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Younger Men, Better Sex?
Older Women Are Discovering The Attraction Of Younger Men
July 9, 2004
(Lynn, 45 and Bronson, 31, have been married almost four years (CBS))
(CBS) In the ‘60s, the women’s sexual revolution paved the way for protests, “the pill,” and new possibilities.
Since then, women have come a long way. And for Lynn Snowden Picket, 45, the sexual revolution today is about power and confidence.
“You know what you like. You’re not so worried about what the guy’s thinking, that you’re finally able to decide what’s important for you,” Lynn tells Correspondent Maureen Maher in this report that first aired last January.
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Lynn, who lives in New York City, often writes about relationships for magazines like "O." She was married to a man who was five years her senior.
When she got divorced in her mid-30s, she said she never thought she would fall in love and marry again.
"After 12 increasingly dreary years capped by a wrenching divorce, I couldn't imagine why women in my situation complained about the prospect of re-entering single life. Wasn't that the good news?" asks Lynn.
But she discovered her dating pool had changed. “The older men didn’t seem to want to do the same things I wanted to do. I wanted to go out and have fun and go to clubs and go dancing and be out and about,” says Lynn.
“They were just dying to settle down and have a rut. And I didn’t want a rut. That’s what I just got out of, and I wasn’t eager to step back into one.”
Lynn knew she was entitled to more, so she started doing something men have been doing for years – dating someone younger.
“I saw him and I felt the very quality of the room change. I went from being cynical to seeing hearts in my eyes,” says Lynn, of her relationship with actor Bronson Picket.
Bronson says he had no idea what he was going to find eight years ago when he attended a black-tie gala in New York City: “I saw this gorgeous face and I thought, ‘Oh, my dear God, this woman’s gorgeous.' It was Lynn.”
“The best way I can describe it is it was like a chemical reaction,” says Lynn. But it’s a chemical reaction with a younger man. Lynn is 45; Bronson 31. That's almost a 14-year difference. When they first met, she was 38 and he was just 24.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When they began dating, Bronson's parents had some reservations about the age difference.
"With me starting in my career, they were concerned that you may end up cutting that short because you're going to have so many other responsibilities if you decide to follow this relationship through," says Bronson.
"My family was, of course, delighted. What's not to love?" says Lynn.
But Lynn admits that her older male friends felt threatened by Bronson: "They were dying to tell me all of his flaws. They're assuming he's an idiot, he didn't read, he's going to be staring at the mirror more than he's going to be looking at you. All these things."
Both noticed that they were being judged because of their age, but they knew they were right for each other. Now, they’ve been married almost four years.
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What’s the benefit of love and sex in a relationship with an older woman?
“Your appetites are just about the same or right in sync, which is pretty neat to say the least,” says Bronson.
“I’m not gonna lie and say, ‘Oh no, I wasn’t interested in hot sex. Of course, it was on my mind. I was thinking about it a great deal,” says Lynn.
Actress Demi Moore, 41, is the most famous example of this emerging trend. She’s dating actor Ashton Kutcher, 26.
A recent study, however, reports that today, one-third of single women over 40 are dating younger men.
Susan Winter and Felicia Brings, authors of “Older Women/Younger Men,” say these younger men are helping to define the new sexual revolution.
“They are probably an entire group of men that look at the whole woman. They see the whole picture, and they’re capable of embracing power and they love a strong woman,” says Winter.
“It's not that, you know, 'Oh, I have a young boyfriend, and there I have power.' It's quite the other way around," adds Brings. "It's you have the personal power to embrace and be open to having a younger man in your life."
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Besides the cliché of great sex, what’s the advantage to an older woman in being with a younger man? Is having a good sex life integral to having a good life?
48 Hours asked Dr. Jennifer Berman, a urologist, and her sister, Dr. Laura Berman, a sex therapist and one of the country’s foremost experts in women’s sexual health.
”Feeling beautiful. Feeling attractive. Feeling young. Being appreciated as a woman for all that you are and all that you’ve learned and all that you’ve become,” says Dr. Jennifer Berman.
“We’re starting to pay real attention to helping women reach their full sexual potential,” adds Dr. Laura Berman.
“For women, it’s part of their femininity. It’s part of their self-esteem. It’s part of their general power," says Dr. Laura Berman. "The tricky part about women is that we’re complicated animals. The main sexual organ is the brain, and if a woman is not attending to the emotional and relationship aspects of her sexual life, no amount of medication, no medical device is going to work.”
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For now, Lynn says it’s all working: the emotion, the relationship and of course, the sex -- to the point where she’s now thinking about something she hadn’t considered in her first marriage – children.
“I thought, 'Wow, it'd be so much fun to raise kids with this man.' I always thought of it before as a sacrifice and now I think of it as something that would just be wonderful."
To Lynn and Bronson, age is just a number: “American women find it easy to summarily reject younger men. Too bad. They could be denying themselves the most wonderful relationship of their lives.”
© MMIV, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.
| Age disparity in sexual relationships
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Significant age disparity in sexual relationships has been and remains a feature of couples in many cultures and societies. The most common pattern in heterosexual couples is an older man with a younger woman.[1] This may be brought about as an arranged marriage, or either member may pursue and initiate this relationship. Relationships involving a younger male and an older female also exist, and while not as common, have become considerably more common in recent years.[citation needed] Homosexual relationships of both sexes may also exhibit age disparity; when between an adult male and adolescent boy, the term "pederasty" is sometimes used, especially in European historical context. In extreme cases, age disparity may be seen as dysfunctional (a paraphilia) if such relationships are pursued to the exclusion of all others and to the detriment of the partners. Sexual relationships involving an adult or adolescent and a prepubescent child are defined as child sexual abuse in all modern societies
Motives
Factors leading into a search for a younger individual with whom to share an intimate relationship can vary wildly. A common perception is that younger mates serve the purpose of a "trophy", or object of status.
Many psychologists study the phenomenon of age disparity, and have observed certain extremes of this behavior.
Chronophilia is a general term, applied to any age-related preference that is outside their own age group.
Ephebophilia is the attraction of older individuals to adolescents.
Infantophilia is the attraction of older individuals to small children (ages ranging from 0 to 5).
Pedophilia is the attraction of older individuals to pre-adolescents.
Gerontophilia is the attraction of non-elderly individuals to the elderly.
Age disparity as paraphilia
There is also the issue of whether all age-disparate relationships fall under the definition of paraphilia. Individuals who exclusively pursue age-disparate relationships are generally classified by psychologists as parasexual, that is, their behavior is qualitatively different from the norm. Individuals who occasionally pursue age-disparate relationships are not included in this category, except in the popular press. As is speculated with other practices considered paraphilia, sexual imprinting may play a role in age-disparate relationships.
The "half-your-age-plus-seven" rule
Graph of the "Half-Your-Age-Plus-Seven" RuleThe "half-your-age-plus-seven rule" is one rule of thumb defining a mathematical formula to judge whether the age difference in an intimate relationship is socially acceptable.
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Slang terms
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A number of slang terms exist to describe pairings in which one individual is much older than the other:
Boy toy or toy boy is slang referring to a much younger boyfriend or husband of an older woman or man.
Chickenhawk describes an older gay man who sexually pursues younger males, i.e. "twinks"/"chickens" or underage boys. The term was used as the name of a television documentary on the subject of NAMBLA.
Cougar refers to an older woman, usually in her 40s, 50s or 60s who usually sexually pursue men in their 20s and 30s. In many cases, the alternative scenario is true where these women are pursued by younger men who have an affinity for the beauty, maturity & intellect of women in this age range. Term used by TV series 30 Rock (episode "Cougars"), How I Met Your Mother (episode "Aldrin Justice"), Two and a Half Men (episode "Waiting for the Right Snapper"), Supernatural (episode "Red Sky at Morning"), the NBC reality TV show Age of Love, CBC's jPod, One Tree Hill and Law & Order: CI (episode "Betrayed").
On film, it was used in 2004's National Lampoon's Going the Distance and in 2007's Ocean's Thirteen. The 2007 film Cougar Club was dedicated to the subject — its plot was about two males creating a club where parties are thrown where male members get the chance to meet and have sexual encounters with "cougars".
Puma refers to a young "cougar," typically a woman in her 30s or 40s who pursues men in their 20s.
Jailbait refers to a sexually attractive person, female or male, below the legal age of consent. This designation connotes enticement to endanger oneself of being prosecuted for statutory rape.
Lolita refers to a sexually precocious young girl who is the object of desire of a significantly older man. As used in the English language, the term refers to the title character of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, who is referred to by the book's narrator, Humbert Humbert, as a nymphet. While "nymphet" is still used to refer to younger children, "Lolita" has come to be applied to older adolescents and young women in the context of pornography.
May-December romance is a romance in which the age differential between the two adults is wide enough to risk social disapproval.
Sugar Daddy refers to a rich, usually older man who offers money or gifts to a less rich, usually younger person in return for companionship or sexual favors. This differs from prostitution in that the older man is usually the sole financial provider to the younger person. In Japan, there is a loosely similar practice known as enjō kosai.
Chihuahua* is a younger woman who dates men 50 years and older. Chihuahuas are pampered, petted, and taken around by their owners.
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