There's a new trend on the dating block and it's getting younger women's knickers all wound up in a knot. It's not the fact that there are a surplus of players, cheating cads or too many expectations of casual sex on the first date that are getting young modern femmes in a tizzy. Instead, it's that they're being overlooked … for older women.
I've never dated a much younger man. But seeing my girlfriend go all googly-eyed over a man who is at least 10 years her junior is making me wonder: have too many women for way too long been barking up the wrong, seemingly age-appropriate, tree? And have the tables finally turned? Are the younger women being shunned for their older - albeit more sophisticated, less desperate - single counterparts?
My girlfriend is not a cougar (which by definition is a woman over 40 who actively seeks out younger men for sex). Nor is she a desperate singleton who can't meet a man. Nor is she on the hunt for a toy boy. Oh no. Instead, she's the type of gal who has men flocking all over her and can't bat them away fast enough despite the fact she's mastered the art of the cold-shoulder. But when a younger man started to woo her relentlessly, suddenly things began getting mightily exciting.
Because here's the thing: younger men aren't jaded. They haven't been heartbroken (yet), they haven't been played, dumped or manipulated and they're not into games (or at least they haven't yet discovered how exactly to play them). Instead, they simply do what they feel like when they feel like doing it without fear of consequences, rejection or judgment.
When I ask my girlfriend how the relationship is progressing, she tells me that what's keeping them together is being at a similar stage in life.
"We're both progressing in our careers and are fired up about life. We both want to travel and explore the world. That's why it's working," she says.
But there's more. It seems to me that younger men dote on older women, aren't afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves, are eager to please and - even more beneficial - are eager to learn.
Which puts older men - and younger women - at a disadvantage when it comes to the modern dating game. Or any dating game for that matter. Or at least if Benjamin Franklin's reasoning is anything to go by. Long before Desperate Housewives, Cougar Town and Demi Moore, Franklin appeared to realise the value of dating an older woman when he wrote a letter to a friend, giving him the following advice:
"In all your amours you should prefer old women to young ones. You call this a paradox, and demand my reasons. They are these: Because as they have more knowledge of the world and their minds are better stored with observations, their conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreeable. Because when women cease to be handsome they study to be good. To maintain their influence over men, they supply the diminution of beauty by an augmentation of utility. They learn to do a thousand services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old woman who is not a good woman."
But let's get real here: is the appeal simply the lure of better sex? Are older women more likely to give it up sooner than younger women? And are they really better at it?
Miss Cougar Canada Alison Brown (yes, there is such a thing as a cougar competition) says the answer is a definitive no.
She told Time magazine this: "What I've noticed on dating sites today is that younger men are coming on to me, and it's not just because we're 'easy marks' for sex. It's because we're successful, intelligent, looking great and we don't play games like so many of the younger girls they date."
Case in point is what one younger man told me about dating an older women: "It's not about the sex - although it's usually fantastic - but it's about the ability to be intellectually stimulated outside the bedroom that makes it all the more appealing."
Many, including Michael Dunn, a noted psychology researcher at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, believe the notion of the cougar is indeed a myth. They say not that many women are seeking younger men, but are looking instead for any partner who ticks most of the boxes. I think that perhaps we should start to look outside our age-gap box.
Because if it's flowers, attention and good sex you're after, sometimes it's the ones who don't tick the boxes on your checklists that end up being the best partners in real life after all ...
What do you think?
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