It’s not easy to date a younger woman when you’re an older man, Hugo Schwyzer writes.
Both at the Good Men Project and at my own blog, my most popular posts in terms of page-views are invariably those that focus on one particularly controversial subject: older men and younger women. (Here’s “What Young Women are Really Looking for From Older Men.”)
As I’ve laid out in those pieces, for a number of reasons I think we should be suspicious of age-disparate heterosexual relationships in which the male partner is substantially older than the female one, and in which the woman is still quite young (say, under 23). Put simply, the potential problems in these relationships seem to diminish based less upon the actual number of years in between the partners and more upon the age of the woman involved. I’m more concerned about an 18 year-old woman and a 30 year-old man than I am about a 30 year-old woman and a 55 year-old man, even though the latter relationship has twice the number of years separating the partners. The research of psychologists like Lynn Phillips—who has written extensively about relationships between teen girls (including those above the age of consent) and older men—bears out how damaging these relationships can be.
Since this topic comes up so often, I frequently get asked whether I think older women/younger men relationships, or age-disparate relationships between lovers of the same sex, are as problematic. It sounds as if they ought to be—if age really is “more than just a number,” then why not see all relationships with a substantial gap as equally “bad”? But I think a compelling case can be made that older women/younger men relationships (and those between same-sex partners of unequal ages) are less culturally and psychologically damaging.
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This isn’t about seeing women as less inclined to exploit younger sexual partners. It’s about how our sexual desires are distorted by social expectations. We don’t fall in love, or fall into bed, in a vacuum. What we want sexually is shaped by the society in which we’re raised. Long before we hit puberty and start having sexual feelings of our own, we’ve picked up on what’s “hot” or “not” from the broader culture. And those cultural rules show an astonishing—and depressing—resilience. Ask anyone who’s found himself or herself falling into a stubbornly familiar traditional pattern in heterosexual relationships. A determined young feminist finds herself almost overwhelmed by the impulse to do her boyfriend’s laundry and “look after him”—even when he hasn’t asked for help. An egalitarian-minded guy finds himself strangely troubled that his girlfriend makes more money than he does. This has nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with the gender-role straitjacket with which most of us have been raised.
The older man/younger woman relationship reinforces those traditional gender roles. These relationships have their individual nuances, but they’re all variations on what is essentially the same thing. The older man offers (or pretends to offer) wisdom, experience, and wealth; the younger woman offers her innocence, her beauty, and her malleability in return. She gets a rocket booster into adulthood; he gets to be with someone too young to call him on his crap. Win-win or lose-lose, it’s a very old story.
When I wrote my original piece at the Good Men Project about older men and younger women, many readers of both sexes wrote in to defend these relationships, suggesting that it was “natural” for girls to seek out mentors—and natural for older men to want to sexualize that mentoring relationship. Others argued that these relationships made reproductive sense: older men, according to this theory always want to be with younger, more fertile women. The theory falls apart when you consider what happens to the quality of men’s sperm after 35; why guys my age would want to sleep with 20-somethings might make evolutionary sense. Why those young women would want to sleep with us, given the degraded nature of our swimmers, is a question evo-psych is powerless to answer.
Older women/younger men relationships don’t reinforce unhealthy gender stereotypes. They subvert them. They don’t make “reproductive sense” to the aficionados of junk science. (Though if you believe the questionable stereotype about when men and women are said to hit their respective sexual peaks—guys around 19, women in their mid-30s—perhaps there is some sense to be made after all.) Straight women may eroticize youth and vigor in younger men, but they rarely are taught to be turned on by displays of masculine ignorance or uncertainty; high-brow Western literature and low-brow pornography are filled with countless examples of men being aroused by much younger women who either “play dumb”—or are the genuine article. (This doesn’t mean that traditional roles never emerge in older women/younger men relationships. In many societies, boys were initiated into sex by older women, often prostitutes. There’s a notable reference to the acceptability of that practice in last year’s Oscar-winner for Best Picture, The King’s Speech. But that tradition is, thankfully, much rarer now.)
I’m not saying that every older woman/younger man relationship is inherently progressive while every older man/younger woman coupling is oppressive and reactionary. A great many young women do exercise great agency in relationships with older men. But there’s no escaping that given who has power in our culture, the reality is that the potential for abuse and exploitation is likely to be much higher in an age-disparate relationship where it is the man who is the elder of the lovers. We must note, too, that we live in a world where men are seen as growing both more “visible” and more powerful as they age, while women, past a certain age, are either desexualized or mocked. “Cougar” was not coined as a compliment; “silver fox” was.
Young men in consensual relationships with older women (or older men) aren’t having sex in a culture in which they are told, over and over again, that their beauty is their number one asset. We raise men to believe that good looks are a happy and welcome bonus, not an essential component of success. While underage boys can be victims of rape by women (a point I made here), their slightly older male counterparts are culturally better equipped to enter into consensual sexual relationships with older women (or men) than are their female peers. This isn’t because boys mature faster. This is because boys aren’t raised to believe that their sexual value has a rapidly approaching sell-by date. Whatever sexual power he may have in his youth, a young man knows he’s likely to have far more of a different—and more enduring—kind of clout when he gets older. Girls, raised as they are in a culture that values youthful female beauty above all else, have no such reassurance.
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What about gay men and lesbians? Of course, same-sex relationships can replicate unhealthy dynamics from the dominant culture. But by their very nature, same-sex relationships “subvert the dominant paradigm” in constructive ways. A romantic relationship between two men or two women reminds us that biology alone isn’t destiny, and that while a certain degree of complementarity is surely present in any enduring relationship, that complementarity doesn’t require radically different genitalia. The age-disparate relationship, while certainly quite common in gay and lesbian communities, doesn’t reinforce an unhealthy norm. Even a wealthy older man with a beautiful young but broke “boy toy” is a fundamentally distinct phenomenon from that of a wealthy older man with his hot young girlfriend. The latter relationship reminds us all of women’s relative powerlessness—and of older women’s disposability—in a unique and far more damaging way.
This doesn’t mean that young men (even those over the age of consent) can never be exploited or harmed, any more than it means that, say, a 19 year-old young woman will invariably suffer lasting trauma from a sexual relationship with a man twice her age. But though individual experiences can and will vary, every older man/younger woman affair sends a clear and visible signal to the outside world that our toxic social norms are left untouched; every older woman/younger man relationship sends the exact opposite signal. An older man and a younger woman need to work twice as hard as an older woman and a younger man to keep unhealthy power dynamics at bay. And so for reasons that have nothing to do with our individual intentions, and everything to do with the culture in which we live, we need to acknowledge that silver foxes have more capacity to do more harm than do cougars.
—Photo nicknbecka/Flickr
So good to read this coming from a man. Thank you.
Yes! Finally something about attracted to men.
This is a really great article. I’m 22 and I always find it very odd and uncomfortable when I get approached by significantly older men. After having a conversation with one I figured it must be easier for these older guys to exercise their power and dominance over immature young girls and women. While relationships where the women is older and the guy is younger. The relationship seems fun and much more easy going. Just my observation.
….patriarchy has done a job on our society.
Wow. Just curious, do you feel the same way about older women pursuing younger men? Or are you ok with that because you would probably love to get with guys who look like Justin Bieber or Taylor Lautner? And you say much older men make you feel uncomfortable, but is that really about age? Or is it just about looks? When you say “significantly older men” I bet you mean a 27 year old who doesn’t look like a school boy. I just wonder what you’re going to do when you’re 30 and are only attracted to much younger men… Read more »
“boys aren’t raised to believe that their sexual value has a rapidly approaching sell-by date.” This is actually not true at all. When you really think about it, average mature men in our culture are not presented as being objects of a woman’s lust. But young adolescent looking boys often are. So yeah, even though we are led to believe that as men age, they are still capable of succeeding with women, we are not led to believe that women actually lust after them the way younger girls and “cougars” lust after younger men. And as for women, I would… Read more »
Hey FTP: I agree that mainstream media may be trying to foist upon women the concept of lusting after young men. However, I do not think these women are buying into it. From the little bit of conversation and articles I have been privy too, many younger women in the late 80’s and 90’s thought harrison ford was super hot. I remember one article by a young female author that complained of milk-teethed baby-men like Ben Affleck being foisted upon women and she went on to say how Affleck didn’t hold a candle to Ford. The simple fact is that… Read more »
Excellent, rational rebuttal from a masculine perspective here:
http://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/the-mature-man/
Like I said in my comment on your other article, are a self-hating man, an uncle tom. You basically want to live in a society where women are taught they are sexy and that they should date the hottest youngest men they can find whereas men are lead to believe they are over the hill once they are 25. I wouldn’t be surprised if you promoted women having sex with underage teenage boys too. You are nothing but hypocrite and the world you dream of will never come.
My silver fox acquaintance is 61, and he loves cougars. He thinks of them as wingwomen. He pointed out the obvious math to me. The young dude who is dating the cougar just isn’t available to pay attention to the hot 30 year old.
You know, I’ve decided I’m tired of this topic. I expect that men will continue to like younger women. Some young women will continue to be grossed out by attention from older men. Others will continue to date them. Some young women will end up feeling exploited, some won’t. A few older women will date younger men (but I don’t think that will ever become common). Meanwhile, older women will continue to bemoan the lack of decent guys who want to date women their own age. A few older women will decide to work on their own satisfaction and happiness… Read more »
Plenty of “nice guys” watch girls their age date older guys, you get to watch guys your age date younger girls. There are also plenty of people the same age who date/marry/etc so maybe people are putting the blame on an easy to use excuse, instead of simply realizing finding a partner is as much luck as it is choice. Focus on making your life better, living an individual and self-sufficient life and you’ll gain a power that is EXPECTED in men, and thus remove a potential power imbalance. We cannot predict the future, you may find shit men, or… Read more »
Jun said: “Plenty of “nice guys” watch girls their age date older guys, you get to watch guys your age date younger girls.”
What about the “nice girls” that watch guys their age date “hot sexy party” girls only to see them bet burned but the guys go back for more?
They get an inkling of what nice guys go through when they see women their age go back to ‘bad boys’ again and again, only to return to their Nice Guy Best Friend for emotional comfort and a sympathetic ear before they head out back to the Bad Boy Biker Bar for another round of wild sex.
If it is acknowledged that older woman/younger man is acceptable then, in the interests of EQUALITY so is older man/younger women. It really comes down to women are adults, they are responsible for their actions. Men do not owe women protection, an income, a lifestyle or any advantage that men do not also receive in equal measure.
To do otherwise is misandry.
I’m surprised; given Schwyzer’s recent rhetorical strategy, I would have expected this post to go on Jezebel with all his other misandric pieces. Then again, Jezebel is mostly a women’s website, so I suppose it wouldn’t make much sense. Backed into a corner, eh, Schwyzer?
I wonder if this’ll need moderation too. Folks, the future should have fewer, rather than more rules. But sometimes the normaholism on this site is daunting. Regulate business (they need it), not individual behavior.
LMAO. Right you are, Henry V.
You are extremely correct in this post. I was in the bad fortune of getting into a relationship with an older man where he did in fact try to “sexualize” a mentor relationship that I was hoping to have with him. While I only sought to have a “mentor” relationship, the older man took advantage and proceeded to turn the relationship into a sexual one instead. This was his plan all along. He took my naive trust in which I naively believed that someone as old and as powerful as him could be a generous benefactor and used that to… Read more »
k.: “Sure there are indeed younger women who willingly enter into a relationship with an older man, but I believe they do so out of every reason BUT love.”
So your belief is that those women are unable to love someone older than themselves and that they simply are unable to know the difference between real love and exploitation (incompetent) or that they all are some form of gold-diggers (greedy and materalistics)?
Of course! Women who do not follow the radical-feminist model must, somehow, be deluded and unable to comprehend their own wants and needs.
They should be protected from their own bad decisions by noble champions like Schwyzer.
K: most people tend to regret the poor decisions they made in their youth. I don’t have the article to hand, but somebody posted a link in hugo’s previous post about young women/old men and it shows that when young women were queried about their current relationships or recent previous relationships, they scored much higher in satisfaction than older women who were queried about relationships in their youth. I think it’s analogous to women who date jerks in their youth. Later in life they might think “how could I have been so stupid!” and shove more of the blame on… Read more »
My experience has been that the younger woman indicates she wants sex…
I think sex is like cheese, you add it to anything and it makes it better. Sex and mentor relationship…I think its fantastic. You wanted a mentor relationship. You instead go mentor relationship + sex. Sex is a bonus. Of course that is because I think sex is fantastic. So I understand your complaints. You should be happy that in addition to a mentor you got laid.
You are an example of someone who is sex negative. Add anything to sex and its worse. Mentor….Great. Sex + mentor ….. rape. Ewwww. You suck.
This is a absolutely solid writing, I once tried 3 yrs to get in a relationship with a girl 10 months younger than me. She was too insecure to acknowledge my advance as serious, she finally confessed on one of our dates that she like dating older men. It gave her security that she would get married soon and gave her a sense of maturity. It comes down to the fact that the lady in the first comment said eventually she will grow our of the next and fly away. I dated another woman 10 yrs older than me, she… Read more »
TL:DR
I hate the term cougar – its usually the younger men that are the predatory ones.What do you call an older man who chases younger women – an old fart? Unless of course, he happens to be rich and famous – then he is considered a distinguished gentleman with character.
Yes. exactly.
It’s easy if you have fame, power & money – Hugh Hefner comes to mind. “The Beauty Myth” – Naomi Wolf – “For many men, the myth is a drug that insulates them from the dangers of self-knowledge. Contemplating an art object made out of a living woman is one way a man can fool himself that he is immortal. If the woman’s eyes are his mirror, and the mirror ages, the gazing man must see that he is aging as well. A new mirror, or a fantasy mirror made of “beauty” rather than degenerating flesh and blood, saves him… Read more »
There are several errors in this blog. One is that there is a sexual demarcation on power and wealth. It is an even trade anyway one looks. It is that in Western society we hammer the stereotypes for economic reasons NOT sexual. From Bacon’s rebellion to today men and women are manipulated by the “powers that are? to be enslaved to a way of life that is in economic best interest but not that of the individual. The idea that women of wealth and power are somehow to be lauded while condemning males for the same action is discriminatory in… Read more »
As for a 40 year old degree, many college grads don’t open a book after they graduate. They seem to view reading books as a form of punishment. I am a college graduate and an autodidact – I own more books (which I actually read!) than I can count in my personal library.
As an astrologer, I think it’s really chart compatability that matters. I had a relationship with a woman 24 years younger than I where we had trine Moons, and Mars and Venus in mutual reception. Zowie! There were some Mercury problems, though (quincux.) And her Saturn was sitting on my Sun. So, after six years, Pow! It was over.
When I was a kid, most of my fantasies were about adult women. Does that get me off the hook?
Hmmm, so much of this seems to come down to what Hugo views as the “dominant paradigm.” Anything that “subverts” said paradigm is good, and anything that is consistent with it is bad. So, what happens when the paradigm changes, Hugo? Much of the perceived “longevity” of men in the sexual marketplace seems to result from outdated educational and economic stereotypes. Will undereducated / unemployed / underemployed men in their 30s be able to attract women? I have my doubts. Whether it is the “End of Men” or, as Lionel Tiger put it better 10 years ago “The Decline of… Read more »
Another sexist double standard based on the misogyny that women aren’t adults capable of making their own decisions.
As far as public opinion goes, cougars are very popular, they even have a TV show. Is anyone praising Berlusconi for is appetite for young women?
Well, that’s actually the complete opposite of what he said. He said there is a difference between women under 23, their choices, vs a women in her 30s. And honestly, I think we all experienced that since we were all probably 18-23 once. I completely changed between the ages of 18-25. I was a different person at 25. Expecting a 21 year old woman to be equppied to make the same choices as a 30 year old one isn’t exactly fair. Especially if that 21 year old woman is in a relationship with a more seasoned man. It is the… Read more »
I agree with you AllyFogg. People’s relationships don’t owe the larger society any dues and balances. This is an all too common logical mistake made by those that skip back and forth between instances and generalities. An individual relationship is toxic when it is toxic, not when the statistical average of the category it happens to belong to is more toxic than not. If we were to be similarly confused and unfair, we could make a comparable case for interracial relationships with nonsensical claims that since whites are racist and privileged, that it would be toxic for a white female… Read more »
Actually, people DO say this about relationships between Black women and white men. For instance, “since whites are racist and privileged, it would be toxic for a Black female to date/marry a white male”. Conventional wisdom in the Black community is that relationships between Black women and white men will eventually fall into slave/master dynamics that when further loaded with racial baggage can’t be anything but toxic even if it LOOKS benign. Black parents often tell their daughters this the minute they hit puberty and Black women will tell you some version of this when asked why they would never… Read more »
Quite a record of sucessful Black women dating and marrying white men…
My first problem with this article is that it insists upon generalising out from specifics to principle. I agree that there are dangers in relationships where there are large disparities in status, wealth, power etc, all of which often correlate with age and gender. However that doesn’t mean that it is either the age or the gender that is the problem. My second problem is that there is an implied (or perhaps overt) judgementalism towards individuals and their choices. It might be ill-advised for someone to enter a very unbalanced relationship, and if one of my friends asked for my… Read more »
Nice to see you commenting here AllyF. I enjoy reading your posts at the Guardian site.
just want to echo AllyFog and Elissa- they said it better than I could.
If you extend this line of absurd thinking you can come up with combinations of factors (that confer or deny “privilege”) within a given person or people that could render masturbation problematic… so ridiculous.
“Young men in consensual relationships with older women (or older men) aren’t having sex in a culture in which they are told, over and over again, that their beauty is their number one asset. We raise men to believe that good looks are a happy and welcome bonus, not an essential component of success.” So very true. When my daughter was about 16, and already considering herself a feminist, we had an unforgettable conversation. I had just started dating again several years after divorce, and was using match.com and running into the usual experiences women have. Men 10-20 years older… Read more »
I’ve experience similar things (from the poly perspective though). Men 10-20 years older are interested and (I think) looking for a new wife (not what I’m about). Men 20 years younger, think I’m a cougar perhaps, though some just seem to want a mother to take care of them. Not interested in hook ups or parenting 25 year olds. Men my age, are usually not poly anyway, but mostly seeking a second wife a few years younger. Personally, I wish we all could date who we want regardless of age, so long as the relationship was entered into with respect… Read more »
Lori Day, Perhaps I am reading too much into your reaction to your daughter’s statement, but: “Verbal smack-down” is how you converse with your daughter when you disagree with her opinion about relationships? I’m wondering which rhetorical techniques would be involved with a verbal smackdown of one’s child – guilt, shame, sarcasm, intimidation, or…. And, I’m wondering how she will attempt to even the score, if there is point scoring involved. Did you get the sense that she was won over to your point of view, or is she just informed that she should not say such things in the… Read more »
I don’t know Lori personally, but my guess is that was a turn of phrase much like “schooled her.”
Wow! Just wow! I love to write, and was having fun writing about that conversation using exaggerated language. I have THE most fabulous relationship with my daughter and would never harm her in any way, and owe no further explanation to anyone on the matter. “That Guy,” you need to chill out and get a sense of humor. You know what it’s like? It’s like that new book for adults called “Go the Fuck to Sleep.” That book is for fun! No loving adult would actually say that to their child, or read the book to their child. Are you… Read more »
Thank you, Jill, for being, well, rational. 🙂
Julie! I meant Julie! I must need a smack-down!
BAM! 😉
Lori:
I don’t see how your daughter’s views differ greatly from Hugo’s. He’s arbitrarily judging old men/young women relationships as potentially toxic and older women/young men relationships as mostly healthy without any critical thinking to back it up.
I understand that you wanted to correct your daughters judgementalism, but then you embrace Hugos? That doesn’t make sense.
In my mind (and the opinions of a lot of common-sense stating grounded commenters) may december romances are equal whatever the genders are.
Yawn.
Pretty sure I already read this article three or four times before, he just changes the title. Oh well, at least he didn’t conflate men who have relationships with younger, adult, women with pedophilia… this time.
I was unaware that “reproduction” was the sole consideration in age-disparate relationships.
However, that’s an excellent picture to accompany the article.
Way to propagate the “men are predators” meme. For a writer on a mens website you sure seem to hate men. Projecting your own guilt perhaps?
Although I won’t comment on him personally and what could possibly motivate a person to hold such doggedly consistent male-hate filled views, I have noticed that people immersed in Women’s/Gender Studies, who don’t get escape that ideology at some point, very frequently see the world through the anti-male prism reflected in this and prior articles. That view becomes their personal reality; that is truly how they truly see the world. Sadly, they often can’t be convinced that average go-to-work-every-day heterosexual men aren’t inherently evil and predators of women, young and old.