Your Relationship Radio hosted by Peter Ehrlich and Liza Fromer- YRR

By Teresa Pavlinek

A friend of mine recently ended a relationship with a man because he was almost twenty years younger than her. Although he was very mature for his age – he played X-Box but was also into Nietzsche - she found that she was too embarrassed to go out with him fearing people would think she was a “cougar”, aka, An older woman in her sexual prime who prefers to hunt down young men and feast on their burgeoning sexuality.

I have to say I was shocked. Not that she was dating a man half her age but that she stopped dating a man half her age. It bothered me that the derogatory, ageist label of cougar is pigeon-holing women into the role of sex-starved, predator. Have women not earned the same right as men to explore the fruits of dating someone who’s young and beautiful? Okay that’s not always the only reason but let’s be honest, it’s up there.

I experienced my own “cougar” moment recently, actually I prefer to use the term “tigress” moment. It sounds more regal.  On my thirty-seventh birthday I found myself in a bar in Edinburgh with three hot twenty-something women partying into the night. Don’t ask.

At one point I looked around and realized I was one of the oldest people in the place. It didn’t bother me. Mostly because I realized I was the only one in the bar with absolutely no expectations of getting laid that night.  Just then a cherub faced, Ewan McGregor look a like walked up to me and proceeded to chat me up. I couldn’t believe it. He was interested in me.

Thank you birthday gods, I thought. I told him that it was my birthday and he asked how old I was. I played it cool. I asked him how old he thought I was. He looked me up and down, I sucked in everything that need to be sucked in and stuck out everything that needed to be stuck out, and he looked deep into my eyes and said … twenty-eight?

I almost slipped him the tongue right there in the middle of the smoke filled patio. Did I suddenly find him more attractive because he thought I was younger? Uh, yes. Did that make me want to have sex with him? Yes, it did. Well that, and the perfectly chiseled jaw, the six-pack and the accent – just being honest.

Would I eventually become paranoid that he would discover my true age and run off with some nubile, wrinkle free twenty year old? (laughs) Definitely. But in that beautiful moment nothing else mattered.

Whether it was the dim lighting, that expensive cream I’d been using or the ten pints my sweet Scottish boy downed that evening, in that moment I understood what all the fuss was about. No I didn’t sleep with him.

Not because I was embarrassed that people would accuse me of robbing the cradle or because I couldn’t handle watching Saturday morning cartoons but because I didn’t need to. Just knowing that I could was somehow enough.

So I stood aside as one of my severely intoxicated female companions proceeded to clumsily maul my Scottish prince on the dance floor. I didn’t feel like a cougar or a tigress I felt like a woman.