If a man dates a woman younger than him, no one bats and eyelid… but if the roles are reversed, the woman gets labelled as a cougar. Our guest writer this week prefers to date younger men, but she is sick and tired of this dated old term.
Welcome to our series, The Love Diaries – a space for you to share your experiences, advice, fairy-tale endings, setbacks and heartbreaks. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences with love – from the woman who cheated on her husband with a work colleague, one woman’s temptation now the love of her life is finally single (although she’s not), and the woman who forced her husband to choose between her and his girlfriend.
This week we check in with a story from a guest writer at 9Honey who shares a quite shocking confession about her marriage…
When I was 21, I dated an older man. Rod was 40 and we got on like a house on fire. The sex was amazing and I just loved his company.
I really was in love with him but we split up after five years. There was nothing bad about our breakup; we just decided to go our separate ways and that was that.
My family kept telling me how they hoped I’d find men closer to my age so we’d be on the same page on a whole lot of things, like kids.
Well, that hasn’t quite happened because now I only date younger men, and I couldn’t be happier. But please don’t call me a cougar.
I hate that term, and “cradle snatcher.” Last year I dated a man who was only six years younger than me, but everyone was referring to me as a cougar – yet if a man dates a woman six years younger, he isn’t called that name! I find it sexist and insulting.
Calling me a cougar is insinuating I’m “on the prowl” and only have eyes for young men. I do like young men, but my latest relationships have not been as a result of me deliberately searching for them – it’s just that we happen to connect on a very deep level.
Wouldn’t it be great if men were called cougars? But then, no doubt, they’d love the title. It’s just such a derogatory comment towards women.
Also, I often reject much younger men. For example, at a club, there was a gorgeous guy chatting me up and telling me I looked hot and he wanted to buy me a drink. I asked for his age and he told me he was 36, but I knew he was lying. I insisted he prove his age to me, and he showed me his driver’s license – he was 22.
There’s no way I’d date a guy aged under 25! I’m 45 now, and the age gap is just too much for my liking. Also, I wouldn’t have been able to stand the amount of ribbing I’d get for my “cradle-snatching” abilities.
Now I’m dating a guy just five years younger than me and I’m very happy with him. We have a lot of fun, we have similar goals and neither of us want to have kids. We’re both financially stable with great jobs, we laugh at similar things and we love spending time in the bedroom.
He ticks every box and my friends are happy to see me so much in love, but, with our five-year age gap, the cougar comments still keep coming.
I get that people think it’s funny to call me a cougar, but I’m just tired of it. There is a lot more to me than the label my friends and family like to put on me.
This article was reproduced with permission from 9Honey. To read the original article, click here.
