Got an email a week or so ago from “Dana”:
I am 40, single and loving it. I am not ready to settle down yet but I realized a while ago that I am starting on that path. I look much younger than I am. Most people think I’m in my 20’s (Thank you Mom and Dad!) and both my age and the way I look have had some interesting effects. Over the past few years I’ve found it harder and harder to find men my age who want a romantic relationship with a woman *my* age. They all seem to want that young under-30 type of woman. I’m at the point where almost all the men I date are 10+ years younger than I am! In general, I have no problem with it (or the opposite scenario). I get along fabulously with people (male or female) who are younger than I am, but I do find the generation gap (and there is one!) to be somewhat irritating at times. They’re fun to date but I can’t imagine settling down with someone who lacks so much life experience. I have no desire to be anyone’s mother or babysitter.
I had a similar conversation recently with an old friend, my age (and Dana’s). Single again after a twelve-year marriage, she’s recently been repeatedly “hit on” by her daughter’s soccer coach — a handsome lad in his late twenties, well over a decade her junior. My friend is flattered and physically attracted, but said essentially the same thing Dana did: she has no desire to be anyone’s mother, teacher, or babysitter. “I’m not here to give anyone experience”, she says.
Because I post so often on older men, younger women, I periodically get notes asking me to address the reverse: older women, younger men. There are a number of reasons I don’t post on the subject. I work as a college professor and a volunteer youth minister. Over the years, I’ve heard countless stories from high school girls and traditionally college-aged women about their experiences of being pursued by, approached by, ogled by, harrassed by, older men. I’ve worked with many young women who, in their teens or early twenties, had sexual relationships with substantially older men. Though a handful tend to interpret their experiences positively, most — with hindsight — deeply regretted their premature sexualization by much older males.
On the other hand, in all my years of teaching and youth ministry, I’ve only known one teen boy who was sexually involved with an older woman (when their relationship began, he was 17 and she was nearly 30). He only told me about the relationship after he had turned 18. This woman had pursued him (he was a charming, almost unnaturally graceful adolescent, and very handsome) after meeting him in a church setting, and they had had an intense sexual and emotional relationship until he moved away to college. The last time I spoke with him about it, he was deeply conflicted about what had happened, but still at least somewhat in love with the woman who had seduced him.
Bottom line: I don’t see older women pursuing young men at the same rate that I see the reverse. My primary concern has been for substantial age gaps in which the younger partner is in their teens or twenties. In theory, I’ve got as much objection to a 17 year-old boy having a sexual relationship with a 30 year-old woman as I do to the reverse; on the other hand, despite the frenzied tabloid coverage of the Mary Kay Letourneau’s of the world, most evidence tends to suggest that younger men/older women relationships are comparatively rare.
We don’t live in a culture that teaches older women to sexualize teenage boys. Very few teen boys have had the experience that their sisters have had, of having a car filled with middle-aged women pull up alongside them, with the women inside making obscene suggestions. And while I don’t doubt for a second that there are plenty of women in their thirties or forties who find a nicely muscled adolescent male to be visually appealing, I think there’s a substantial (and in this case, welcome) social pressure against an older woman making advances on a younger man. Older men all-too-frequently bond with each other while rhapsodizing about “jail bait”; while older women may joke briefly about a hot high school lifeguard, it’s very unlikely that a woman who did seriously want to pursue an adolescent boy would get much in the way of social support from her peers.
Of course, there’s a colossal difference between a 40 year-old woman dating a 28 year-old man and a 30 year-old woman dating an 18 year-old boy. The meaning of an age gap is largely dependent on the age of the younger party in the relationship; the older he or she is, the less significant the disparity and the lower the likelihood of abuse. If my friend wants to date her daughter’s soccer coach, or Dana wants to date a fellow too young to remember disco, that’s not a similar ethical problem to pursuing an adolescent.
What I find so striking about both my friend and Dana is that they are uninterested in and indeed actively opposed to, taking on the role of teacher. And therein lies what I think is the most significant difference between older men/younger women and older women/younger men relationships. We live in a society where we teach older men to eroticize the role of mentor and teacher; both in pop culture and real life, we send men the message that to be a woman’s “first” (or, more likely, her “first” who knows what he’s doing) is a sublime delight. The fantasy of serving as both father figure and lover, as grotesque and incestuous as it sounds, is inscribed on the psyche of the European-American male by everyone from Shaw to Nabokov. Far fewer women long to serve as teachers and initiatiors. This might be because they’ve been socialized not to fantasize about younger men, but I think there’s more to it than that. It’s not that grown women can’t have voracious libidos, nor is it that too many American women are uncomfortable with power.
The real issue is the simple and obvious one: most grown women already do plenty of teaching and care-giving and hand-holding within their families and their workplaces. Even those who are not mothers have probably spent a great deal of time doing for others what they cannot or will not do for themselves. The idea of extending that to a romantic and sexual relationship as well is, understandably, a less than exciting prospect. We live in a culture, after all, where many young men turn their own adolescence into a quarter-century project. And while younger men may be more receptive to egalitarianism, and while they may have firmer bodies, they are all too likely to be carrying around a heavy dose of post-adolescent anxiety about their lives. Many — too many — are “waiting to be struck by certainty” about what to do with themselves. And for most women, I’d venture to say that helping a man figure out what the hell he wants doesn’t rank high on the list of powerful turn-ons.
Regardless of age, I’m opposed to anyone who doesn’t want to engage in some sort of “teaching” in a relationship. As far as I’m concerned, both people should bring something to a relationship that helps the other person grow. If I’m dating someone who doesn’t have anything to offer along those lines, what’s the point? It’s stagnant before it’s even begun.
Your discussion of older women/younger men brought to mind something that’s not entirely On Topic - not only are these pairings more rare than your often-talked-about older men/younger women, but fewer people recognize the harm in the pairing. I’ve often heard young men respond to scenarios like Mary Kay Letourneau’s by congratulating the underage male, or suggesting that all teenage boys would love to lose their virginity to a hot, older, experienced woman. I can never figure out if they really believe what they’re saying, but it’s appalling.
“Bottom line: I don’t see older women pursuing young men at the same rate that I see the reverse.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, Hugo, but you don’t really see women of *any* age pursuing men. So it stands to reason you don’t see older women (*especially* older women who’d have grown up even more indoctrinated than younger ones) pursuing younger men.
As for whether your friend would really have all that much to mother, teach, babysit, or “give anyone experience,” to someone in his 20s that’s, um, just as incredibly arrogant and “othering” as the older men who imagine they could do likewise to young adult women. So it’s just as well that she declined.
And I want to be really clear here. I’m not calling that attitude “reverse sexism,” I’m calling it just plain old sexism as in “to discriminate against an individual for their failure to adhere to the attributes, characteristics, and roles tradition designates as appropriate.”
Because seriously, it’s not enough for men to get over disdaining women who are taller, better educated, more intelligent, funnier, better compensated, more aggressive, and older if women aren’t willing to get over their complementary biases against shorter, less educated, less intelligent, less funny, more poorly paid, less assertive, or younger men.
And just to be clear, I’m *not* flaming anyone here[1]. The thing about uncovering previously unexamined reservoirs of bias is that nobody needs to apologize or introspect. Not your friend and certainly not you, Hugo. But it does need examination.
I’m not sure you’ve done exercises along these lines in any of your classes but I think series of questions like “would you go out with someone taller/shorter than you” provide great opportunities for uncovering gender-role assumptions.
figleaf
[1] Ok, maybe Maureen Dowd, but since there are only about five single men older, richer, taller, smarter, and more influential than she is and because she thinks it’s *feminism’s* fault she can’t find a “suitable” partner, I think she’s a special case.
Not too long ago, I emailed Hugo asking him if he found this “older women, younger men” issue common. I am at the beginning stages of a relationship with a young man (about 8 years my junior, however we have been friends for a year or so), I am of the opinion that age really has little to do with my attraction or his. After being married to a man that was older than I, my friends who know my ex and my current interest, will tell you that the 22 year old is light years more engaging,gracious, kind and mature.
Sure, I’ve had more life experiences, but I believe that certain people have life attitudes that reveal how ambitious or curious (learners of life in general), that cannot be dismissed by an age gap. Plus, twenty-somethings really know how to kiss. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Figleaf, I agree that there’s a presumption in this post against the possibility that twenty-something men are, for the most part, emotionally mature enough to handle a relationship with an older and more experienced person. Exceptions to the rule of the sort that Skippy raises do not disprove the validity of the general rule.
My primary interest is in writing critically about older men, younger women relationships — a subject to which I have devoted considerably more time and effort and thought. That means that some more glaring blind spots will appear in a post on this reverse topic!
Figleaf, I do want to take issue with one aspect of what you say — in your note about assumptions, you say:
it’s not enough for men to get over disdaining women who are taller, better educated, more intelligent, funnier, better compensated, more aggressive, and older if women aren’t willing to get over their complementary biases against shorter, less educated, less intelligent, less funny, more poorly paid, less assertive, or younger men.
There’s some apples in that there pile with some oranges. “Poorly paid” is one thing. “Less intelligent” is another ball of wax. The latter is a very legitimate deal breaker, wouldn’t you say? You separate intelligence from age and experience and education — rightly so — because intelligence does matter, I think, in a way that these other things may not. I cannot for the life of me imagine being in love with someone whose intellect didn’t match my own, even if the manner in which she expressed it was very different.
You fail to ask an important question here Hugo which is if ‘Dana’ can’t see herself with any of these men then why does she keep dating them?
As a man who actually has been the May in May/December several times I can tell you that there are indeed women out there who enjoy showing a young man the ropes, sexually and otherwise. And there are lots of women out there who mother the men they’re with……….and this can happen with older men or same age men as well. In my case I have indeed played out issues with my mother(and father) by being with older women and am now, on some level, paying the price.
Then there are the Susan Sarandons and the Tim Robbins of the world in which each person appears to be perfectly suited for the other and the age difference is all but irrelevant.
Are we almost ready to say ‘it depends on the two people in question’ once and for all?
No, I’m not ready to say that — because none of us operates independently of the culture, not entirely. And because older men younger women relationships are so often exploitative and predatory, particularly when the younger women is barely an adult, simply saying “age is just a number” is all too often a way of turning a blind eye to very serious problems, which I’ve addressed in many different respects.
After all, Bill, there are plenty of older men who love showing a young girl “the ropes” — frequently because of an eagerness for power, a discomfort with vulnerability, and so forth.
I do think we make a colossal error in seeking to repair a relationship with a parent through a sexual relationship with an older person. But I’ve made the case again and again against age-disparate relationships that take place before both parties are full and complete emotional and chronological adults, and I’m not going to reiterate the contents of all my archives!
“Less intelligent” is another ball of wax. The latter is a very legitimate deal breaker, wouldn’t you say?
I think you and figleaf are talking past each other; you seem to be saying “less intelligent” as synonymous as “they must have a certain level of intelligence”; I read figleaf’s version as “they must be smarter than me.” Absolute versus relative.
I see — if that’s the case, I did misread “fig”. Thanks for clearing that up!
Interesting post. My first visceral reaction was that by categorically crossing out younger men as potential partners Dana is passing up the chance to meet someone who suits her. But I do thinks she has a point. I’ve always wondered about the life experience issue. I’ve dated a number of older men and I’ve often been puzzled as to why they wanted to date me. I have a healthy self esteem but as awesome as I think I am I’m convinced that I’m going to be a lot more interesting in 10, 20 years. I just haven’t had time to do a whole lot. So why weren’t these guys dating women who were as awesome as I was and older? more interesting? more equal in their experience? Of course, there’s the obvious answer of physical attraction, but since I liked these guys I obviously wanted/want to think better of them then that. An answer I often got was that older women were very much focused on getting married… which I didn’t find convincing. But that’s thread drifting.
I’m glad you wrote on this issue! Generally I think the increased acceptance of older women and younger men (when the man is over 20) is a positive development and shows a decrease in sexist attitudes. I do think that some of the reason women don’t want to think of settling down with men 10 yrs their junior are sexist attitudes but also that dating someone more then 10 yrs younger then you is … strange due to the life experience difference. (And makes me suspicious of your priorities). (Obviously 10 yrs is a somewhat arbitrary number).
Hi Hugo. Just to be clear, yes, I did mean “compared to me,” not absolutely. I should have been more clear.
An example of what I’m talking about, by the way, would be how if you take a room full of hetero couples you’ll see that virtually all the men are taller than their partners. On the other hand, if you separate each party and reassign them another partner at random the height difference becomes *way* more random as well. And yes, men’s selection has something to do with it but so do women’s.
You can see, by the way, how that selection bias would tend to give people an overwhelming impression that men are always taller than women. Same with strength, income, intelligence, and so on. And after a point it becomes self-fulfilling.
Sorry for not being more clear earlier, Hugo,
figleaf
This reminds me of a less than positive therapy relationship I had. I’ve been going to a sexual assault group for a year. Something had been said about trust in relationships in this all woman group and the joke had been made of why we didn’t just date other women. A therapist I’d butted heads with before says to me, “women can be sexual predators, too.” I said that yes, I knew, but that it was much less common. Then she says that with all the new evidence coming out now, women might be just as likely as men to be sexual abusers. I just had to say, no, that is just not true by any stretch of the imagination. Just because something happens sometimes, that it’s possible, does NOT disprove general themes. Doing something like that in a conversation is counter-productive and argumentative. I feel the same about using examples that don’t really apply to the conversation when trying to argue against it. It forces the person making the point to address why this example does not apply instead of creating dialogue about the issue at hand.
I hate the notion that women are morally superior to men and that they’re there to keep men in line and be good examples. It keeps coming up in conversations with my mother, grandmother and aunts about adult women abusing male children or much older women dating men in their late teens or early twenties. They’ve gotten to the point where they expect exploitive behavior from men, but are shocked by or disapprove of these of examples because “women should know better.” This frustrates me. It’s not the abuse of power that bothers them, that is expected, but it’s about condemning the women for doing what they already expect men will do without the moral influence of “good” women. I really don’t know what I’m trying to say here…
Maybe this. It’s easier to focus on what seems to be the exception to the rule. Exceptions are easier to pin down and more interesting than what happens all the time. However, these things distract us from more common problems that a lot of us have just given up as impossible to solve. Attitudes that allow people to see others as objects for their own personal satisfaction at the expense of another’s humanity are the problem. It just happens to be that this culture more often encourages the older male/younger female dynamic when it comes to the sexual expression of this attitude. The older woman/younger man dynamic is only a less common (thus more attention getting) outgrowth of this. I think if we quit thinking of men and women as two different species and start thinking of ourselves as “same” instead of “other”, that would go a long way toward curbing a human willingness to exploit.
Also, I like the point about women not wanting to have to do in a relationship what they already do everywhere else. It’s all fun and games for a man to get a sexual kick out of playing Daddy/mentor/caregiver to a younger woman, when the burden probably hasn’t been on him his whole life to make these roles his whole identity. When women are socialized practically from birth (think gendered girls toys) to fill these roles as their gender identity, then have to deal with being pegged in these roles in their adult careers, it really takes the sexual thrill out of playing Mommy/mentor/caregiver with a lover.
A-flippin-men, jennyfields, to your last paragraph.
As I’ve said to you before, I think it’s good that you have brought the issue of age disparate relationships into the open and called to people to examine their motives before getting into them. But while you’ve made a slight distinction between relationships in which one person is extremely young and ones where both are basically adults, I don’t think the distinction has been strong enough. You seem almost as concerned about the latter and that’s where we part company.
i think in general that AGE=POWER. there is a “power gap” between men and women. men have more power than women in our culture. perhaps the older woman/younger man dynamic is a way of equalizing the power a bit? i’m 39. among my female friends of the same age, most of them are dynamic, self-supporting, independent, athletic, etc. men are frequently intimidated by this. some of my friends have found that younger men (maybe they’ve been exposed to more gender studies classes in college than the men who are our age?) can better handle/accept a vibrant, dynamic woman.
my brother is 8 years younger than i. he and i are good friends and we hang out a lot, so sometimes i end up in situations where i’m also hanging out with his friends. these guys who are a decade younger than i seem all too aware that i’m “in my sexual prime.” their fantasy isn’t about a mother/caretaker figure; it’s about capitalizing on my hormones. but what a turn-off when a 26 year old says, in front of your brother for cryin out loud, at thanksgiving dinner, “your sister is in her sexual prime, dude!” no parents were present, thankfully, but still: ugh.
on the other end of the spectrum, i think it could be argued that in a relationship between a younger woman and a much older man, in some senses the younger woman has some power over the man because she could get a younger man if she wanted. he’s lucky to have her and he knows it…?
lastly, i will admit that the idea of “breaking in” some hunky young buck is fun in concept, but in reality the older woman knows that it will probably be a very unsatisfying sexual experience for her.
and as always, there are exceptions to every generalization and someone will always have an individual experience that will defy the “rule.” i realize that but that’s not going to stop me from saying that, in general, in my experience, men only get better with age. i’d take a 46 year old over a 26 year old anytime.
You have some interesting ideas Hugo, but I think it’s less complicated than that. Simply put, women depreciate in value as they age (in the eyes of many men). Now, young men will have sex with older women (especially if the young women are monopolized by old rich men), but they are unlikely to marry them.
There’s the issue of decreased fertility, diminished libido from menopause, the fact that women tend to show signs of aging before men do, and the servile, teachable attitude of a younger person as mentioned in your post. Older women don’t merely need to be sexy to young men, they also need to be seen as desirable wives.
I had an interesting experience in a bar the other night. I met a woman… not sure how old she is. She has three children and an ex-husband though, if thats anything to go by… she was clearly older than me.
Anyway, she wanted to get it on, but when I got uncomfortable with how far she wanted to go, she got very upset and brought my masculinity and my sexuality into question.
Young men *always want it*, if they don’t, theres something wrong.
I think that Teresa is right… young men don’t mind dating the MILF, but actually getting permanently involved in all that baggage? I don’t think so.
I myself find anyone over thirty, divorced, or with kids, kinda scary, cos I know I am not emotionally ready for the kind of commitment, they often expect.
I’m young, and I like to date people around 5 years either side of my age.
Well, unfortunately some of these responses abound with stereotypes……. However, I do agree with most of this post and would concur with most of your observations. Because of being prematurely sexualized by much older males, I couldn’t see perpetrating a role reversal on a man. To do so would make me feel like I was a predator and I just couldn’t see it. I don’t occupy the landscape of emotional unavailability, so I just don’t view people as sexual currency, nor could I devalue them as objects to feed my ego. I agree with your observation that women who would want to pursue an adolescent boy, regardless of how hot or mature he seemed physically, would not get much in the way of social support from her peers, unless they keep company with sexual predators. I also agree that we do not live in a culture that teaches older women to sexualize teenage boys or to rhapsodize and bond with each other about predatory perversions such as being the first and “jail bait”, as males are.
You hit the nail on the head with this one:
“The fantasy of serving as both father figure and lover, as grotesque and incestuous as it sounds, is inscribed on the psyche of the European-American male…”
Ditto for this gem:
“The real issue is the simple and obvious one: most grown women already do plenty of teaching and care-giving and hand-holding within their families and their workplaces. Even those who are not mothers have probably spent a great deal of time doing for others what they cannot or will not do for themselves.”
Simply stated for most healthy adult women it’s not a sexual turn on to be in the role of caretaker, mother, teacher, and babysitter. It’s draining and not erotic in the least. It’s never been erotic to fantasize about sex with daddy either, not the life I want to lead. Both scenario’s in my mind do not rank high on the list of potential turn on’s, but rather turn offs and I equate such behaviors as unhealthy (RARE exceptions excluded). It’s not a “sublime delight” to engage in any way, shape or form in the emotional landscape of the unavailable and oblivious.
I have two female friends who are married to men at least 10 years their younger and one male friend who is a couple of decades younger than his boyfriend.
One couple is American, very egalitarian and I believe just happened to fall in love with each other and both be ready for the relationship at that time of their lives.
The other two couples are Mexican (I live in Mexico). The female/male couple is very much a relationship of mothering/teaching/etc. The male/male couple is of the younger man taking care of the older man physically and emotionally and the older man taking care of the younger man financially. However, they have been together for 15 years and I just met them a year ago. Hence, I don’t know what the relationship was like at the beginning.
I mention that they are Mexican because “mothering” is a woman’s role regardless. I dated a man younger than me who expected to be “mothered,” although not necessarily taught, and I am dating a man, right now, who is older than me and wants to be “mothered.”
I absolutely do not want to “mother” a lover. If/when I want children I will have them. However, I do agree that “teaching” as much as learning should be part of any serious relationship. However, I have never eliminated younger men from the dating pool specifically based on their age and the assumption that I would have to teach them/mother them.
Perhaps Dana and your friend are stereotyping these younger men. Perhaps the younger men are giving off a vibe of immaturity that the women can sense but not necessarily name and they don’t want to get involved.
I think mothering is an expected woman’s role in all cultures–what may be different is the intensity. I meet a lot of people who want to be mothered and seem to expect that they deserved to be nurtured, yet I think many of these types of people are completely unaware of their emotions, what motivates them, their impact on other’s and they don’t seem to respond appropriately or positively to taking personal responsibility for their behaviors. I don’t think they want to be taught anything either and I don’t consider myself arrogant enough to offer to teach them. My guess is that they’d act infantile anyway to my not wanting to mother/nurture them and take it as personal rejection and then throw a fit or an ugly tantrum. I doubt they would see it as an opportunity to grow–narcissists have that effect on a person. I don’t meet people who seem eager to learn anything, unless they’ve reached a point in their live’s where learning is motivated only by experiencing emotional pain, but behavior is habitual and takes a lot of effort to change. Likewise, these individuals don’t strike me as desiring to be taught. The seek answers. The role of nurturer and caretaker was foisted on me at a very young age by adult children and much older males.
Just curious here, since from reading some of these posts, I get somewhat different vibes on the meaning, but… What exactly constitutes an expectation by men to be “mothered”.
What type of behavior exactly are we describing here? I don’t mean to be deliberately dense, but the meaning to me, from these posts, sounds somewhat ambiguous, at least from my (a male) perspective.
Priviledged Male,
I can only speak for myself and not other women, so you are right that it can mean different things to different women. An example I can provide is that children are very self-focused–how does the world affect me, not how do I affect the world. When one mother’s a child they expect developmental stages. Adult children do not make the usual transition from the childish how the world affects me to how I affect the world, which usually happens in adolescence and remain locked in childish view (narcissism). They go though life expecting others to take care of their needs (emotional and otherwise) and do not think about how they impact other people, if their demands are unreasonable, selfish, childish. It is all about them and their needs. When it comes to their needs they want me to listen, to console, to mother, to nurture, but they do not think about my needs because it is all about them. Women can behave like this as well. I hope this helps…
Hugo:
[W]hile I don’t doubt for a second that there are plenty of women in their thirties or forties who find a nicely muscled adolescent male to be visually appealing, I think there’s a substantial (and in this case, welcome) social pressure against an older woman making advances on a younger man.
I am a woman in her thirties who can most definitely appreciate the looks and charms of young men in their late teens and early twenties; but that appreciation is a million miles from wanting to date or have sex with them. It is not social pressure that holds me back. I don’t want a sexual relationship based on superficialities such as young skin, good muscle tone or youthful enthusiasm. I want an equal, someone I can talk to and explore life with, someone who is on the same track as me, whatever the length of the relationship. And I don’t consider ten years or less a dramatic age gap for men or women, I notice some people are counting an 8 year gap as significant. Would they feel that way if the man were older than the woman?
Oh and Hugo, that part about adolescent boys - I don’t know any women who find adolescent boys appealing, young men yes, but most definitely not adolescents, that would be a whole other arena.
Some young women are motivated by practicalities. A 25 year old woman marrying a 50 year is likely to be left a widow, not a divorcee, although I do know one 75 year old man who outlived his 40 something wife.
In my experiences dating guys of all ages, I found that the older ones wanted a woman who was going to take care of them in their dotage, basically a free home-nurse.
The younger ones were tired of women their age trying to play house with them and trying to domesticate them, so they go after mature women who treat them like men, not children.
And as far as who is a better lover, that is entirely a factor of empathy and natural talent. Some fo the mature guys who had been married for a long time wouldn’t adapt their style from the way wifey used to like it. The smart young guys weren’t fixed in their ways and would listen and learn.