The View from down under
A growing number of older women are dating younger men – but what’s in it for the “toy boys”? Doug Hendrie tracks down four men who have nothing but praise for “cougar” women.
Mitchell Burns always thought Lucie Puk was cute. He worked with her in the bookshop at Melbourne’s Monash University for more than a year before he realised it might be more than a work relationship.
Casual chatting turned into in-depth conversations, as the two realised they shared a love of ice hockey and 1950s Billy Wilder films. But it was Puk who jumped in. “It’s lucky you’re 21, or I would have made a move on you by now,” she wrote in an email.
Then 30, Puk was reluctant to ask out someone nearly 10 years her junior. “I didn’t want to bust a move because of the age difference and the fact we worked together,” she says. Two months later, at the work Christmas party in 2007, a little Dutch courage helped both towards a drunken snog. Ice broken, the new couple embarked on what Burns describes as “old-fashioned courting” – dinner and movies.
From a casual beginning with no expectations, their relationship reached a critical point when Burns left for an overseas trip in February last year. They realised they missed each other, and when Burns returned to Australia six weeks later, the relationship deepened.
Puk is the first older woman Burns has dated – and he likes it. “Lucie has experienced a lot,” he says, “and that’s helped her develop a sense of what she wants, which makes it easier for me to understand what she’s thinking.”
Almost two years later, the couple now openly talk about their future. After a trip together to Germany, Finland and the Czech Republic at the end of the year, the next step is house-hunting – either near the Melbourne suburb of Bentleigh, where Puk lives, or in Burns’ home town of Leongatha in country Victoria. “We’ve had the future talk,” says Lucie.
“My biological clock is ticking. I asked if he was scared and he said not really. I think I’m more scared – both of my parents have been married three times.”
Commitment is far from a daunting word for Burns, who says having children “may not be too far off”. Burns and Puk are part of a growing trend of relationships between older women and younger men. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that the proportion of relationships where women were at least 10 years older than their partners shot up 23 per cent between 1996 and 2006. Spearheaded by celebrities such as Demi Moore, who was 42 when she married 27-year-old Ashton Kutcher in 2005, the growing trend has resulted in an American moniker, “cougar”, being coined for women who pursue younger men. But what’s the attraction for younger men who date older women?
Melbourne relationship psychologist Evelyn Field says a younger man and an older woman are a “good mix”. “Women in their 40s and 50s are sexually very interested, and of course the younger man is,” she says. “Also, an older woman is not as needy. Seeing each other twice a week is OK, while younger women say, `I need to see you every day.”‘
Field says the trend is a positive step towards women looking to have their own needs met.
“Men have always been doing it – a trophy bride is well accepted. The other way around – well, older women don’t want to have babies, they’re established professionally, and some are well off.”
Another force behind the trend is the tendency of older divorced men to go for younger women. “That means their ex-wives have less to choose from,” Field says.
“But the 50-year-old man is also a dinosaur. That generation is egocentric and set in their ways.
The younger man is more respectful of a woman.”
It’s not just men in their 20s who have discovered the joys of dating older women. One Sydney man, a 45-year-old financial consultant from Castle Hill, emerged from a divorce two years ago and started dating women between 10 and 20 years his senior.
Older women, younger men
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“Once they hit 50 and they’re independent and divorced, women become more liberated. They try to make up for lost time, and they’re good company. They’re comfortable, mature, and sexually, they’re magnificent,” he says. “They don’t have anything to prove. They’re worldly, and for the first time in their lives, they’re looking to do something for themselves.”
He is dismissive of men his age who scour clubs in search of blondes in their 20s. “A 55-year-old woman has been through it all; she’s passionate without being overly emotional, which makes for a much easier relationship,” he says. “These women have kids who have grown up, and now they’re relaxed. If men experienced someone with these qualities, they’d realise it was much more fulfilling.”
Others say early relationships with older women gave them confidence in themselves. For Rush St-Pierre, 27, a relationship five years ago with a 35-year-old woman taught him about women and himself.
“Ever since then I’ve gone for older women,” says the Melbourne IT professional.
He’s now dating a 40-year-old woman he met at a Fast Impressions Toy Boy speed-dating event, aimed at younger men who want to meet older women. “Women in their 20s still want to go out and get drunk or do drugs every Saturday night. That’s fine, but older women don’t need alcohol to feel good. They’re usually secure, emotionally and financially.”
Dating older women is a thing of the past for one Melbourne builder, now 54, but it was once a hugely formative experience for him. At the age of 19, he “fell into the hands” of a 42-year-old woman unhappily married to a wealthy local department store owner in his home town in England.
“She polished me and taught me things in a social and sexual sense,” he says. “It gave me confidence in myself. After that, I found younger girls were under-ripe fruit, while older women were ripe peaches.”
His two marriages have been to women his age, but the Mount Waverley man doesn’t rule out a similar experience for his 18-year-old son. “I wouldn’t be averse to him being educated in the same way.”
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
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