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I didn’t always want to date toyboys. In fact, after my marriage broke down, inviting attention from younger men was the last thing on my mind…

After my divorce, I felt lumpy, bereft, and worthless. But for the sake of the outside world I was consumed with keeping up appearances. The brave face I kept throughout the divorce and settlement meant everything to me. With our family falling apart, I felt I had to keep everything in our home together, running on track, just as normal.

It didn’t appeal to be set up on dates and introduced to single men through friends because I didn’t need a man, or a partner, not even a dog really. I was sure I was fine. Companionship was for people with more time and more emotional needs. Because despite being single, I had everything I needed for company in my daughter, after all. And she would always come first in my lifestyle.

Then my daughter went away to University.

It may not seem that important but as I write this line it carries the emotional weight of what became a pivotal moment in my life. My child was gone, dramatic pause, end of sentence. And she really was gone, as I knew her. She wasn’t my little girl anymore but a grown woman. She still needed me but not in the same way as before. It was then I realised how much I’d always relied on her, her strength and her beauty, as inspiration to go about my everyday life.

So I got a little bit lazy for a while. I stopped taking proper care of my house as it was only me in it. I started eating more, watching more television, socialising less. It took me a very long time to realise it, perhaps because I wasn’t fully aware of it myself, but realised later that during this time I was crying at night – every night. And for the second time in my life I felt abandoned.

It would hurt my daughter a lot to read that, which makes me feel guilty to say it because I’m very happy she lives her life as she wishes, studying and travelling, that’s what I want for her. But for a while I stopped living my own life at all and descended into a state of deep sadness.

A small development at work jolted me back to life again.

As the Outreach Manager for a large Trade Union I’d always felt a sense of purpose from my career, helping people with complicated problems and standing up for important public issues. A promotion made me feel in charge again and I decided to make the most of my moment of increased confidence and join a local gym, something I always wanted to do but felt intimidated by. Soon, working out gave me a powerful outlet for my emotions and the residual stress I had built up over the years. And it goes without saying that my 25-year-old, stunningly gorgeous gym instructor did not hurt this little period of increased optimism either.

Giggling about how cute he was with a girlfriend of mine, she suggested maybe I had a thing for younger men. This didn’t make any sense to me at first, as my husband was actually 12 years older than me. And don’t we all admire beautiful people, whatever their age?

“You need that thingy,” she chuckled, a little tipsy on our favourite Chianti. “That thing the woman on Channel 5 last night said she uses – the Toyboy House.”

“What is a toyboy house?” I asked, envisioning something somewhere between a strip club and a dolls house.

She replied: “Well, it’s not a house, it’s a dating thing, for single older women who like younger men.”

“What on earth.”

I wondered what she took me for, but before I had chance to ask this question she had catch-up TV on and was proudly showing me a previous episode of Channel 5’s Age-Gap Love. I looked for the mischievous glint in her eyes that would tell me this was all a joke but she watched me intently as I discovered that Toyboy Warehouse was not a ‘Toyboy House’ after all, but a dating site for older women and younger men.

“And what do you want me to do this with this information?” I asked.

“Stop drooling over your gym instructor and start dating hot younger guys who see older women for more than just a weekly workout. Or, you know, for a workout of another kind.” It was time to send her home. So that’s what I did.

Then I booted up my laptop.

“Hmm… Toyboy – what was it…” at first I typed Warhorse. A mistake I’ve made about eighty times since. It must be part of a latent desire to learn more about the uses of animals in warfare. But thank you Google, for always being there to find my intention when my typing skills just don’t cover it.

A few clicks later and I became Rebecca42…

… divorced, looking for men in the Brighton & Hove area. For the more observant among you, you caught me, I used a false name at first. But I wasn’t committed yet. What if someone I knew was a member and recognised me? What if no one on here looked like my gym instructor? These horrors plagued me as I lost my online dating virginity.

It’s a cliché but I was bombarded with messages from the get go. Some a little too saucy, some not saucy enough, but one from a 29-year-old living in a village near enough to my own was just right. He shared my love of Anne Rice novels (they’re serious vampire books, for those of you among the Twilight Generation who still think vampires glitter) and believed in taking a stand for public causes.

We went for our first date to a picket-line protest. He was insanely hot, passionate (which made him even hotter) and – the one thing that’s always truly thrown me head over heels for a man – he challenged me constantly during our discussions.

We talked at length about worldly issues, he told me about the environmental problems the world was facing and how he was working towards fixing energy problems in a third world country as his phD thesis project. I told him about my life experiences, of the places I’d visited, a few of which I would revisit with him during our relationship.

Recently I ended it. Not because what we shared wasn’t real and didn’t matter to me, but because he wanted something serious.

Dating him had reminded me to love myself again, as I saw myself through his eyes, as a beautiful, confident, mature woman with a lot to offer to anyone. This has helped me discover a new main priority in my life – myself. Yes he was breath-taking, our time together was magnificent, but I’m making time for the real love of my life, one I intend to spend a lot more time looking after. That’s a full-time occupation, after all. So if I happen to meet lots of sexy younger men along the way, well, there’s no harm done is there?

And for the future? Watch this space.

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The post My Toyboy Journey appeared first on Toyboy Warehouse.

These days everything has to be a goddamn adventure, has to involve ‘white water this’ or ‘indigenous tribe that’. Or even worse ‘backpacking lodge this’ and ‘non flushing toilet that’! Why is it that people look down on you if you haven’t used 90 percent of your annual leave, sat in a mosquito infested hut, staving off malaria, hoping a some passing beast doesn’t make you it’s lunch!

The other week a mate from uni, was telling me about his experiences with leopards in the Indian jungle. He was in raptures as he explained that there were two kinds of leopards and you could tell the difference by counting their spots or something! What? Count their spots!! b*llocks more like! if I ever encounter a leopard (of any kind) on holiday, I’m only gonna do the one kind of running…. the fast kind!

Honestly it’s like you have to be bloody Indiana Jones to go anywhere these days. I’m almost embarrassed to say that I was considering a nice relaxing trip to a Greek Island, where I could happily get a tan and look at girls in bikinis. I may lie to people, and say I’m going Elk wrestling in Canada, then photoshop up some pictures of me in a lumberjack shirt, locked in battle with some big thing with antlers.

The worst thing is that even when I think about doing something a bit adventurous, apparently it’s not adventurous enough, and worse still I get accused of destroying local cultures! A year ago, a mate and I were planning a holiday, and decided we might give Vietnam a look… but not in some stinky hippie, mud hut, hostel. No way. Vietnam has some damn nice hotels and resorts these days, so we thought we’d give on of those a shot.

We decided to ask a mate who’d been to Vietnam a few years before, for advice. Imagine our shock when he reacted as if we’d just told him we were planning to carpet bomb Hanoi! Apparently tourists like us were ruining Vietnam, nay the world. And if we were going to go we should back pack like he did, and explore the spiritual side….

Not bloody likely, a holiday to me doesn’t involve trooping around like a pack mule, and the only spirits I’m interested in exploring, are served in a glass over ice. Not to mention the fact, that I’m sure the locals would rather have us stay for two weeks and spend some cash, than some hippie stay for two months, spent 10p a day, and generally stink up the place!

So what’s all this got to do with anything? Well if noticed that quite a few profiles mention travel. Both in what they’ve done, and what they’re looking for. Now see I’m worried, does that mean that as long as I have a few stamps in the passport I’m ok? Or does it mean that unless I’ve herded cattle on the Serengeti, I’m just an unenlightened oaf, fit for nothing more than mockery?

The other thing about a lot of people who do these worthy, adventurous holidays is…… well they’re plonklers. I swear to god they go on holiday, not for fun, but to impress their chino wearing mates. It’s like a game of one-up-man-ship. If you go to Vietnam, we’ll go to North Korea… If you go to Alaska, we’ll go to the Antarctic…. where does it end? “Well next year we’re backpacking to Baghdad” … “yes that’s nice but I’m going pony treking in an Afghan minefield”…. “Oh yeah, we’ll we’re going caravaning in the Sun’s corona… beat that”…. sheesh!

Well stuff it all, I’m not doing anything adventurous, I’m going to Miami.. Moijitos, air-con and drunk American girls all the way…. the most adventurous thing I’ll have to do is get through US customs, and I cant wait.

By Dan

The post Holidays, Hippies and Indiana Jones appeared first on Toyboy Warehouse.

When I started out of this little adventure of mine a few months shy of my thirtieth birthday, I might as well be honest and admit it was all about “me”. Well it was. Mr self-confessed boring bastard went online, discovered confidence personified in a brand new persona, riskily took it offline, nearly had his heart broken as a result, and yet in the end he survived and prospered. Almost sounds ruthless, doesn’t it? But hey practice makes perfect. And things have been somewhat perfect since (except of course when I’m drunk).

However, as you all know, of late I’ve been asking a lot of questions. It began on a beach with too much time to think and has, in between the now usual carnal interludes, intermittently progressed from there. What I’ve been asking, especially as my thirty-fourth year approaches, is where is this all really taking me? I’ve lamented missing out on the refreshingly less restraining toyboy thing altogether, having instead gone straight to maturing toyman stage that’s marooned me in some kind of limbo where I don’t quite fit anywhere despite (and in fact partly because of) all the fun I’ve been having. It’s almost as if something’s telling me I “should” fit somewhere but I’m for the moment still trying not to listen.

You see the other day, over Sunday lunch, my mother (whose never been known to pull her punches), made the pointed remark that unlike my two younger siblings who appear to be happily ensconced, I’m obviously “afraid of commitment”. To be fair I think she’s after grandchildren (but that’s a whole other conversation for another time) rather than passing any judgement on my current lifestyle, mainly because she has no idea what my current lifestyle is, and never has. I don’t reveal that much to that many because I guess that’s just me. However, without her realising it, there behind her comment belies the point. I do indeed have absolutely no idea how to handle commitment.

Of course statements like that, as I warned you earlier, immediately get the hackles up. I mean perhaps it’s a tad hackneyed but that really is something that most women (and particularly the more discerning older woman who’s “heard it all before”) have absolutely no time for. It puts me in the realm of those so-called players I often allude to when making stark warnings about the dating tightrope we singletons delight in wobbling across these days. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you all want commitment. Hell it was me who gave you the phrase “the committed fling” after all, that fuzzy state of somewhere in-between the relationship, the f*ckbuddy and the one-night stand, the “invisible” rather than “no” strings scenario that nonetheless still demands some small degree of mutual accountability even if it’s just in the loosest sense.

Apart from Jane though, which I see now was at best a “committed fling” (at least on my part anyway), everything else for me has probably been merely fling-ish, entirely through my own making I hasten to add. You know me, I’ve settled into my fascination of the older woman, appreciated the compelling beauty in her maturity, independence and assurance as much as my addiction to her stylish and sexual superiority over her younger counterpart. However I’d be lying if I said I’d stuck with anything or anyone. I admit I have my “sometimes” moments about Jane still creeping up on me every so often, but apart from that it’d be fair to say I’ve merely wine-tasted rather than consumed that curious aspect of human experience they call constancy.

Anyway, what’s also made my mother’s observation hit a little too close for comfort has a lot to do with someone I met recently. Oh I’ve already told you about her by the way. Yep that’s right, the theatre loos escapade. Remember? Well it was fun so things have carried on. And yet if you recall, even after our first night there was a part of me asking should I really still be doing this (although you might think that’s a bit rich because I’m not exactly turning it down am I. No. But then would some of you?). I haven’t been dishonest though. I don’t do that. I don’t make promises or say the right things just to get my leg over. I’m a lot of things, but not that low. And I don’t disappear without a trace either, as such. Having a previous personal affinity with rejection myself it’s not something I care to inflict.

But maybe then what I do is far worse, because what happens is this, and it’s happened in this case. Somebody starts to analyse me. Big deal you think, like you’re that special. Well it kind of is. I’m not good at those questions. The “why don’t you get involved” to the “you’ve suddenly become very distant” is then only a step away from the “how do you feel about us?”- awkward when I probably don’t feel anything beyond a kind of friendship mixed with mere raw chemistry which isn’t taking me or “us” anywhere. What do you say when you’ve already said at the outset “let’s just have fun”, “let’s not make things complicated”, “let’s have no mind games”, but nonetheless the subtle enquiries start? Well you know what I do, I do repeat all that, while at the same going into a less forthcoming system shutdown until they, maybe quite rightly, think “total time wasting loser” and move on to someone far better who can offer something I couldn’t have given them because it didn’t click, because it didn’t feel right to drop my guard again and be the all encapsulating “me” beyond this creation whose one odd flaw is he won’t allow me to be occasionally vulnerable.

So hey folks, I’m sh*te at commitment in case you hadn’t guessed. However I’m not going to use that well-worn cliché as a means to get away with what I’ve so far got away with. Otherwise you really would disapprove wouldn’t you! You see I’m sensing that maybe the next part of my big adventure is this; maybe it’s time to experience what this commitment lark, even if only in it’s less binding, “committed fling” twenty-first century sense, is really all about.

But okay if that’s the plan, who then to commit (in whatever way) to? Well as I’m sure you’d tell me, it’s finding this out that’s half the fun…

By Bastian Dash  Read his diary on your home page….

The post Can’t Commit Won’t Commit? appeared first on Toyboy Warehouse.

Jetlagged and shell-shocked the day after getting back from India, we were at his younger sister’s confirmation, waiting for the official photograph in front of the altar and the lavishly decorated Virgin Mary (remember this is deepest Catholic southern Spain). I was as usual, standing to one side, watching (valuable anthropological study) all the comings and goings of these temperamental folk when it was their turn to pose. J says I should join them. “Don’t be silly,” I retort “We’re not married yet.” He claims his mother has asked for me to be on the picture. And sure enough as they walk up to the altar she beckons me over.

Now this is a woman who up until now won’t sleep under the same roof as me because – I quote her: “I don’t feel comfortable if a woman my age is sharing my son’s bed.” I do admit: she is only five years older than me and my union with her son is ample fuel for every mother’s oedipal paranoias. We are also from different planets – she married at 19, had five children and the furthest she’s been abroad is France; I focused on my career, spent ridiculous amounts of money on shoes and travelled the world alone for decades.

So why this sudden change of heart? Rather than asking when I’ll finally start seeing someone my own age, I have been promoted to daughter-in-law.

I have a confession to make. It’s something I have been keeping from the readers of this column.
I am pregnant. At the ripe and luscious age of 39 my body is bulging with new life. Six months gone and three to go, I am showing beyond any reasonable doubt. And of course J’s mother knows. But if she’s so Catholic why has she accepted a child out of wedlock? I’m not sure I fully understand either. Maybe it has to do with the Latin adoration of children; maybe it is because all pregnant women become as holy as Maria and the child they carry has the innocence of baby Jesus; maybe it is because I am granting her a grandchild; maybe it is simple resignation to the fact that I am now bound to her by blood. Whatever it is I have been silently sworn into the society of mothers. There is an unspoken solidarity amongst women who procreate it seems. My bump prompted J’s grandmother – who really is from another time, speak Franco’s Spain – to recount all her labor stories and assure me that I could eat whatever I wanted to (what, even that second crema catalan?).
And another gesture which is just as touching as being included in the family photo album; J’s mother has started sewing things for the baby – a blanket, a pram cover and she has crocheted tiny little socks. They are blue for a boy.

 By Claudia Spahr

For more information and an excerpt from her latest book go to: http://www.andrewlownie.co.uk

The post Help! His mother’s my age! appeared first on Toyboy Warehouse.