Opening Up to Love with a Younger Partner

It took Hollywood a while to catch up to a worldwide trend: Older single women are enjoying romantic love and passionate sex with men both younger and older.

Diane Keaton, playing a postmenopausal playwright in "Something's Gotta Give," does nothing overtly seductive. She's 50-something, thin, rich and famous, and describes herself as "strong, controlling, know it all, neurotic, but kind of cute."

Yet, Jack Nicholson, playing the paunchy playboy who lusts after her 20-year old daughter, is titillated by Diane's teasing. Keanu Reeves, the drop-dead handsome young doctor, ignores her daughter and pursues the Keaton character like a lovesick puppy.

Can you believe this? What is the allure of the older single woman, personified by 58-year-old Keaton? Beneath the age lines clearly etched in her face and the turtlenecks pulled up to her chin, what does she have that her adorable, dewy-skinned daughter does not?

She's a head trip. Funny and sharp-tongued, she is self-mocking, even as she is able to puncture the ego bubble around a man's head. "I'm not regular," she tells Nicholson. "And men want regular."

Ah, but that is the fascination of the older woman. She has been uniquely shaped by her many life experiences and, like a flowering shrub pruned over many seasons, she stands out from all the others.

She doesn't need a man, or at least not for the things young women are looking for: money, status, babies, security. The older single woman is likely to have worked out her financial situation with a previous husband or husbands.

She is the archetypal sex goddess who, in mythology, was always a wise older woman who embodied both the erotic and the maternal. The Keaton character, for instance, is the one who "saves" the Nicholson character with mouth-to-mouth after his pre-coital heart attack, and the one who nurses him back to health.

What Are Gray Goddesses Looking For?
More and more, midlife women are enjoying love, sex, dating and playing the field with both younger and older men. By and large, these are not widows. They are mostly divorced boomer women in their 50s who are economically independent. Many have had their fill of high-maintenance husband care. They are looking for fun, companionship, somebody to climb mountains with and hold hands with at the movies.

And many are unabashedly looking for good sex. After all, these are the women who pioneered the sexual revolution. Why give up now?

A recent study by AARP confirmed this trend. Once free of the role constrictions of "good little wife," many divorced midlife women drop their inhibitions and look for men who are as full of life and lust for adventure as they are. Half of the women among this group said they are happier playing the field than being monogamous in dating. In fact, they said, they enjoy dating two people at the same time and don't feel that it's cheating, provided they haven't agreed to an exclusive relationship. About the same percentage of midlife single men in the AARP study felt the same way about dating multiple women.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher, who studied 20 cultures for her latest book, Why We Love (Henry Holt, 2004), sees that women today, having acquired economic power, have gained social and sexual power along with it. "More women are picking younger men, and they're doing it because they can."

Single women over 50, many of whom were sexually repressed in their salad days (pre-sexual revolution), are likely to feel it's catch-up time. Maxine, a 53-year-old singer I interviewed in San Francisco, admits she has gone through two husbands because "I didn't want to be sitting here in my 50s and a spinster. But I really only knew how to make love and how to make dinner."

At 52, Maxine met her second love through an online dating service, and for the first time in her life, really began to enjoy sex.

Do You Want Him to Worship You or Get Your Jokes?
Many of these women are being liberated by the ease of meeting many different men online. They never would have felt comfortable sitting in bars or cruising church socials to find male company. But being able to test out a dozen different men in one night through online conversations -- before even choosing one to meet for coffee -- avoids the tedium of a two-hour dinner with a dork. It also lays the predicate for what might at least be an interesting evening.

When the magic moment does come, most older women shrink up and can't think of anything but the embarrassment of exposing their expanded girth and sagging treasures. It's tough to have sexual confidence over 50. Keaton's character is horrified when the Nicholson character catches her in the nude, but the next day she hands him the scissors to cut the turtleneck off her body. He looks at her, exposed, and says, "You're beautiful." This is the core female fantasy of being overpowered by a passionate lover, but at her own invitation.

Older women tell me they often find it valuable to have a "transitional affair" with a younger lover, in which the woman is appreciated as a great teacher and reminded that her erotic self, forgotten by both her and her husband, still lives. But the real "click" is usually with a man who shares the same cultural history. Who wouldn't pass up a boy-man who may worship you -- but only because he envies your success -- in favor of an accomplished man who remembers being thrilled by the Beatles and who is comfortable enough to trade reading glasses with you in a restaurant?

Gail Sheehy is a journalist, cultural observer and author of 14 books, including Passages, New Passages and The Silent Passage, in which Sheehy broke the taboo surrounding menopause and opened a dialogue vital to mature women's health. She is currently doing research on love, sex and dating among women over 50. Visit www.gailsheehy.com.