Over in the UK, the British media are buzzing with a story about a TV presenter named Caroline Flack. She’s 31 and allegedly used to date Prince Harry, amongst others.

But it’s not royalty that the media are getting in a spin over. She has a job presenting one of the shows for singing talent competition, X Factor UK. One of last year’s biggest success stories are a boy band – One Direction. The boys age in range from 16-18. The main hear-throb that the screaming teenagers adore is a 17 year old called Harry Styles. And it’s rumoured that he and Caroline are dating.

I do feel sorry for Ms Flack in as much as she has been receiving death threats from distraught fans of Harry’s, but, by any measure, a 17 year old boy with a 31 year old woman is a pretty huge age gap. While the age of consent in the UK is 16, they certainly aren’t doing anything illegal, but it’s certainly pushing the boundaries and ruffling feathers.

I met my husband when he was 23 and I was 33. Would I have even contemplated dating him if he was 17 – 19 even? Probably not, truth be told. But, for Harry, isn’t that the fantasy of many a young man – to have an older, more experienced woman to ‘show him the ropes’? It’s Mrs Robinson in the extreme, but still something that many men would dream of experiencing.

The truth is, I don’t know what to think about it. While I naturally support age gap relationships, I know if she was 41 and he was 27, I wouldn’t give it another thought. But 17. It’s *so* close to the limit it makes me uncomfortable. Equally, I know that many similar relationships where the age gap is reversed  and the man is older don’t attract the same attention, which makes me want to defend it.

I’m really torn on this – what do you think?

A recent comment on one of my posts set me thinking.

‘Confused’ wrote:

“Hi, I have been dating/living with a man 11 years younger than me. We are deeply in love but have many issues. One of which is his mother refuses to meet me because I am older. She wants him to come home and spend weekends with her but I am not invited. Am I wrong to want him to demand that this behavior is unacceptable?”

Poor ‘Confused’! – My heart goes out to you!

Unfortunately, whatever our age, age gap, colour or creed, parents-in-law have the ability to wreak devastation on relationships. I actually once broke off an engagement with a guy (my own age) primarily based on his mother – she was an Alpha female, who had to have control of her precious boy at all times. As another Alpha, we clashed. Badly. It was never going to work and at the time, I wasn’t prepared to keep fighting. (It was the right decision – I met the right man, and I fixed him up with a friend who was certainly a beta and got along great with his poisonous mother.)

My decision to end it came because I didn’t want to keep him stuck in the middle of us (it wasn’t fair on him) and the decision that I didn’t want a man who didn’t have the balls to stand up to his mother when he needed to. (Boy, she pulled some stunts).

But I think the problem, Confused, is with the idea of ‘demanding’ anything of anyone. Making demands on people has a tendency to backfire.

So – she refuses to meet you. Fine. Don’t meet her. Doesn’t sound as though she is going to be a welcome addition to your friends and circle of positive people. But be mature about it. Leave the ball in her court. Act the adult here, even if she isn’t. If you can keep your cool and not make a drama of it, your man should, in time, see how unreasonable she is being. Have the upper hand by not reacting in front of your man (save the bitching for your friends – no man wants to hear his mother being cussed).

Maybe she just needs some time to come to terms with the idea of his being with an older woman. Maybe she is a vindictive old cow who will never change – who knows? But demanding she meet you will not do anyone any good. She will resent being forced into something she doesn’t want to do, your guy will feel torn between the two women in his life and you will be frustrated when she doesn’t immediately see how wonderful you are and what a cute couple you make (and in those forced circumstances, she won’t, that’s for sure).

As for the weekend visits – well – again – you have to treat him like an adult. If you try and stop him, he will naturally side with his mother. No guy – or woman – likes to feel controlled. So let him decide. If he chooses to go spend every weekend with her, then maybe you need to examine your relationship a little more closely. If he goes – make sure you tell him what a fabulous weekend you had and all he missed. You don’t say how old he is, but if he’s still running home to his mom every weekend, then maybe he needs to grow up a little before he’s ready for an adult relationship.

Ideally, you can find a solution where he spends some weekends with you, and others with his mother. Hopefully a time will come when a weekend with Mummy doesn’t appeal and he’d rather be with you, and choose accordingly. But don’t force him. He needs to be responsible for his own choices and his relationship not only with you, but with his mother.

Give it time, stay neutral and leave the ball in her court. If she doesn’t want to play, that’s her issue, not yours.

Good luck – let us know how it turns out!

It appears from media reports that the marriage of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher is over.

It’s Hollywood – marriages fail all the time. While I’m sad for them both – particularly Demi, what has really surprised me is the reaction of people and the media.

“She should have expected it.”

“He was bound to cheat with a younger woman.”

“Of course it was going to happen.”

I find this rather harsh. He was a consenting adult when he married her, and as such, knows that fidelity and loyalty and monogamy come with marriage. So why do people think it’s almost permissible of him to do the dirty on her?

When marriages between people who married young end because of infidelity, people don’t say the same: “Well, you married too young, it was inevitable.” “He was only 26 when he married you – of course he was going to cheat!”

Marriage is marriage. He was plenty old enough to know what comes with marriage, and the notion that somehow it’s to be expected because she is older is what really jars with me. Why? Does it give him some kind of get-out clause to behave badly? Does society really believe that just because a woman is older, her guy has carte blanche to behave as he pleases and she has to somehow accept this as ‘inevitable’? What does that say about how people perceive women in older/younger marriages? The young man does the dirty, and is somehow excused from blame because his older wife should have expected it?

Do we really think so little of women of a certain age? Are they really not accorded the same ideals and expectations of the rest of the world? Do they have to devalue themselves and take responsibility for their younger partner’s inability to keep it in his pants?

It’s a sad indictment of how society likes to punish women who choose a different path. They celebrate with you at the time, but behind your back, are waiting for the axe to fall, and to be able to say: “I told you so,” and smugly tell themselves it’s your own fault for crossing that line.

Demi has every right to feel bitter – not just at her idiot husband for behaving so irresponsibly – but at the rest of the world for lacking the heart to treat her with the same respect and kindness that would be shown to anyone in a same-age relationship where infidelity was at play.

I have noticed over the past few months the sharp decline in Cougar-related stories in the news. Compared to this time last year, I’d say numbers are down by at least 60%. Nowadays, the only Cougar stories I see involve the furry, 4-pawed variety, rather than the two-legged, underdressed variety.

So – is the cougar phenomenon finally over?

I hope it is. Sure, it may mean I get less visits to my blog, but it also means I get less smart-arsed comments about my choice of partner, and less emails from random guys asking if I am interested in an extra-marital affair, and ‘showing them the ropes’. (Dream on, guys).

To me, the idea of branding a woman on the age of the man she chooses to date was always rather sexist and backwards.

So if it’s over – and I hope it is – I won’t be sad to see it go.

How about you?

Pregnant for the second time, Sam Taylor Wood and Aaron Johnson’s relationship appears to be going from strength to strength. The couple have recently annnounced they are expecting their second child together.

I love this couple. They appear to have got things absolutely right. Sam Taylor Wood says that Aaron made his desire for kids clear from the start, and has given up a number of acting jobs to help concentrate on the early moments of their first child’s life. As a couple they live a quiet life, with strong family values.

Isn’t it nice to read something positive about older/younger relationships, for a change?

Of course, the kids or not issue can be a deal-breaker in any relationship, but as they seem to have resolved this together, their relationship looks like one of the stronger ones in tinseltown.

Sam Taylor Wood also appears to be over the whole cougar phenomenon already. As she quite rightfully points out, women and men in age gap relationships where the woman is older is still viewed as ‘controversial’ – and the same simply wouldn’t happen with an older man and a younger woman. Look at Hugh Hefner (who looks more like a silly old fool, than controversial, since the demise of his most recent engagement).

So – Sam and Aaron – many congratulations from Beyond Cougar – long may you continue!

I came across an article the other day by British columnist, Liz Jones. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ms Jones, she writes for the right-wing British newspaper, The Daily Mail. She is well known and pretty unpopular over here for her narcissistic, self-obsessed opinions. She’s also rather well known for marrying a man – an up and coming novelist – who was 16 years her junior. The marriage did not last long and was all over some years ago, with each painful turn of the knife documented in her columns. 

So it was with some interest that I read her latest article, slating Madonna for dating a man much younger than her. You can read it here. It is her surmising, based on her own failed relationship, that age gap relationships cannot possibly work, and the younger man’s motivation for being with an older woman is that he is lazy and vain and wants a woman who will pander to him.

She goes on to substantiate how doomed to failure these relationships are, by citing her own ex-husband who used to make endless ageist jibes at her, and would rather be playing his games console than engaging with her. Well, I think most men who found themselves married to Ms Jones would be finding anything to do other than listen to her self-obsessed whinging and whining.

I’d go so far as to say that if her ex was so awful, that she showed particularly poor judgement in marrying him in the first place. Perhaps if her self esteem wasn’t so low, and her ego so desperate to be flattered, that she would have seen him for the loser he was before she said ‘I do.’ And let’s face it, loser men exist in every age demographic.

She also suggests that older women are easy, because they will do anything to keep hold of their man. Again, I think that’s more Ms Jones and her character than the majority of empowered, strong women who date younger men, who are more inclined to believe that a man is never too good to be kept for his beauty alone. 

If your younger husband makes you feel old beyond your years, as Ms Jones’s did, I’d suggest it’s perhaps time to move on. But Ms Jones should realise that just because she chose a loser, doesn’t mean we all do.

What really does age a woman, however, is bitterness. Ms Jones – take note.

I met my now-husband when he was a fresh faced 23 year old. Six years on, he’s pushing 30 and I’m delighted to say – he’s going gray.

Only gradually. It started when he was about 26, with just one stubborn hair that shone out, isolated, from the rest of his beautiful, shiny dark brown hair. Then, at 27, a few more appeared. At 28, one or two more. Now, at 29, he’s still less than 5% gray, but those silver strands around his temples are slowly increasing in their number.

And – I love it!

It serves as a very good reminder to me – who is constantly fretting about looking good beside my younger man, that ageing is something that happens to all of us. Even my young, gorgeous, handsome hubby. It also means that the requests for age ID (for him, not me, obviously) are decreasing (thank heavens – nothing worse to make you feel like a total cradle-snatcher). It makes me less conscious of the difference in our years. And it’s a good reminder to him, that I’ve already had the best years of his life, so he’d better damn well stick with what he’s got. (Kidding).

That said, it’s positive for him to experience the effects of ageing himself. Goodness knows, I’ve spent enough of my life worrying about it, and now he has some notion of what it is I’ve been going on about all that time. Of course, ageing for men is still, somehow, far easier than it is for women. They just don’t care as much as we do; although in today’s looks-obsessed society, that is something changing – but not, in my opinion, for the better.

So – here’s to my beautiful hubby – every inch as gorgeous as he was the day I met him, a little bit older and quite a lot wiser. And a timely reminder that even age gap couples grow older together too!

Cougar Town is about as far from our real life as Wisteria Lane or 90210. It’s entertainment, sure, but real life, it ain’t. But back to our conversation…

Because, hey, we’re not like that. I’m not toying. He isn’t either. We’re not some crazy, Hollywood-ized version of a media-induced fad. We’re just like any other couple.

I’m not some snarling woman desperately attempting to relive my youth. I had my youth – in fact, I had mine longer than most. I was done with all that when we met. I just met a guy and we fell in love and really, the age doesn’t even figure. We grumble about whose turn it is to do the washing up, I pick up after him and he complains about the excess of beauty products that fill the bathroom shelves.

In so many ways, it’s really not that exciting.

But we like it that way. Because when you’re satisfied with your relationship, you don’t need exciting. You need mutual respect, trust and honesty, and an indefagtible sense of humour. You need to be in it together.

So tell me – where does the age gap figure in that?

I must admit, I watched the first series, when the whole ‘cougar’ phenomenon was at it’s height (mostly through gritted teeth – it wasn’t pretty). The irony was, the ‘cougar’ element was lacking from the show, besides one typecast, stereotyped predatory woman. I read today there is a new ‘cougar’ set to join the show, but does anyone care anymore?

The show almost went for a name change before series 2 began, based on the notion that ‘cougar’ was a term that put potential viewers off (and rightly so, given the terrible stereotypes they portrayed). Younger men were reduced to commodity items, mere playthings of the older, successful and heavily botoxed women, who treated them accordingly.

Yes, I know Hollywood likes to dumb things down, but really? Cougar Town had the opportunity to show women and men as equals, who each admired and was attracted to the older/younger partner for the right reasons. But they blew it. But maybe that’s the point. In reality, those of us with successful, happy relationships with younger men are really not so different from those in more conventional relationships, and where’s the on-screen frission in that?

I guess the one positive is that there is still a gap in the market for a show that really does show an accurate view of younger men as men (not boys), and older women as empowered by their choice of dating younger men. Perhaps I ought to brush up on my screenwriting skills…..