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Posted on 10/11/2003 12:13:39 PM PDT by anncoulteriscool
Older women, younger men
Celebrities not only ones to embrace growing trend
By BO EMERSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For five years, Betty Rials dated a man slightly older than her oldest child. She was in her 50s; he was in his 30s.
They danced, shopped for antiques, put a new roof on her carport and got along famously. But she wasn't ready for wedlock.
"I didn't think marriage would work with someone that much younger," says the retired insurance underwriter, who lives in Kennesaw and prefers not to reveal her age. "The only way I could break up with him was move away. I left Kentucky and came to Atlanta."
Though she's dating an older man now, Rials has an appreciative eye for the younger guy. And she's not alone.
Many of the 9 million members of online dating service Match.com feel the same way. Some 31 percent of Match.com's female subscribers say they are willing to date a man five years younger, and 26 percent of men are willing to date a woman five years older.
A new survey by AARP The Magazine found similar results, revealing that, among those polled, 34 percent of women over 50 dated younger men.
This is what editor Stephen Slon calls the "Demi/Ashton" phenomenon, referring to the recent romance between 25-year-old Ashton Kutcher (of MTV's "Punk'd" and Fox's "That 70s Show") and 40-year-old mega-babe Demi Moore, who recently demonstrated she could still stuff a wild bikini in "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle."
For powerful women, dating youngsters is nothing new.
The first wife of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was his boss, a rich widow named Khadija whose business he managed, and whose hand he eventually accepted in marriage, though she was five years older.
The celebrated French novelist Gabrielle Collette found happiness, after several marriages, with a husband 16 years her junior. Cher has been linked with a series of younger men, from Richie Sambora to Val Kilmer. Today actress Vivica A. Fox is reportedly dating young rapper 50 Cent, while Madonna, 45, has settled happily into a marriage with 35-year-old director Guy Ritchie.
Yet for eons, biology has ruled social interaction, directing men toward the reproductively viable younger female and women toward the able provider (i.e., the powerful older male).
That goes some way in explaining how actor Tony Randall, now 83, hooked up with actress Heather Harlan (50 years his junior) and how Michael Douglas, 59, paired up with Catherine Zeta-Jones, 34.
So, where are we now?
"The question is, have the evolutionary tables turned?" asks Match.com spokeswoman Trish McDermott. "Are women becoming less interested in men based on their ability to provide, because women are in fact providing for themselves?"
Absolutely, says Atlanta interior designer Pat Harris, who just broke off a relationship with a younger man.
"I'm not looking for somebody's wallet," she says. "Security? That's not an interest to me. I'm secure enough."
"It's changed in the past 15 years," says Alpharetta resident Susanne Shaub, 37, a market analyst in the telecom industry. "When I was growing up, a girl dating somebody younger, it was 'Oh my gosh! Why would she do that? What's the benefit?' "
Today Shaub will tell you the benefit is named Charles Wilson. Wilson, 32, loves to go clubbing, digs rap music and does not doze off in front of the television. He's also impeccably attentive to Shaub's two young children.
"I still live a young life," says Shaub. "I cannot listen to the standard music of the person who's 37."
For his part, Wilson, an outdoor advertising executive who lives in Marietta, enjoys Shaub's centeredness and her accomplishments, and the fact that her cellphone ring tone is the melody from "In Da Club."
"I thought she was my age or a little younger," when they met last spring, he says. "She's really cool, I like her a lot, and all the game playing is over with."
When Terry McMillan wrote "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" in 1996 (based on her own love affair with a young man), critics called it a fantasy. Today it's edging closer to the norm. In 26.9 percent of unmarried couples, the woman is older, according to the U.S. census. In 13 percent of married couples, the wife is older than the husband. According to Census Bureau figures, that percentage has crept steadily upward, from 7.7 percent in the early 1940s.
Atlanta women say there are several good reasons to hook up with a junior male. "Endurance," jokes a sly Pamela Brooks, 40, of Stone Mountain. "That's always an advantage."
The Emory University grants administrator is married to Richard Brooks, 36, an information specialist with the Georgia Technology Authority and an energetic tennis-teaching daddy to their two girls.
She was 27 and he was just out of college when they met at church. "He was tall, dark and handsome, and he was able to conjugate his verbs," she says. It turned out they both love jazz, sports and Christian fellowship.
In the not-too-distant past, their age difference might have superseded such common interests. Today things have changed.
Men and women raised in the post-feminist '70s and '80s are more open-minded when seeking a mate, says Mori Freed, a marriage and family therapist based in Buckhead.
"These young women grow up knowing they're going to have to take care of themselves, which is very wise," says Freed. "They're much more inclined to marry a playmate, someone with a lot of compatibility, rather than somebody who will be a daddy."
But chronology does not necessarily make for compatibility. Many Atlanta women say finding an appropriate male in their age range is a challenge.
Gerry Adcock of Acworth likes to hike up Brasstown Bald and go to concerts and ballgames. When she found herself single in her 50s (her husband had taken up with a younger woman), she soon discovered that 50-year-old men were perpetually pooped. But 40-year-old men weren't.
A budget analyst with the state, she fell in love with another state employee who happened to be 10 years her junior. "He could do a lot more than most men my age," she says. "We went to concerts, played tennis, went to Vegas. We enjoyed each other."
Which brings up another reason for the May-December attraction: Women in their 50s have already navigated the most difficult decade of all, says Harris, the interior designer. They are usually done with child rearing, established in business, and ready to explore. But men, she said, aren't.
"You don't want to meet men your age," she says. "They seem to be tired. They seem like their jobs are wearing them out. You want someone who's younger who can keep up with you."
McDermott, of Match.com, says she knows of additional reasons older single women might prefer a younger man.
Such men "are less encumbered by career demands and may be more able to care for and provide love and support for these busy and successful women."
Women want someone who can cook supper or give them a massage, says McDermott. In other words, a man who is a little bit like a wife.
"We definitely have older women that prefer to date younger men," says Michelle Brown, senior director of It's Just Lunch, an Atlanta branch of a national dating service. She estimates 30 percent of her female clients date whippersnappers. "I think the men are more open to it than they used to be."
But older men are slower to change, according to "traditional" Atlanta matchmaker Beatrice Gruss.
"Once a man reaches his mid-40s, he is no longer fine with somebody his own age or older," she says. "When he reaches middle age, he decides that now a younger woman would look better on his arm."
With older men overfishing the dating pool and depleting the supply of young females, younger men are even more likely to date up as well as down, says Brown.
Some women who date or marry freshly minted males admit to feeling insecure about competition from the ingenue. "That's the risk you take," says Harris, "but that's the risk you take with anyone, younger or older."
When Pamela Brooks celebrated her 40th birthday last month, the occasion brought a few fleeting moments of age concern, but she put them out of her mind.
"I did not want it to be an issue," she says. "If nothing else, it was a motivation for me to be a foxy middle-aged woman."
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The woman wants the young stud, and the young stud wants her money. It's an easy way to find a sugar momma.
Woman have been using old geezers for years. Now it's the mans turn.
Like the old saying says: "What goes around, comes around."
Good luck cash hunting, boys!
I'm soooooo sorry....it has nothing to do with Kobe Bryant or Rush Limbaugh or WMD's or Arnold...what was I thinking...I'm so sorry....NOT!
Athletic and active? Spare me. They're after her money. No different than why a younger girl dates a rich old coot.
Disgusting! Act your age ladies!
Practically speaking, though, singles should confine their choices to no more than 10 years difference either way. I say that because of impending physiological differences. Between 50 and 60, the human body undergoes some real changes. It might not be pleasant for someone who is, say, 30 years younger than their mate.
What do y'all think of a 38-year old woman with 16-year old and 13-year old daughters who has a 22-year old boyfriend that looks 15?
Am I judgemental to think that is messed up?
29 and counting! hehe.
Ain't it the truth?!
(But hey, that's just one guy's opinion.)
Shoot, I'm your age...let's see that gives me at least 18 years to see my fuse sparkle! : ) (wishes and prayers on my part!)
That would descibe the clothes those two are wearing.
We were standing in the courthouse getting our marriage license and the clerk asked him his DOB.
We got along so well, it never even occured to me to ask. :)
Ahmm, I never EVER, use the work "luck" with the missus! Stamina, happy, more, continue, yes, forever, grunt, and hungry maybe! Oh, wait a minute...she isn't "the missus" anymore! Too much work related issues I guess! : )
As is mine.
Ain't he a cutie?
Just no groping, redlipstick...
Insightful, and true. I date younger women because I want to marry and have kids. With a woman my age (45), it wouldn't be safe to have children. You can only go so young, though, before you have absolutely nothing to talk about. Of course, it varies with individuals. Some people are very mature, very young, and some are never mature, ever.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Actually, it's great, because we "remember the same stuff"...
John Hendrickson and Mary Lou Whitney
"In 1992 after 34 years of marriage, Sonny Whitney died at the age of 93, leaving Marylou his entire $100 million estate. After a few months, the high-spirited Marylou, who had dutifully nursed her husband through his last ailing years, threw herself headlong into society. It was not long before "Page Six" reported that the "ageless beauty" was dangling several men, ranging in age from 30 to 70. "Oh, yes!" Marylou confirms brightly. "There were lots! But John was the only one who counted."
".............So when she returned home with a husband 39 years her junior, some of her neighbors were understandably alarmed. "I think people were scared that he was a lightweight, that he was using her for the money, and, worst of all, that he'd steal her away from Saratoga," says one prominent local. But John's genial nature soon won over most of his detractors, and his deft sale of 15,000 acres of Mrs. Whitney's land in the Adirondacks proved he was more than just a semi-pretty face. In any case, he says, he wouldn't dream of abandoning Saratoga. "Marylou saved this town," he says. "At least, that's what people tell me. I wasn't born yet........."
Fascinating!
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