Don't Call Me A Cougar

I am not a cougar.

I am married to a much younger man. Twenty-five years younger, to be exact.

In the old days, this was called a “May-December” romance, and it raised eyebrows whether the older partner was male or female. Older women were widely expected to be “past all that nonsense by now,” and older males often found themselves followed by whispers of, “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

In today’s generally more tactless and overtly judgmental society, much-younger wives are still widely regarded - openly now - as gold diggers and fortune hunters. Their older husbands may be publicly disparaged as being “old fools,” but they are secretly envied by their same-sex peers for their young, firm, fecund trophy wives. Older women who partner with younger men, on the other hand, are pretty much universally regarded as cradle-robbing predators, as evidenced by the pejorative nickname, “cougar.”

I suppose that is because most people don’t think pretty young men…at least not emotionally healthy ones…will pursue older women, therefore any older woman who is coupled with a nubile young man must have chased him down. And there must be some kind of aberration that makes him vulnerable to her attentions…either the woman must be deceptively young-looking or the young man must have some kind of unwholesome mother fixation. Or she pursued and seduced him with her greater experience…and perhaps openness…in sexual matters, using his own carnal nature against him. Why else, after all, would a younger man seek relationship bliss with a woman a decade or more his senior?

But my own experiences…and the experiences of several female acquaintances…don’t bear out that predatory image. In every case of which I am personally aware, the younger men have approached the women first and, in some cases, actively pursued them.