass judgment.
Hugo to judge something as being fundamentally wrong is to also assume that you know what is fundamentally right. I don’t think that anybody can accurately assume that they know unquestionably what the truth is. You may know for yourself and for those close to you but to make a grand generalization about people that you essentially nothing about is risky. In regards to an ideal I argue the same, what is ideal in your head is what is ideal for you but possibly not for another
“those who perpetuate the practice — regardless of the reason — are engaged in an evil activity.”
An evil activity? You may see all kinds of negative and inhuman associations with the practice or with how it has been performed under some circumstances but to say that someone else’s cultural practices are evil is arrogant. Generalizations are dangerous.
Sorry, Elizabeth. I am willing to adopt absolutes: putting people in gas chambers is always and everywhere wrong. Cutting off little girls’ clitorises is always and everywhere evil. The people who do it may not be evil, but their actions are. If that’s arrogance, I am delighted to plead guilty to the charge.
Arrogance in the defense of the principle of bodily autonomy, to borrow from Goldwater, is no vice.
John Spragge, this is your cue to lament my cultural chauvinism…
Oh, and yeah, I just lost the argument. No need to tell me. Godwin’s Law…
Hugo, I wish you would read what I write before telling me what you expect to me to say. Specifically, I wrote:
Just for the record, when I wrote that, I did not intend to class female genital mutilation as a harmless cultural practice. It violates a universally held moral precepts: the concept of individual autonomy (from which the concept of cultural autonomy derives).
Cultural chauvanism does not consist of believing that universal moral values exist, it consists of the unexamined belief that your particular culture best exemplifies these values. And in this case, I do not think your cultural chauvanism has much to do with the issue. It has to do with your claim to make a sweeping moral judgment with very little universal basis that I can see.
I could understand your point Hugo if I could also understand where your absolutes begin and where they end. Not to drift but many different cultures have many different rituals that involve mutilation of the body. Where does the evil begin? And male circumcision, what about that? Absolutes don’t deal with the gray area, which is twice the size of the black and of the white. By saying that something is absolutely wrong, in a way, your similar to those who say that it is absolutely right.
“Just for the record, when I wrote that, I did not intend to class female genital mutilation as a harmless cultural practice. It violates a universally held moral precepts: the concept of individual autonomy (from which the concept of cultural autonomy derives).”
How do you know it’s universally held? The evidence of it still being a widespread practice doesn’t suggest that it is a universally held moral precept. And for the record, I think it a pretty evil practice and I absolutely disagree with it.
“Mutilating a child with the intention of preventing her from experiencing sexual pleasure perpetrates one of the most violent assaults possible…”
Also John, the practice is not confined to children only. It is also done to teenagers.
“It violates a universally held moral precepts: the concept of individual autonomy (from which the concept of cultural autonomy derives).”
Has every culture, really, a concept of individual autonomy? That seems a very Western way of looking at things… when, if we were to be “culturally relatavistic” we would realize that there are cultures in which individuals, particularly young and female individuals, are not considered to have the nearly the level of “individual autonomy” that they are in ours. Family bonds, for example, are different and power plays out in different ways. Perhaps one could prove that there is a “base level” of individual autonomy granted to all which differs along a sliding scale.
I don’t wish to *ethically* compare FGM and male circumcision, for example, but they are generally practiced on young children *precisely because* young children are not always seen to have a level of bodily autonomy that renders them immune to “harmless” or “necessary” body modification practiced upon them by their families.
I suppose I would argue about “individual autonomy” being a universally held moral precept both in theory (”Of course we have the right to beat my children/modify their bodies/dictate whom they marry”) and in practice (”We have the right, and we do so”).
I’d argue that the societies and individuals that practise, or defend, female genital mutilation do not hold a consistent belief that the powerful have unlimited rights over the bodies or the lives of the less powerful. If you want to experiment with that, try defending the African slave trade or colonialism to someone who accepts female genital mutilation; each of these gross rights violations has remarkably similar arguments to support it. You may disagree with that, but I think I can make a pretty good argument for the similarity of the principles involved.
These principles do not, as far as I can tell, support anyone who wants to judge relationships between consenting adults solely on the basis of the age of the participants (please note the word “adults”; I do not refer to people under the age of majority here).
Jeez… FGM is the knew Hitler for Godwins law….
I think that people make a good point that Age disparate relationships don’t fit into an absolute of right and wrong. it a situation where Both parties can benefit.
I find that I have trouble finding people I like enough to date in general. if I get along with someone older or younger I’m going to go for it. It might be another 4 years until I meet someone I can stand for more than a period of 3 months.
When I was 18 I dated a 26 year old. but many of my friends were older than that at the time. Who was I going to meet? We really matched each other intellectually and could talk for hours on end, and we were attracted to each other. It was what I needed at the time. I felt attractive for the first time in my life.
I think it is very likely I will date some older men (I’m 24 now). I’m a nudist. Not very many young men are also nudists. If I want someone to share that with I’m going to end up with someone in their 30s at least possibly early 40s. But I’ve also Had affairs with men a few years younger.
I think the big issue is if an older man is dating a younger woman Simply because she is Younger. Then he is seeing her as a part and not a whole. Same goes for the woman if she is dating a guy simply for his age. Same goes for any issue instead of seeing the individual as a full human. (money, age, position in society)
It does bother me to hear an absolute put on such an issue. Why should you judge who I might fall in love with?
Nakedthoughts,
Hugo wrties:
I’ve repeatedly decried the practice by which some older men use younger women as yardsticks with which to measure their continued potency. I’m more reluctant to judge the tendency of young women like Elizabeth to discover their sexual agency through pursuing older, and presumably more powerful men.” He also writes, “I’m also aware that most men who regularly pursue younger women aren’t doing it to heal themselves of deep psychic injuries; they do it because of social cachet, or because they want to prove that their desirability hasn’t vanished, or they want a fountain of youth, or they are intimidated by the more significant demands of their female peers.”
I don’t see his comments are putting an absolute on the issue. Did you read the entire blog or his other concerning the same issue?
Reading this entry was like looking in the mirror. I am also 27 and was abused sexually as a child. In addition, my father (who was not the man who molested me) was quite verbally and physically abusive. He once threw me out of a moving vehicle as a teen and told me to never show my face at home again.
I have no sexual interest in men my own age and find myself drawn to much older men. My current lover is more than 33 years older than me. I don’t know why I am drawn to older men…I just am! I know I am an attractive woman…been told I am very beautiful…but my sense of self is so warped that I don’t believe it…and continue to pursue relationships that will never amount to anything except a broken heart. I am deeply in love with my current boyfriend and it breaks my heart because I know it will never work out in the long run. I desire marriage and kids but have absolutely NO sexual attraction to men my own age. My therapist seems to think I am seeking protection and a father figure. I don’t know…I cannot pyschoanalyze myself. All I know is that something inside me is terrible, irrevocably broken…and I don’t know how to fix it.
Emma,
I too tend to think that many older man/younger women relationships are about women seeking protection and a father figure (I know there are exceptions). Verbal and physical abuse from a father and a man sexually abusing a child–that is sexual victimization, which is a quick route to powerlessnesss through the process of objectification. Being objectified and the experience of powerlessness is a terrible teacher, and its lessons are long-lasting. People joke about therapy, but I think seeing a qualified therapist is a very positive step towards self-understanding and healing. I wish you well with that.