Las Cougars

Madonna and Jesus Luz.  Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.  Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon.  The younger man/older woman couple has always existed, but now they are out in the open and the stigma associated with them is becoming a thing of the past.  Has anyone seen ABC’s Cougar Town yet?

Historically, it’s been perfectly acceptable for an older man to take on a much younger wife because it gave him the image of virility and experience, which is capable of satisfying her in ways that no younger man could.  The flip side of that coin was that the younger woman was usually looking for economic security, and men her age were usually not financially well established.  Another, more unspoken fact about the older man/younger woman combination, is that less sexually experienced the woman, the less she would be able to compare her aging partner’s sexual performance with that of younger men.  That is life in a man’s world.

What were women in their mid-30s (and over) supposed to do about companionship if they were widowed, divorced, or never married, if men their age were coupling with younger women?  Enter the younger man.

In polite circles, “decent” women never disclosed the details of their sex lives.  They were supposed to keep a chaste appearance as not to appear to have any sexual desires.  They were to wait (sometimes ad infinitum) for a man to court her and marry her and make her an “honest” woman.  If this never happened you would hear, “La pobre nunca tuvo suerte.” As insulting as it was, it was preferable to be known as a solterona (old maid) than the alternative. God forbid it ever got out that she secretly saw younger men because her status in he community would diminish and she would be ridiculed as a vieja bellaca or a sugar momma.

All I have to say is thank God for the 21st Century!  According to an article I read today in Women’s Health:

“As cougars well know, dating a younger guy can be like hitting the sexual jackpot — and not just because women peak later than men do.  ‘A woman in her thirties [and over] is very sexually compatible with a man in his early to mid twenties,’ says Linda Banner, Ph.D., a licensed marital and family therapist in San Jose, California. ‘As women leave their angst-ridden twenties behind, they become more comfortable in their skin, and instead of worrying about how they look during sex, they focus more on how they feel.’

by Alina de Varona