Sloan: About a month after my second husband and I decided to get a divorce, a 22-year-old former NYU student asked me out. He had found me on OKCupid and messaged me. Despite his age, I found myself attracted to him. I was 40 at the time and I felt weird about going out with him, but I said yes.

We went to The Comedy Cellar (where we saw Louis CK – a highlight of my dating career). We went to my favorite bar. We went to watch a game. He was polite, handsome, funny. I took him home and discovered that I had forgotten what a 20-something guy is like in bed. In effect, athletic. Their bodies just work without them worrying about it. They’re in shape. They’re enthusiastic. After a few dates, he found a girl his own age that he liked and we called it off. I had a great time with him.

In essence, I broke the seal. After this guy, I kept dating 20-something men. In fact, I developed a taste for 20-something men. Heck, I lived with one for nearly two years in a serious relationship. (And, just for the record, age was not the factor that broke us up. More on that in a future post.)

When I’m out with a younger guy, sometimes I still get self-conscious when I see people my own age looking at us. There’s some judgment there, often, or envy. I can’t tell which one, since they are so often mixed up with each other. But I’m comfortable dating much younger men. Especially during those time periods – like right after my divorce – when I didn’t want to get into anything serious. There is rarely anything “serious” that comes out of a 40-something/20-something pairing.

But it’s not just about sex either, folks. It really, really isn’t. Most of younger men I’ve dated are smart and interesting and they are often bored by women their own age. They want stimulating conversation. They want a woman who isn’t going to freak out if they don’t text her back immediately. They want a girlfriend who isn’t hustling them down the aisle. They want someone confident enough in herself that she can toss her clothes off, rip their clothes off, and ask for exactly what she wants. I’m not saying that all 20-something women are the opposite of this, but it’s a lot harder to be this type of woman when you’re younger. I was a bundle of insecurities in my 20s. Now I’m not. I’m fun and I know what I want. That’s a huge turn-on for a 20-something guy.

Lest you think this is a freak effect, I get asked out primarily by 27-year-olds. That’s the average age of the men who message me on OKCupid. I’m still hot, so I’m sure that is part of it. But they are responding to the PhD as well. I think that there has been a societal shift in our cultural acceptance of older women/younger men relationships. I think it started when we collectively pondered the Demi Moore-Ashton Kutcher marriage. Demi Moore (and Madonna – let’s not forget the queen) did a lot of trailblazing here to normalize this age difference. And, quite frankly, I love her for it.

Analysis:

Why is age an issue? 

I’m going to start my exploration of this question with another question: Why did we coin the term “cougar” to label women who dared to date younger men? There have been many articles on why this term is offensive and what it might indicate about our culture at large (primarily that we are frightened of sexually aggressive women). I hate the term and I instinctively recoil whenever it is applied to me.

But why should I care? Does my own dislike of the label indicate that I, too, have a problem with the age difference?

As a scientist and researcher, I’m trained to look at the history of the phenomenon I’m studying. And the reverse age gap has a much shorter existence than the older man/younger woman. The older man/younger woman relationship makes us uncomfortable because it highlights the power differential between men and women and reflects a time when females held little sway over the path of their own lives. For centuries, women’s lives were dictated by their marriages. And it made a lot of sense to marry an older, established (read – wealthier) man if you were a young woman.

So the younger man/older woman relationship muddies those waters and makes us rethink our assumptions. There’s the argument that women are finally “getting theirs” by dating younger. But I’m not so sure that’s true and I’m absolutely sure that’s not the whole story. The power dynamic between younger men and older women isn’t necessarily the same (again, unless we are talking about the mega-rich woman like Madonna who may be dating a much more socially disadvantaged youth). I don’t support the men I date (in fact, they usually still pay for everything) and we’re fairly equally matched in everything apart from life experience.

When I was in a relationship with someone who was 27 (when I was 40), I worried that I would get too old for him. That he’d want to have children. That he’d eventually want to be with someone his own age (and his new girlfriend is his own age). But gradually, I became comfortable with the dynamic and the age difference often didn’t matter at all. Sure, he didn’t get my cultural references and hadn’t heard many of the songs I loved. But we could talk deeply about politics, religion, art, life. I sometimes forgot that he was 13 years younger than me.

We’re maybe a decade into this new couple dynamic and I think it’s too early to tell what it means or how it will work out. But new research suggests that slightly older women in relationships with younger men are happier overall. The couples report higher satisfaction with their relationship dynamic and share equal responsibilities. That sounds good to me.

Viv: I am just going to pipe up briefly to say, “All hail to you, Sloan!”  But now that I have said that, I have to admit that as a 34 year old woman I am currently repulsed by the idea of dating a 20-something man.  I have all my dating apps set to search for men in a range from 30 to 40, and I am thinking of bumping the minimum up to 32.  This is clearly because my soon to be ex husband was (is) very immature and I am still in recovery from being close to someone who didn’t (doesn’t) have the capacity to make grown up decisions.  Perhaps my feelings will change as I get farther away from this experience?