HappyDaters.com

Mature women dating younger guys is a trend that has just started to pick up steam, but it is not going away any time soon.  In fact, more than a quarter of today’s brides are older than their grooms.

Celebrity culture has played into this in part.  Many well known actresses such as Demi Moore, Madonna, and Susan Sarandon have married younger men.  These women have put their stamp of approval on the mature women dating younger men concept.

But, society has changed as well.  Not too long ago, women married young and marriages were for life.  The nuclear family unit was the basis for society and anything that deviated from this norm was shunned.  Therefore, there weren’t many opportunities for mature women dating younger men.

But, since divorce has become more prevalent, there are any number of women in their late 30s and 40s who are looking for partners.  When they look at men their own age, they often don’t like what they see.

First of all, men who are in this age range are caught up in their own careers and interests.  They are less likely to be supportive of a woman’s career.  Because women have moved into managerial and entrepreneurial roles, they sometimes need partners who can be “the man behind the woman.”  Men their own age are reluctant to take on this role.

Also, mature women dating men their own age are likely to be disappointed in the sex.  A woman peeks sexually in her late 30s.  Well into her 40s, she is in her sexual prime.  A man, however, begins to loose steam at this age.  He’s just not able to keep up with her surging needs.

Younger men find these women, newly confident in their sexual prowess, to be very attractive.  Mature women know what they want in bed and can communicate that to their lovers.

Mature women dating younger men can also provide the guys with a sense of financial stability that allows the men to take risks with their careers.  One younger man was able to pursue a career as a concert pianist because his older woman lover was able to cover their living expenses while he became known in his field.  Other men have been able to pursue graduate school or start businesses due to the financial support of their older girlfriends.

Women have, for years, benefited from the generosity of older partners.  Now, men are able to do so as well.

If you want to meet a person outside your own age range, you have to go where they are.  For instance, a mature woman wanting to date a younger man may want to join a gym.  A younger man looking for a professional woman might join a tango class.  There are also places for such couples to meet online.  The term for this is cougar dating.

Expect that the trend of mature women dating younger men to grow as society’s expectations about sex roles evolve.

You know that an idea has the public imagination when you hear it described by a number of imaginative epithets. Older women-younger men romantic pairings somehow really have the public imagination. They get called Cougar Relationships (the cougar being the older woman, as you probably know from the Courteney Cox-starring TV show Cougar Town), May-December relationships (from the idea that the boy is seen to be in the spring of his life and the woman in the winter of hers) and other colorful terms. Actually, age disparity in relationships where the woman is older isn’t all that new. People have been talking about this for 20 years now. The fact that it still attracts a fair amount of press goes to show how a woman being older in a relationship is something people really consider strange.

Which is a shame; the only reason older women-younger men match-ups are even done today is that women today are freer and more independent than they ever were. Why, the Michael Douglas – Catherine Zeta Jones pair never attracts that description; only an Ashton Kutcher – Demi Moore relationship does. It isn’t an age difference per se that gets people wondering. It’s the fact that it’s the woman who is older. Why would a young man want to do that, they wonder. Is the man gay? Is he looking for a free ride? Is he somehow strange? It never occurs to people that fairness usually comes into play when you allow people to do what they really wish for. If people wish for love, if they don’t fear society, and if they have the means to be free, society will begin to witness just about every kind of relationship it is possible for people to have.

Some people like to point to how a relationship between an older man and a young woman is supposed to be somehow more natural. Emotionally speaking, men happen to take longer to develop than women, they say. A woman with an older man would naturally feel right at home – as he would be her emotional equal. An older man would also be financially more stable, they say. By that reasoning, older women -younger men pairings would have to be all wrong. An older woman would have to be far, far more emotionally mature than her younger partner. But that’s not really how it works.

Women in such relationships report that their partners usually are adequately mature; they also value how a younger man comes to them with no emotional baggage. Quite simply though, tastes just differ. Some men simply have an eye for the kind of mature and vulnerable beauty an older woman possesses.

For men who understand all this, a relationship with an older woman can be especially meaningful. Partners can contribute to a relationship in different ways. As long as a relationship is equal and allows room for both partners to contribute in whatever way they can, it really can work. As long as both partners understand how aging can change things or are at least open to handling all of it the right way, love certainly can work. It has before. And it will in the future.