Source: facebook.com via Yapert on Pinterest

Alyssa wrote this in October, 2011. Today, she got married! Congrats, Alyssa! ~ ed.

The dialog about men our age dating women half our age is a conversation that needs to be had.

And it has been, in comments and Facebook threads and emails. This is a sloppy sampling, that I hope will spark a larger conversation that we can all work with.

Why are so many men our age being drawn to women half our age?

I have no idea, really. Though I can make some guesses.

I suspect that they’re looking for sex and good times, in a way that they think will have no strings attached. There are a lot of flaws in this line of reasoning—a lot.

1. Sex, like most things, gets better with practice. I know that I give a better blowjob at 41 than I did at 31, or 21.

2. The strings are attached, very attached. I’m sorry, but if a 25 year-old woman is interested in a 45 year-old guy, it’s very likely because she wants something. To be taken care of, to get married, to have a family. Even if she says she doesn’t. At that age, they’re still planning their future, and if they’re f*cking you, it’s because they, maybe unconsciously, think you can help them get it. (Especially if you have lots of money.) (Extra especially if you have lots of money, a pot-belly and a hairy back.)

3. In their 20s, most people don’t really know themselves enough to be centered. Their expectations will seep out in all sorts of ways: jealousy, manipulation, fighting, games. Those are all strings, whether they’re pulled intentionally or not.

From many conversations with both men and women in their early 40s, I think that many men have an unconscious desire to return to the glory days of their initial sexual awakening.

Not just sex, but that sex, young sex. When guys are first claiming their sexuality, in their late teens and early 20s, there’s no responsibility, the pussy is all young, it’s all a party and nothing is permanent. Sex is just sex. Moreover, they’re lauded for their conquests. Nothing but fun. They’re too young to realize that their partner may be having a different experience, so it seems perfect.

Then life goes on, many get married, get jobs, start families. During that time, for whatever reason, sex often dissipates, and what sex there is becomes a form of emotional commerce. Their sex drives haven’t necessarily dissipated, but their sex lives have. And they’ve become fraught with responsibility, guilt, angst, manipulation, judgement..

When they find themselves divorced in their early 40s, some naturally want to go back to how sex was, so they look to the last place they had it—the early 20s. I doubt, really, if most men give it any more thought than that. I certainly don’t think that most men are predatory in any way. But if they’re looking for hot sex with no strings attached, then women in the most dramatic age of their life who are looking for security are not the place to find it.

Women on the other hand, tend to have a very different experience when we first come into our sexuality in our late teens and early 20s.

It’s a time of tremendous insecurity, of being used just for our bodies, of being called uptight if we don’t have sex and sluts if we do. Much of the time, when we do have sex, it’s to get something, or because we think we have to—if we don’t f*ck him, he’ll find someone else who will, and we’ll lose him. (And we’re still young enough to believe that we need him.) We worry about our bodies, our reputation, our skills. It is not a great time for most women.

So when we find ourselves divorced in our early 40s, many of us have a second sexual awakening. We aren’t looking back to that first time, we’re claiming it for ourselves, for the first time. Our hormones are raging, biologically speaking, we’re at our peak. Emotionally speaking, we have figured ourselves out and have autonomous agency over our bodies and desires that nobody in their early 20s can have.

What many of us want are men our age who have the same power and wisdom and experience, who will want us for who we are as people. We’ve given away the sexy bits for too long, on other people’s terms. Now we want to really use it, but on our terms. With people who appreciate it. Ideally, people who want a hot body, a sharp mind, an independent woman—no puppet strings going in either direction.

We don’t want to be your mother. We don’t want you to be our father. We want equals. And hot sex.

Why does it seem so wrong?

Why does it seem so wrong when guys our age date women half their age?

1. There’s an inherent power differential here that makes “true” consent almost impossible. She may say yes to things that she may not want, or may harm her in the long run, in order to get her goal. She’s not necessarily able to protect herself emotionally because she’s putting her emotional self on the back burner—because, in many cases, she hasn’t learned not to.

2. It’s also a weak choice for the man. It’s like an NBA player going one-on-one with a high-school player. How cool does the NBA player really look when he scores? And how good does he really feel?

But beyond that, many of these men are inadvertently validating the notion that most young women still have—that the only thing of value is their sexiness. We’re drenched in media images that tell us we have to be sexy. Not smart, not strong, not driven, not creative, not even kind. Just sexy. We’re only as valuable as we are sexy. The way we get things is with sex. When we’re no longer sexy, we’ll be tossed aside for someone who is sexy. Which is what it looks like when the older guy is with the younger new model of a girl.

When the supposedly older, wiser and more powerful amongst us behave this way, it validates those messages, becomes the acceptable mode of behavior. Imagine it’s your daughter, is that what you want her to learn? Do you want to teach her that that’s her value, and that’s how she should expect to be and accept being treated?

No? Then don’t set that example.

Again, I don’t know any men who would do this intentionally. But they do it unintentionally quite often. And it damages everyone. (Including themselves. They too deserve to be loved for who they are, not just what they can provide.)

So what, if so many are doing it knowingly? She’s getting spoiled, he’s getting laid, it’s equal commerce, right?

Wrong. In early adulthood, women are defining who they will be for the next decades. Just like in early childhood, when we teach children what works and what doesn’t by having clear rules and boundaries with our children. Early adulthood is a polishing of that framework. If we allow women to believe that they can and should use sex to get what they want, they will learn that sex is the commodity of value for emotional commerce, and it will become a game of debit and deposit.

Sex will become a tool, rather than a union. Sex, then, is not about what it feels like or even what it means in a relationship or to the individuals. It is simply a tool. Further, sexiness is judged only by physical appearance and ability to meet external expectations.

This separates women from their own sexuality. Rather than it being a part of them, it is a tool they use. And that can be used against them.

This is the first step in making a woman’s sexuality the property of other people. This is what makes it possible for “sex crimes” to go unreported, victims to be blamed, and continue using sexualized images of women as a way to sell products—cementing our belief that it is a tool of commerce, not part of a woman’s body and soul.

So yes, it’s wrong.

As my friend Hugo, who has written and lectured extensively on the subject, said to me in a Facebook comment thread:

And the onus is on the older men, too, to see through that. As a prof who works around sexuality/body image issues, lots of female students who first come to meet me are flirtatious because that’s how they’ve been taught they need to be to be taken seriously.

They don’t want to fuck me. They don’t usually even want me to want to. What they want is attention, and they don’t trust me (or any other man) to give it for any other reason. After I gently make it clear that I’m absolutely not sexualizing anything, they change. First time in my office hours, it’s miniskirts. A month later, its sweatpants. I take that as a compliment I’m doing my damn job.

But we also need to redefine sexy. It’s not just a hot body, but it’s also creativity, adventure, kindness, smarts… It’s the whole package. It is everything that we are, not just our collagen and follicles.

Why doesn’t it seem wrong when women our age date men half our age?

For me, personally, it seems weird, but not quite as wrong. I’ve had some very smart, hot and awesome guys in their 20s pursue me in damned near irresistible ways. But I can’t do it, because to me it seems selfish.