Women 4 boys seems epidemic around the world
I’VE been having sex with a 19-year-old-lad and I’ve fallen for him, even
though I’m old enough to be his mother.
I’m 38 and I met him when he came to install some solar panels for me. I live
on my own and he was with his boss and was really sweet.
They took a few days on the job and I really got to know him chatting over
cups of tea and so on.
I was selling my car as I’d just started a new job which provided me with a
car, and the younger guy was interested in buying it.
He called around to my house at the weekend and asked whether he could take
the car for a test-drive. I went with him and he really liked it, then he
came back to mine for a drink to discuss the finances.
He had a cuppa and then out of the blue, said that he fancied me. I was so
flattered so I gave him a little hug and he kissed me.
Things then went to the next level and ended up in my bed. I hadn’t had a
relationship for nearly two years so it felt great to be wanted again.
The sex was great. He then told me his age and I was shocked because my nephew
is older than he is. It didn’t stop me though and when he called around the
next day, we had a repeat performance.
I’ve been seeing him whenever I can since but he’s been insistent that we stay
below the radar. I’ve fallen for him but he’s called me tonight and says our
relationship must end as his mum would go mad if she found out about us.
Why does sex with a younger man feel so good? And?
I have just started having a physical relationship with a younger man 22y.o. I am 33y.o. I didnt realise how old he was when we first met up & then found myself attracted to him before his real age came about.
I have just come out of a very painful long 9yr relationship & starting to feel good about myself & okay about leaving my ex ... & have just agreed to sex with this younger guy because its been 8mths for me & he seemed like the perfect first guy to get together with - so uncomplicated & affectionate. We have sort of got to know each other this past month before we got involved physically. The sex we had the other night was really amazing for me!
How is it possible that a young 22y.o could satisfy me so much?? It was really intense & felt like we both had the same sexual pace & desires. I was always so into my ex & thought we were so compatible. But this young guy is showing me what I have been missing out on - he is so intimate & affectionate & so very hot in bed. I have had other great lovers in the past but there is something about this young guy - he is so very good in bed - really knows how to please a woman. The thing is I dont want to be falling in love with this guy cos I am supposed to be leaving in 6-weeks to go overseas. How do I keep myself detached emotionally & allow myself to enjoy the connection we have in bed & when we talk?? Should I stop seeing him so I dont become emotionally involved?? (There is a possibility I will seek out my ex to try to resolve things when I get back to his country in 6-weeks - but this lover I have now is changing my feelings about things ...)
PS: I am a fit looking 33y.o - I am not doing this to just boost my self esteem or anything like that. I just found myself attracted to him. I have had other offers but wasnt interested until I met this guy. I didnt want to jump into bed with just anyone. This connection we have in bed has really thrown me ...
For some of us sex is the only thing that matters
I’m a 50-year-old woman, in good health and attractive, I think. I have remained single after I divorced the father of my c***dren almost 10 years ago, and the truth is that I haven’t had one meaningful relationship since. I’m still sexually active, though, and I have to add that my sex life may be somewhat racy at times, but I make no apologies for it, nor do I try to lead a secret existence beyond what’s normally expected to be private.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what I’ve said so far, except for the fact that I date and have sex with men who are significantly younger than me. I’m talking about ages 19 up to 35, more or less. I feel extremely conflicted about this. I realize that my chances of having a romantic relationship with younger men are not so simple, and the old adage that “age is just a number” may suit men more than women due to expiration date on beauty and fertility. However, I cannot get myself attracted to men my age or even slightly younger. I’ve tried dating some, but I can’t get past that.
With younger men, on the other hand, everything flows perfectly when it comes to sex. Some of these young men may provide a little more than others in terms of intimacy, but I don’t expect it in general. What I do expect is certain sexual satisfaction, and so far things have worked out relatively well. I consider myself extremely lucky that younger men still find me attractive, so I have no problems in finding takers for my little forays.
I feel somewhat guilty at times. Men my age approach me at times and they are absolutely pleasant to be with, but I still cannot get myself to consider them as sexual partners. It’s been 15 years since the last time I went to bed with a man older than me, and you might as well make that 25 years since he was only one year older. I also lost my virginity to a guy who was two years younger than me, and even back in my younger years, I dated men who were younger, so this is not something that started recently.
I hope you can help me understand the situation I’m in. I sometimes wonder if I’ll end up alone in life because I’m not able to maintain companionship. It’s not that I mind that prospect, but more than being alone, I dread that I won’t be having any more sex after a certain age outside of a long-term relationship.
Paradigm Shift
I am a woman in her forties dating a much younger man in his late twenties. I continue to be surprised at the sheer numbers of 20-21 year old fellow who hit on me.
And yet…. I can also identify with the letter-writer. When I was just 19, my then 21 year old boyfriend dumped me or his friend’s mom… who may have been 41 or even older. I was so disgusted. especially when my boyfriend describe how in love he was and that she was a really beautiful woman who really understood him. All I saw was someone’s old mom. We I was out partying at bars, I would see her surrounded by young men. I was like “they are all disgusting” “why doesn’t she grow up?”. What I did not understand is that she probably was also dating men her own age, earlier in the evening and then partying with the young ones when the fifty year old went to sleep at 9:30!
Paradigm shift is correct. Once you have been divorced, you look at divorced people differently. Once you have a c***d, you realize your old ideas about parenting were wrong. Once you lose a parent or a peer to death, you cross a river of understanding. Once you are midlife, you look back and laugh at the judgmental teen you were.
We're all doing it
The first time Lucy Cavendish, 46, was asked out by a twentysomething man, she laughed. Then it happened again – and it wasn’t just her. Divorced friends said they were all doing it. So she said yes
This is what happened to me about six months ago. I was at a party feeling somewhat nervous. My long-term relationship had ended some months before and I had been left feeling about as attractive as a damp dishcloth. I am in my mid-forties. I have four c***dren. I have wrinkles and crinkles and bits of me that used to be firm now sag. It’s just how it is.
So the last thing I expected to happen was for a young man to take an active interest in me. Yet at this party, a good looking, tall, blond, youthful nephew of a friend, not a day more than 23, made a beeline for me. As the evening went on, he gazed into my eyes and brushed his fingers against mine as he handed me a glass of wine. Before I went to leave, he asked me for my telephone number. I laughed and said, “I don’t think so. What would your mother say?” He went away appearing genuinely crushed.
When I told a female friend of mine about this encounter, she looked at me as if I were mad. “Why on earth didn’t you give him your number?” she said. “You could have gone out and had some fun. What’s wrong with that?”
Here is the problem; I can’t get my head around having fun with someone who could almost be young enough to be my son. All I can think of is the age gap. What young twentysomething man would seriously find a 40-plus woman and mother attractive? There’s too much at stake. I fear it would make me feel old and threatened (by every woman aged 18 to 50) and that I’d probably want to mother them. Also, I’m not convinced I would find someone two decades younger than myself that intellectually interesting.
Fun maybe, but what would we talk about? I have two decades of knowledge on them after all.
But maybe I am missing a trick here. Since my summer encounter, I have been told by at least three other single female friends, all in their forties and all divorced with c***dren, that they too have been hit on by men in their early twenties. Two of them bit the bullet and went on dates. One of them, Susie, is now happily dancing the night away on a weekly basis with someone aged 23.
“I haven’t had this much fun in ages,” she says. She is, it has to be said, glowing.
It makes me think. So when a male friend tells me I’d get on like a house on fire with another friend of his, I don’t balk at the fact that he is 25. Trembling at the thought of feeling old, but keen to get away from divorcees-who-play-golf dates (for I can see this is where I’m heading), I agree to meet up with him. A thought occurs to me that maybe some easygoing fun is exactly what I need.
We meet in a coffee shop. I sit at a table, shredding a napkin. I am, in short, dreading this. I am not sure if I am striking the right note. A dress seemed too formal (he is, after all, young), a skirt maybe too provocative, a trouser suit too businesslike. I’ve gone for a shirt and jeans, but now I feel so Home Counties I am sure he will take one look at me and run.
But then a tall, dark-haired, good-looking man/boy walks in to the coffee shop and smiles at me.
“Hi, I’m Jono,” he says.
My first reaction is: “Gosh, you look young!” And he does. Jono Namara may be 25, but he appears to be about 18. The second thought is that there is no way I could ever fancy someone of this age. It would feel terribly embarrassing; very Mrs Robinson. I just know I look two decades older than he does. No amount of face peels and Botox is going to change that.
But Jono sits down and we start chatting and it turns out he is very easy to talk to. He tells me he is a male model, spotted by the fashion designer Hedi Slimane. He has been modelling for five years and now models part-time. He has travelled all around the world, lived in Japan and now he is back and working, again part-time, as a DJ. He is also a broadcast journalist for an online magazine.
I sit there and listen to it all, rather impressed at how much he has done in such a short time. An hour passes very quickly. At the end of our coffee, he asks if I’d like to have lunch. To my surprise I hear myself saying yes. My friends were right. It has been fun.
Of course, for some, it is more than fun. Sam Taylor-Wood (now Taylor-Johnson) aged 45, is married to the actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson who is 23 years her junior. They have two c***dren together. Joan Collins, 79, has been married to Percy Gibson, who is 32 years her junior, for a decade. Yet for most of us the older women-dating-younger-men scenario is taboo. These types of relationships have always been presented in a negative light. In Cougar Town, the television series starring Courteney Cox, it was predatory, with older women pursuing younger men for sexual reasons. In other relationships — notably the young men who date Madonna or J.Lo — the exchange is obvious. The boyfriend gets fame, money and a great time. The woman gets — whisper it — hot sex or that’s what we are supposed to think.
No one really turns a hair when a man has a woman half his age on his arm. We have no problem with alpha males wanting to be seen to be able to get young, attractive and fertile partners. But an older woman with a younger man seems inconceivable, a more problematic concept. If it’s not about reproduction, then what it is about? An extreme form of Oedipal angst or something less complicated?
Yet the “cougar” dynamic has taken a hold in our popular culture. This is partially down to One Direction’s Harry Styles who for a while became the poster boy for cougar dating after he went out with the television presenter Caroline Flack, 15 years his senior. In interviews he was often quoted talking about the joys of older women. We are apparently more interesting, more at ease with ourselves, less neurotic and therefore much more fun to be with and intellectually stimulating. A survey last summer by the online casino Roxy Palace even found that one in five men, when asked what age gap they would consider when looking for a girlfriend, said they would date a woman 15 years older.
In 2009, Newsweek took stock of the explosion of on-screen romances between older women and younger men and declared it “the year of the cougar”. Then a study published in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy found that older woman/younger man couples thought their age difference mattered more to the outside world than to them and that the men were more strongly drawn to the relationships at the start because of physical attraction.
Consistent with most other research and what many relationship experts are saying about these connections, the authors found that women liked the vitality that the younger man brought into their lives, while the men liked the maturity and confidence of the woman, although generational differences sometimes made both partners uncomfortable. “Initially I thought I would find more issues,” said Nichole R. Proulx, the lead author of the study, who is a marriage and family ther****t. “But it’s a relationship like any other, despite what society might say. I thought I’d find that he looks at her like his mother; more inequality, more power struggles.”
For our lunch date, Jono and I go to Newman Street Tavern, a buzzy new restaurant in the heart of London. Yet again Jono is great company and I start finding myself beginning to relax. He’s attentive, funny and really rather attractive. I start forgetting he’s younger than me. I’m enjoying his company. He seems very interested in my life. He tells me he has started his own online magazine and he shows me some of it. It is dynamic and insightful. I’m just about to say, “Your mother would be proud of you” when I realise how tactless that is — he has already told me his mother is at least “a decade” older than me. Phew!
When the waiter comes over, I order some oysters. I then realise what I have done — taken control without consulting Jono — but maybe that’s what an older woman does. When the oysters get to the table, Jono blushes a bit. “I’m sorry Lucy, I’m not too keen on oysters,” he says. I feel really awkward that I ordered for him and wish I hadn’t.
We carry on talking, but as we do I start registering the reactions of the people around me. A man on the table behind me just cannot stop staring. Neither can the woman next to him. “They think I’m your mum,” I hiss at Jono, motioning towards the whispering couple. Jono reaches across the table, takes my hand and stares romantically in to my eyes. “That’ll show them,” he says. I can’t help it. I start giggling. He’s game, I’ll give him that.
“Younger men help you to continue to feel young,” says my friend Marianne, who is married to a man 20 years her junior. “It’s wonderful,” she says. “I just feel young and sexy and we have so much fun.” That’s the upside. But what about the drawbacks? Marianne says it’s an absolute sadness between herself and her husband that they won’t be able to have c***dren. “I’m too old,” she says. He apparently claims he doesn’t mind. He is happy to be “daddy” to her two c***dren, aged 8 and 10. “I am prepared for the fact that this might change,” she says. “I have told him that if he needs to go off and procreate one day then so be it.” She sighs. “But I’d rather have had these wonderful years with him than not at all. It clinched it when he asked me to marry him. That was when I knew he was serious. I think he asked me because I kept on pushing him away, refusing to believe that he really and truly wanted me.”
Also, the reactions of other people made her want to weep. “It’s very difficult,” she says. “The driving instructor came over once to give my husband a lesson and he said to me, ‘Your son is doing so well.’ That made me want to run and hide for ever.” But she says she just had to get over that one. “I do find certain cultural references slightly tricky, but for me it’s about a connection. I feel he is a kindred spirit.”
She also points out that before meeting her young man she was going on dates with fiftysomethings. “They were all so boring and set in their ways. It was all golf, cars, slippers, bed by 10pm and Viagra if I was lucky. I don’t have to worry about any of that. Who wants to feel old when you can feel young?”
though I’m old enough to be his mother.
I’m 38 and I met him when he came to install some solar panels for me. I live
on my own and he was with his boss and was really sweet.
They took a few days on the job and I really got to know him chatting over
cups of tea and so on.
I was selling my car as I’d just started a new job which provided me with a
car, and the younger guy was interested in buying it.
He called around to my house at the weekend and asked whether he could take
the car for a test-drive. I went with him and he really liked it, then he
came back to mine for a drink to discuss the finances.
He had a cuppa and then out of the blue, said that he fancied me. I was so
flattered so I gave him a little hug and he kissed me.
Things then went to the next level and ended up in my bed. I hadn’t had a
relationship for nearly two years so it felt great to be wanted again.
The sex was great. He then told me his age and I was shocked because my nephew
is older than he is. It didn’t stop me though and when he called around the
next day, we had a repeat performance.
I’ve been seeing him whenever I can since but he’s been insistent that we stay
below the radar. I’ve fallen for him but he’s called me tonight and says our
relationship must end as his mum would go mad if she found out about us.
Why does sex with a younger man feel so good? And?
I have just started having a physical relationship with a younger man 22y.o. I am 33y.o. I didnt realise how old he was when we first met up & then found myself attracted to him before his real age came about.
I have just come out of a very painful long 9yr relationship & starting to feel good about myself & okay about leaving my ex ... & have just agreed to sex with this younger guy because its been 8mths for me & he seemed like the perfect first guy to get together with - so uncomplicated & affectionate. We have sort of got to know each other this past month before we got involved physically. The sex we had the other night was really amazing for me!
How is it possible that a young 22y.o could satisfy me so much?? It was really intense & felt like we both had the same sexual pace & desires. I was always so into my ex & thought we were so compatible. But this young guy is showing me what I have been missing out on - he is so intimate & affectionate & so very hot in bed. I have had other great lovers in the past but there is something about this young guy - he is so very good in bed - really knows how to please a woman. The thing is I dont want to be falling in love with this guy cos I am supposed to be leaving in 6-weeks to go overseas. How do I keep myself detached emotionally & allow myself to enjoy the connection we have in bed & when we talk?? Should I stop seeing him so I dont become emotionally involved?? (There is a possibility I will seek out my ex to try to resolve things when I get back to his country in 6-weeks - but this lover I have now is changing my feelings about things ...)
PS: I am a fit looking 33y.o - I am not doing this to just boost my self esteem or anything like that. I just found myself attracted to him. I have had other offers but wasnt interested until I met this guy. I didnt want to jump into bed with just anyone. This connection we have in bed has really thrown me ...
For some of us sex is the only thing that matters
I’m a 50-year-old woman, in good health and attractive, I think. I have remained single after I divorced the father of my c***dren almost 10 years ago, and the truth is that I haven’t had one meaningful relationship since. I’m still sexually active, though, and I have to add that my sex life may be somewhat racy at times, but I make no apologies for it, nor do I try to lead a secret existence beyond what’s normally expected to be private.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what I’ve said so far, except for the fact that I date and have sex with men who are significantly younger than me. I’m talking about ages 19 up to 35, more or less. I feel extremely conflicted about this. I realize that my chances of having a romantic relationship with younger men are not so simple, and the old adage that “age is just a number” may suit men more than women due to expiration date on beauty and fertility. However, I cannot get myself attracted to men my age or even slightly younger. I’ve tried dating some, but I can’t get past that.
With younger men, on the other hand, everything flows perfectly when it comes to sex. Some of these young men may provide a little more than others in terms of intimacy, but I don’t expect it in general. What I do expect is certain sexual satisfaction, and so far things have worked out relatively well. I consider myself extremely lucky that younger men still find me attractive, so I have no problems in finding takers for my little forays.
I feel somewhat guilty at times. Men my age approach me at times and they are absolutely pleasant to be with, but I still cannot get myself to consider them as sexual partners. It’s been 15 years since the last time I went to bed with a man older than me, and you might as well make that 25 years since he was only one year older. I also lost my virginity to a guy who was two years younger than me, and even back in my younger years, I dated men who were younger, so this is not something that started recently.
I hope you can help me understand the situation I’m in. I sometimes wonder if I’ll end up alone in life because I’m not able to maintain companionship. It’s not that I mind that prospect, but more than being alone, I dread that I won’t be having any more sex after a certain age outside of a long-term relationship.
Paradigm Shift
I am a woman in her forties dating a much younger man in his late twenties. I continue to be surprised at the sheer numbers of 20-21 year old fellow who hit on me.
And yet…. I can also identify with the letter-writer. When I was just 19, my then 21 year old boyfriend dumped me or his friend’s mom… who may have been 41 or even older. I was so disgusted. especially when my boyfriend describe how in love he was and that she was a really beautiful woman who really understood him. All I saw was someone’s old mom. We I was out partying at bars, I would see her surrounded by young men. I was like “they are all disgusting” “why doesn’t she grow up?”. What I did not understand is that she probably was also dating men her own age, earlier in the evening and then partying with the young ones when the fifty year old went to sleep at 9:30!
Paradigm shift is correct. Once you have been divorced, you look at divorced people differently. Once you have a c***d, you realize your old ideas about parenting were wrong. Once you lose a parent or a peer to death, you cross a river of understanding. Once you are midlife, you look back and laugh at the judgmental teen you were.
We're all doing it
The first time Lucy Cavendish, 46, was asked out by a twentysomething man, she laughed. Then it happened again – and it wasn’t just her. Divorced friends said they were all doing it. So she said yes
This is what happened to me about six months ago. I was at a party feeling somewhat nervous. My long-term relationship had ended some months before and I had been left feeling about as attractive as a damp dishcloth. I am in my mid-forties. I have four c***dren. I have wrinkles and crinkles and bits of me that used to be firm now sag. It’s just how it is.
So the last thing I expected to happen was for a young man to take an active interest in me. Yet at this party, a good looking, tall, blond, youthful nephew of a friend, not a day more than 23, made a beeline for me. As the evening went on, he gazed into my eyes and brushed his fingers against mine as he handed me a glass of wine. Before I went to leave, he asked me for my telephone number. I laughed and said, “I don’t think so. What would your mother say?” He went away appearing genuinely crushed.
When I told a female friend of mine about this encounter, she looked at me as if I were mad. “Why on earth didn’t you give him your number?” she said. “You could have gone out and had some fun. What’s wrong with that?”
Here is the problem; I can’t get my head around having fun with someone who could almost be young enough to be my son. All I can think of is the age gap. What young twentysomething man would seriously find a 40-plus woman and mother attractive? There’s too much at stake. I fear it would make me feel old and threatened (by every woman aged 18 to 50) and that I’d probably want to mother them. Also, I’m not convinced I would find someone two decades younger than myself that intellectually interesting.
Fun maybe, but what would we talk about? I have two decades of knowledge on them after all.
But maybe I am missing a trick here. Since my summer encounter, I have been told by at least three other single female friends, all in their forties and all divorced with c***dren, that they too have been hit on by men in their early twenties. Two of them bit the bullet and went on dates. One of them, Susie, is now happily dancing the night away on a weekly basis with someone aged 23.
“I haven’t had this much fun in ages,” she says. She is, it has to be said, glowing.
It makes me think. So when a male friend tells me I’d get on like a house on fire with another friend of his, I don’t balk at the fact that he is 25. Trembling at the thought of feeling old, but keen to get away from divorcees-who-play-golf dates (for I can see this is where I’m heading), I agree to meet up with him. A thought occurs to me that maybe some easygoing fun is exactly what I need.
We meet in a coffee shop. I sit at a table, shredding a napkin. I am, in short, dreading this. I am not sure if I am striking the right note. A dress seemed too formal (he is, after all, young), a skirt maybe too provocative, a trouser suit too businesslike. I’ve gone for a shirt and jeans, but now I feel so Home Counties I am sure he will take one look at me and run.
But then a tall, dark-haired, good-looking man/boy walks in to the coffee shop and smiles at me.
“Hi, I’m Jono,” he says.
My first reaction is: “Gosh, you look young!” And he does. Jono Namara may be 25, but he appears to be about 18. The second thought is that there is no way I could ever fancy someone of this age. It would feel terribly embarrassing; very Mrs Robinson. I just know I look two decades older than he does. No amount of face peels and Botox is going to change that.
But Jono sits down and we start chatting and it turns out he is very easy to talk to. He tells me he is a male model, spotted by the fashion designer Hedi Slimane. He has been modelling for five years and now models part-time. He has travelled all around the world, lived in Japan and now he is back and working, again part-time, as a DJ. He is also a broadcast journalist for an online magazine.
I sit there and listen to it all, rather impressed at how much he has done in such a short time. An hour passes very quickly. At the end of our coffee, he asks if I’d like to have lunch. To my surprise I hear myself saying yes. My friends were right. It has been fun.
Of course, for some, it is more than fun. Sam Taylor-Wood (now Taylor-Johnson) aged 45, is married to the actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson who is 23 years her junior. They have two c***dren together. Joan Collins, 79, has been married to Percy Gibson, who is 32 years her junior, for a decade. Yet for most of us the older women-dating-younger-men scenario is taboo. These types of relationships have always been presented in a negative light. In Cougar Town, the television series starring Courteney Cox, it was predatory, with older women pursuing younger men for sexual reasons. In other relationships — notably the young men who date Madonna or J.Lo — the exchange is obvious. The boyfriend gets fame, money and a great time. The woman gets — whisper it — hot sex or that’s what we are supposed to think.
No one really turns a hair when a man has a woman half his age on his arm. We have no problem with alpha males wanting to be seen to be able to get young, attractive and fertile partners. But an older woman with a younger man seems inconceivable, a more problematic concept. If it’s not about reproduction, then what it is about? An extreme form of Oedipal angst or something less complicated?
Yet the “cougar” dynamic has taken a hold in our popular culture. This is partially down to One Direction’s Harry Styles who for a while became the poster boy for cougar dating after he went out with the television presenter Caroline Flack, 15 years his senior. In interviews he was often quoted talking about the joys of older women. We are apparently more interesting, more at ease with ourselves, less neurotic and therefore much more fun to be with and intellectually stimulating. A survey last summer by the online casino Roxy Palace even found that one in five men, when asked what age gap they would consider when looking for a girlfriend, said they would date a woman 15 years older.
In 2009, Newsweek took stock of the explosion of on-screen romances between older women and younger men and declared it “the year of the cougar”. Then a study published in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy found that older woman/younger man couples thought their age difference mattered more to the outside world than to them and that the men were more strongly drawn to the relationships at the start because of physical attraction.
Consistent with most other research and what many relationship experts are saying about these connections, the authors found that women liked the vitality that the younger man brought into their lives, while the men liked the maturity and confidence of the woman, although generational differences sometimes made both partners uncomfortable. “Initially I thought I would find more issues,” said Nichole R. Proulx, the lead author of the study, who is a marriage and family ther****t. “But it’s a relationship like any other, despite what society might say. I thought I’d find that he looks at her like his mother; more inequality, more power struggles.”
For our lunch date, Jono and I go to Newman Street Tavern, a buzzy new restaurant in the heart of London. Yet again Jono is great company and I start finding myself beginning to relax. He’s attentive, funny and really rather attractive. I start forgetting he’s younger than me. I’m enjoying his company. He seems very interested in my life. He tells me he has started his own online magazine and he shows me some of it. It is dynamic and insightful. I’m just about to say, “Your mother would be proud of you” when I realise how tactless that is — he has already told me his mother is at least “a decade” older than me. Phew!
When the waiter comes over, I order some oysters. I then realise what I have done — taken control without consulting Jono — but maybe that’s what an older woman does. When the oysters get to the table, Jono blushes a bit. “I’m sorry Lucy, I’m not too keen on oysters,” he says. I feel really awkward that I ordered for him and wish I hadn’t.
We carry on talking, but as we do I start registering the reactions of the people around me. A man on the table behind me just cannot stop staring. Neither can the woman next to him. “They think I’m your mum,” I hiss at Jono, motioning towards the whispering couple. Jono reaches across the table, takes my hand and stares romantically in to my eyes. “That’ll show them,” he says. I can’t help it. I start giggling. He’s game, I’ll give him that.
“Younger men help you to continue to feel young,” says my friend Marianne, who is married to a man 20 years her junior. “It’s wonderful,” she says. “I just feel young and sexy and we have so much fun.” That’s the upside. But what about the drawbacks? Marianne says it’s an absolute sadness between herself and her husband that they won’t be able to have c***dren. “I’m too old,” she says. He apparently claims he doesn’t mind. He is happy to be “daddy” to her two c***dren, aged 8 and 10. “I am prepared for the fact that this might change,” she says. “I have told him that if he needs to go off and procreate one day then so be it.” She sighs. “But I’d rather have had these wonderful years with him than not at all. It clinched it when he asked me to marry him. That was when I knew he was serious. I think he asked me because I kept on pushing him away, refusing to believe that he really and truly wanted me.”
Also, the reactions of other people made her want to weep. “It’s very difficult,” she says. “The driving instructor came over once to give my husband a lesson and he said to me, ‘Your son is doing so well.’ That made me want to run and hide for ever.” But she says she just had to get over that one. “I do find certain cultural references slightly tricky, but for me it’s about a connection. I feel he is a kindred spirit.”
She also points out that before meeting her young man she was going on dates with fiftysomethings. “They were all so boring and set in their ways. It was all golf, cars, slippers, bed by 10pm and Viagra if I was lucky. I don’t have to worry about any of that. Who wants to feel old when you can feel young?”
8 years ago