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When older men date younger women

BY JULIA ALLISON | SPECIAL TO amNEWYORK

February 27, 2006

Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall. (Photo by Handout)

There are very few things I don't approve of these days I like gay marriage, birth control, Hillary Clinton and plastic surgery. But I cannot endorse mustaches (hipster or otherwise), VH1's "Celebreality," or older guys dating younger women.

The last is more than a little ironic -- as it happens, tomorrow is my birthday, which means the guy I'm currently dating will "only" be 12 years older than me. Oops.

I'm in my early 20s, he's in his mid 30s, and together, we're a New York dating cliché. Since just three years ago I was dating a 20-year-old, such an age gap is still new to me and I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with it.

I've never been one of those girls who has her internal love clock set to Geezer. You know the type as a high school freshman she went to prom with a senior, in college she dated grad students. And now, in her 20s, she's seeing recently divorced guys taking an early option on their mid-life crises. One of my roommates is like this; at 23, she shakes her head disparagingly at any male born after 1970.

New York City is teeming with young women like her and older men who strongly believe that dating younger is more than a prerogative, it's a necessity. They may not choose their ideal girlfriend using the hackneyed "Half His Age Plus Seven" rule, but they have no shame when it comes to hitting on women born ten, twenty, even thirty years after themselves. Indeed, according to "seduction" expert David DeAngelo, younger women "bring an amazing energy, vibe and youthful atmosphere many guys have the experience of feeling more vital when they're with them."

Fantastic. So while some 50-year-old feels "more vital" by hitting on my roommate, I feel only the weight of my imminent Desirability Expiration Date.

Actually, age rarely comes up in my own relationship, other than my oh-so-hilarious jokes at his expense (Me: "When I was 5 you were 17? You sick [expletive]!" Him: "Yeah, but we weren't DATING then!"). It would be easy to brush it off.

But I wonder at the message it sends to other men, men who see us and think, "Hey, I'm feeling a little lethargic, a little old why don't I dump my 40 and double down for two 20s?"

Older men who ask me out assume that they're flattering me, and in a way, they are. But no matter how good it feels to be coveted now, I'm pissed at them and myself for setting a horrible example: Throw away the older women and date me? One day I'm going to BE the older woman!

I really have no solution; I don't particularly want to leave my boyfriend to make a statement, even if he will collect social security more than a decade before me. Am I a hypocrite? Yes. But I'm a self-aware hypocrite.

Of course, some older-man/younger-woman relationships do work. My aunt married a guy 20 years older than her and had a happy marriage. "And how's that going?" asked my boyfriend. Um, well, he's dead. Oops.

E-mail Julia at: Julia@JuliaAllison.com. No, she will not set you up with her roommate.