'Cougars?' How About 'Sought After Mature Women?'

The media hype about older women seeking out young men for sexual contact has about worn me down. As a relationship therapist for four decades, I have certainly defended many unfairly labeled "dirty old men," who were just guys who fell in love with younger women for their beauty, energy, and potential for having children. Many of my older male patients have wanted to start families again and have created great second marriages.

Image via WikipediaNow I have a whole new group of valuable people to defend. In the past several years, I've had the pleasure of working with older women in relationships with often much younger men. They are not the "older women who frequent clubs to score sexually with younger men," as the new, and unfair definition is of "Cougars." They are quality, mature women who have been actively sought after by younger men for long-term, committed relationships. Yes, sex is an important part of their relationship, but there is so much more.

Currently, I am working with five couples where the women are five to eighteen years older than their male partners. All of them are in committed relationships. They come into therapy to work on typical issues that all couples face, but also on the challenges that they receive regularly from the outside. Society still has deep prejudices against older women with younger men, unfairly non-reciprocal when the genders are reversed.

I ask these young men what attracts them to their women. They regularly tell me things like:

"She is so incredibly smart about life,"
"She is so easy to be with, nothing fazes her,"
"She tracks me so well. I never have to explain myself or feel badly about who I am. I've never felt this known and still loved,"
"It is so great to be with someone who isn't so concerned about what people think about her. The confidence she feels about herself and what she has to offer is an amazing turn-on."

Here's what the women say:

"He is so caring and appreciative of the things I do for him that are second nature to me."
"He makes me feel beautiful and desirable."
"He is so great with my kids."
"He's always up for any adventure. So many of the older guys I dated were uninterested in the exciting things I love to do."
"He helps me so much, often before I even have to ask."

Their most pressing problem is the discrimination they face. These couples get so many covert and overt negative comments from people that clearly indicate their discomfort: Jealous friends, kids who think moms shouldn't be in love, competitive ex-husbands who may feel displaced by a younger man, implied differences in capacity to provide for financial needs, prejudices against mature women who are "robbing the cradle," and stereotypes about older women only wanting younger men for better sex. And those are only a few.

Here's one example:

Vicky and Hal met in a book club three years ago. Vicky's husband had left her four years earlier to marry a woman twenty years younger. Her kids were torn between their concern for their mom and wanting to accept his new wife. Their dad insisted they get over the fact that his new girlfriend was only six years older than his daughters and wanted them to be "great friends."

Hal was just getting over a long-term relationship with his past girl-friend and discouraged over the women he'd been dating. So many of them were over-indulgent and self-serving, looking for money and a good time. He'd felt like they just didn't understand what it was like to spend so many years building a career and trying to pay off the huge debt he'd incurred.

Vicky seemed sincerely concerned. Twelve years older than Hal, she was wonderfully alive, kind, and calm, paying careful attention when he shared his conflicts and broken dreams. He never thought about the age difference between them as a barrier to their growing intimacy. The more time they spent together, the greater their friendship deepened. Neither thought it would be anything more than that but after a year, it blossomed into a romantic relationship.

At first, her girls thought it a little odd that their mom would spend so much time with someone so much younger than she, but Hal was such a great guy and so much fun to be around. Hanging out as a family became more natural and easy over time. They had to ward off many derogatory remarks from other people, especially from their dad, but they eagerly defended their mom's choice.

Their dad didn't do as well. Somehow feeling oddly displaced, he told Vicky that he wanted to reduce the alimony he was paying her, and told her she should "get money from her new friend for his services." He also regularly told her that people were laughing at her behind her back. Though sensitive and concerned about what people were saying, Vicky took comfort in the wonderful relationship she and Hal were creating.

One of the new modal points for divorce is women over sixty leaving sedate, often self-indulgent husbands who no longer think that romance is necessary in a long-term relationship. These more mature women are searching for men who still love an active relationship, are open to new adventures, energetic in their romantic commitments, and love women who have a combination of all of those same desires plus the maturity that life's lessons provide. What is wrong with that pairing and why can't this society offer that to its women without the derogatory descriptions that seem to be proliferating?

In Ben Franklin's 1745 essay, "Advice on the Choice of a Mistress," he gives eight reasons why a young man should prefer an older woman. First he advocates why marriage is always better than a casual relationship, but then advises that, if a man is not ready, he should definitely seek out the company of a mature woman over a younger one. Though Ben's mores do reflect the times, he tells his advice-seeker that older women have better minds, offer more interesting conversation, are good at heart, have usually satisfied their need to have children, are unlikely to exploit, give excellent counsel, and are sexually desirable and knowledgeable about good love-making.

People lived much shorter lives then, and Ben was probably not talking about long-term committed relationships, but the descriptions of mature women are not very different from what younger men today feel about their older women partners. Could we possibly come up with a different description and definition of wonderful women who are treasured by their younger men than "Cougars?"

Related articles

• Do you love is far from us? (datingrulez.com)
• Gloucester is the 'cougar capital' of Britain as survey shows more than half of UK women want a toyboy (dailymail.co.uk)
• Can cougar/cub relationships ever work? (thesun.co.uk)
• A Cougar Encounter (kdaddy23.wordpress.com)
• "Party Girl" Anna David and the Wounded Cougar (psychologytoday.com)

Meek men the perfect mate in austere times

The Global Financial Crisis may have sent the markets plummeting, but the stakes of the world's milder males should have skyrocketed, according to new research.

In today's edition of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, University of Queensland researchers Anthony Lee and Dr Brendan Zietsch show environmental factors can influence a woman's choice of a mate.

They find that when faced with the threat of increased prevalence of disease, women choose more masculine males. But during times of resource scarcity, "feminine" males, who are more committed to long-term relationships and caring for resulting offspring, come to the fore.

Lee, a postgraduate student in the Univeristy's School of Psychology, says the research builds on cross-cultural studies that show women in countries with a higher prevalence of disease are more likely to prefer males with strong masculine features.

"Masculine males have increased testosterone and robust immune systems," he says. "This indicates if you mate with a masculine male they can pass on their increased immunity to a child."

Lee says the preference for more masculine partners has a trade-off.

"The problem with choosing a more masculine male is that increased testosterone is also associated with traits linked to being a bad parent," he says. These include a preference for short-term relationships and low faithfulness.

Buying a mate
Lee says the cross-cultural studies were limited in their findings as they failed to show the mechanisms underpinning the effect.

"Differences in income, inequality and violence vary with pathogen prevalence and could underlie regional variation in mate preference," the researchers write.

To test whether mate preference was flexible and changed with environment, the researchers asked 60 women to "buy" a mate.

The participants were divided into three groups. One was reminded of the threat of disease, the second of concerns over finances and food, while the third was used as a control group.

After completing a series of questions the participants were given a list of 10 traits, five of each related to good genetic and parenting qualities.

The women were given "25 mate dollars" and asked to spend the money buying their ideal partner.

Those women who had a heightened awareness of financial or resource scarcity preferred men with so-called "good-dad" traits, while those facing an increased disease threat chose men with "good-gene" traits.

Best package to suit their situation
Lee says the flexibility in women's mate preferences shows women do choose mates that will maximise their own or their offspring's survival in any given environment.

"They want to pick the best package to suit their situation," says Lee.

"This is evolutionarily advantageous over a fixed set of preferences as women would be able to adapt their preferences to rapid changes in environment such as a pathogen outbreak or a famine."

Lee says the study cannot predict how women faced with both a high disease risk and resource scarcity would behave.

"However, I would think that women have the ability to perceive and take into account varying levels of both when facing the trade-off between genetic and parental qualities," he says.

But Lee warns there are many factors that influence this trade-off and the "effect of the environment is just one piece of the puzzle".

As for males, it seems any woman will do, says Lee.

"For women, producing an offspring requires at least nine months of gestation, and even more time and resources raising the child through infancy," he says.

"Since men can invest relatively less in producing an offspring, it can be evolutionarily advantageous for men not to be as choosy as women."