I was pretty oblivious about older women when I was a young man…

By Thomas Oldenough | May 12, 2019

I was pretty oblivious about older women when I was a young man. It wasn’t so much about being married as “established” with good jobs, houses or apartments, etc., which I didn’t yet have going for me.

Knowing what I know now I have a feeling I was so intimidated I definitely missed a number of very overt advances.

The funny thing is I wasn’t intimidated by them so much as I was so firmly anchored in what I felt were my own inadequacies. Because I didn’t have a good job, or a house or apartment, or a car or clothes it simply didn’t occur to me that someone who had those things could be interested in me.

Naomi Wolf’s 1990 book The Beauty Myth opened a lot of eyes to the way women tend to “censor” themselves when they feel they’re not matching (generally unattainable, definitely internalized) social ideals of beauty. For instance, women are sometimes surprised, in denial, or even annoyed that men find they’re attractive even though they haven’t “lost that last five pounds,” for instance.

It’s less well-understood that men have corresponding misconceptions about “worthiness” where they (we!) end up surprised or in denial when women find us desirable even though we don’t meet standards of achievement that we’ve internalized.

That’s a long preamble to my response to the meme, above. I’m pretty sure if an older woman or two had fished me out of my obliviousness and self “censorship” of unworthiness I’d have become a more confident, well-balanced lover and partner years and years before I finally did.

I don’t know if most younger men would prefer to hook up with a more mature woman, but based on my own third-hand, second-hand, and first-hand experience I think it would be a very good thing if more of them did. And if more mature women took younger men under their wings.

It would also be really fucking nice if we stopped using mildly derogatory terms for mature women like “cougar” and “milf” for those mature women who’ll date younger men. That shit’s not helping anybody!

Age really is just a number. Society’s got to get over that in a big way. Not just for older men and younger women but for younger men and older women (and older men and younger men and older women and younger women too.)