Ask Dr. Helen: When May Met December
Older men and much-younger women is a hot topic on which everyone seems to have an opinion…just ask Fred Thompson. PJM advice columnist Dr. Helen Smith offers her take on the subject, along with her opinion on a reader’s very different, very loaded definition of mixed marriage.
Today’s column will explore an issue that seems very pertinent to a number of you–older men with younger women and “mixed” marriages.
Dr. Helen,
I am a married man with a much younger wife. I get ribbed about it all the time, from both men and women but mostly from older women who look down on me for having a wife who is 20 years younger. Do you think that older men should hook up with younger women?
Dear Reader,
I have two words in response–Hell, yes! I’ll begin my answer by noting an amusing interchange at columnist Don Surber’s blog:
Don asks: “A 90-year-old farmer in India became a father for the 21st time. What kind of woman has sex with a 90-year-old man? I mean, what kind of woman under 70 has sex with a 90-year-old man?”
Commenter Jeremy answers: “My kind of girl.”
Okay the rest of the comment from Jeremy is not so nice but his point is well-taken. Older men and younger women can work out fine as can older women and younger men. I think the idea here is that you have to do find a relationship that makes you happy and if a younger woman fits the bill, what’s wrong with that? I have never understood this whole issue people have with age and relationships. Younger, older-who cares? If you don’t believe me, take a look at my prom picture here where at 17, I asked a guy two years behind me in school to the prom. Once we’re out of high school, as long as someone is older than 18 and is mentally competent, what’s the problem?
As Baby Boomers and Generation X-ers get older, perhaps its time to stop being so age restrictive and view people as people, rather than numbers. New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine overturns the stereotypical notions that physical pleasure is just a young person’s game. The study found that people from 57-85 were still having sex almost as frequently as younger people who were sexually active. You didn’t mention your age but my point here is that even older people–especially men, according to the study–are still interested in sex at older ages. The need to find a partner, regardless of age, is something that is important to both men and women.
That said, if a man is alive and enjoys relationships with women, why not go for women of all ages and that includes younger ones than oneself. You can’t let others dictate to you what restrictive qualities you must look for in a mate, for that is giving far too much power over your happiness to others. Next time someone tells you’re a “dirty old man” for being with a younger woman, just know that it’s jealousy coming through and has more to do with the naysayer feeling inadequate, threatened or repressed than it has to do with you. As for the older women looking down on you, baby boomers used be into telling everyone to be free and happy–”if it feels good, do it” and now they’re telling others–”you’re too old to do it with anyone but someone of your own age” and are engaging in the worst kind of sterotypes and ageism of both the young and old. Brush it off and go enjoy life with your younger bride.
For the next question, 1charlie2 writes in:
My wife, carries a Ruger. I have a Colt. “Is that considered a mixed marriage?”
You know, mixed marriages can work out fine and often do–I say, celebrate diversity!
So that’s my opinion, what’s yours on the older man/younger woman issue? Should they hook up? Drop a line in the comments and share your thoughts or if you are a woman, what do you think of the older woman/younger man issue?
Or if you have a question you would like answered, please leave it below or email me at askdrhelen@hotmail.com. Your questions may be edited for length and clarity. Please note that your first name only or no name at all will be used to identify your question—if you want me to use your name, tell me, otherwise you will be referred to by your first name or as “a reader” etc.
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Helen Smith is a psychologist specializing in forensic issues in Knoxville, Tennessee and blogs at drhelen.blogspot.com.
This advice column is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not purport to replace therapy or psychological treatment.
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September 4th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
“I am a married man with a much younger wife. I get ribbed about it all the time, from both men and women but mostly from older women who look down on me for having a wife who is 20 years younger. Do you think that older men should hook up with younger women?”
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Older women are aware of the overwhelming competition younger women represent. It’s jealousy and nothing else.
September 4th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
no.. its not jealousy… its grown up to the darker being it becomes, envy. you can be jealous of someone and not wish them ill…
feeling resentment against someone because of that person’s rivalry, success, or advantages
solicitous or vigilant in maintaining or guarding something
resentment: the feeling of displeasure or indignation at some act, remark, person, etc., regarded as causing injury or insult.
older women do not have something to defend if they are not going out with him, consider him in their dating pool, etc… they are not going to defend their competitors, the other women in their group..
while it can seem the same… envy often dresses up like jealousy… but envy is a whole other beast… just read the definitions..
a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another’s advantages, success, possessions, etc
A feeling of discontent and resentment aroused by and in conjunction with desire for the possessions or qualities of another
the symptoms are close… but the condition is darker..
its not jealousy that says, if i cant have him no one should…
These verbs mean to feel resentful or painful desire for another’s advantages or possessions. Envy, the most general, combines discontent, resentment, and desire: “When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals” (Walt Whitman).
Begrudge stresses ill will and reluctance to acknowledge another’s right or claim: Why begrudge him his success?
Covet stresses a secret or culpable longing for something to which one has no right: “We hate no people and covet no people’s lands” (Wendell L. Willkie).
and this is the one that has the key word…
spite and resentment at seeing the success of another (personified as one of the deadly sins)
the sins are saints now… we promote them… the virtues are devils we dispromote..
so the women are not jealous, they are envious… and in that envy sits spite…
what your seeing or he is describing is his good natured way to make those others still acceptable people, to make him seem nicer for accepting everyone (the order of the day)
but jealousy doesnt lead to spite… and spite is what he is getting, not resentment and protection… they have nothing to protect… (in fact, with one less young woman who likes older men taken up, their odds get better)
spite: a malicious, usually petty, desire to harm, annoy, frustrate, or humiliate another person; bitter ill will; malice
a particular instance of such an attitude or action; grudge.
he gets ribbed about it “ALL THE TIME”… “look down on him”
in our world in which we try to tolerate everything, we have forgotten to tell the difference between jealousy and envy… resentment and spite…
they spite him… they know that their constant pressure weighs on a relationship, even if he doesnt.. they know that one day, one of their barbs might catch.. and he doesnt have the sense, nor ability to politely defend himself and tell such sows, their place… because the oppressor class has to accept the ministrations of the oppressed class.
one only has to read the elders of past ages and their witticisms to know the truth of it.
and you will notice that women use it differently too… in a way in which the envy is ok… and so the spite is ok, but kept hidden..
“Who among us hasn’t envied a cat’s ability to ignore the cares of daily life and to relax completely?” – Karen Brademeyer
“Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.” Bertrand Russell
a quote that fits these women perfectly…
they envy that she is envied, and they wish ill upon anyone that makes them realize their place in the scheme of life..
(and if advertising is an indication, they bless anyone that “tells them sweet little lies” by gracing them with purchases to hear more… special K, and others selling the old that they are the new young.. god help those that smash that fantasy by existing in defiance of their internal ideology… they would fare about as well as the intelligent and able fared as they were living proof of comparitive advantage, china… now take a look at your biggest feminist icons who wrote the most strong stuff… no wonder they are socialists… (given that socialism leads to what? and they even agree. and if it dont lead there, that dont matter, cause they are going to make it that way because they believe thats where it leads))
September 5th, 2007 at 3:00 am
Dr. Helen might want to testify at the upcoming IMBRA challenge in federal court. The Tahirih Justice Center and Attorney General of the US will be arguing that men who date foreign women who are youger…are abnormal…and must be regulated.
Read their “finding of fact” that, for the first time in history, got a federal judge to uphold an anti-male law (IMBRA) based on the idea that men who seek younger adult women are heinous:
http://www.veteransabroad.com/georgiacase.pdf
Note also how they use statistically insignificant anecdotes to pretend that there is a “problem” with international marriages that statistically does NOT exist.
September 5th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Oh Dr H, you are usually so on the ball. But here you are going on about sex, sex, sex. As though life was all about old chaps grabbing sexual pleasure whenever.
As a chap of winter-approaching years I want to be loved for my spectacular mind, not just my huge John Thomas! I want my sparkling personality appreciated and valued, not just the multple orgasms I give as a matter of course. I want my talents recognised and appluded from the rafters and extolled by that ’special person’, not just incoherent moans from below.
I think you are stressing the sexual pleasure bit a bit too far. The itty bitty girls at the check-out counter swoon whenever I take out a roll of big bills that balance my cod-piece, but whenever I issue an invoice for ’services rendered’ they soon lose sight of the main game. They even say I have it all the wrong way around!
It ain’t the white hair lady, its the green paper.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Good poetic writing Amfortas, but please do not knock Dr. Helen for sticking up for our rights. I provided the link above which shows that the Tahirih Justice Center, which just placed one of their people in the top immingrant screening job at Homeland Security now has the US Government officially labeling men who date younger women as perverts who need to “control” women.
So whatever an American woman says in defense of human rights, let her say it please.
People are being sent to this post to show that there is a real problem with feminists attacking age difference relationships among Americans. Although it presents an opportunity for joking around, please consider that this issue is no longer a joke as long as the Tahirih Justice Center, the Republican front for the NOW, can put people into the Department of Homeland Security at will:
Here is the blurb from http://www.tahirih.org:
Colleen Renk Zengotitabengoa, Tahirih’s Director of Legal Services, has left Tahirih to accept a position at the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Office of Chief Counsel, Refugee and Asylum Law Division, where she will be working as an attorney advisor. In her five years at Tahirih, Colleen has had a remarkable impact in shaping our Legal Services Department as it expanded to include family law and social services in addition to immigration law services.
THIS WOMAN AT HOMELAND SECURITY IS DEDICATED TO STOPPING AGE DIFFERENCE RELATIONSHIPS.
There is nothing funny about that. While some men were joking, the feminists were moving up the ladder of government.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
“So whatever an American woman says in defense of human rights, let her say it please”
Well, I agree with that, Jim. I agree with your points too. I do not even try to stop her and I generally like her views. But she does not even approach the feminazi position or mention IMBRA let alone endorse or decry it. So I simply put a different perspective. Just as you did. But I related it to her main point.
The woman that you refer to may well be trying to stop age-different relationships but I would say that the age issue has little to do with her dedication which is firmly directed to CONTROL of men by almost any means. Frankly, if she promoted age-different relationships I would still be worried!
By the way is there any truth in the rumour that there was a marriage in Heaven recently? I hear Anna Nicole Smith married Methusela.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:16 am
Because IMBRA is a major issue on most men’s rights blogs (Glenn Sacks, Marc Rudov, MND) I would hope that Dr. Helen not only take up the issue directly but volunteer herself as the plaintiff or an expert witness to not only take IMBA down, but also most of VAWA as well as get the conservative Supreme Court to agree that domestic violence is not an enumerated power of Congress and therefore not a federal issue.
With someone like Dr. Helen as the Plaintiff, the anti-male judiciary would clearly see that the empress of feminism has no clothes.
We at http://www.online-dating-rights.com are convinced that ONLY A WOMAN PLAINTIFF CAN DEFEAT FEMINISM IN THE SUPREME COURT and for once and for all.
This woman would become famous.
Please don’t knock Anna Nicole for that part of her life. If I were 85 years old and alone, I wouldn’t want someone who looked like her to treat me like she’d rather wash her hair than go to dinner. That is not to say I wouldn’t prefer a chipper 65 year old as a dinner partner, but I just don’t like societies, like parts of the US, where women are trained by feminists to actually be rude to any older male who finds her attractive.
The American south is not necessarily like that (outside the realm of the evangelists who believe only in high school sweethearts marrying). I was just in Georgia and North Carolina in June and I like those subcultures. What I am talking about is Boston and San Francisco, the most anti-male subcultures on the planet (with the exception of Toronto and Vancouver in Canada which are actually worse).
September 9th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Its all about envy and control. Jealousy is an odd thing, both genders suffer it. But I dare say that it afflicts women more, but in different ways. Men are indeed jealous, they do NOT want other men sniffing about. They sometimes take it too far. This is evolved over centuries of dragging a gal home and keeping her in the cave.
Women on the other hand have envy about nearly every aspect of mans life. They want to micromanage his movements, all day every day, even down to reminding him he spent only 5 minutes with the kiddos on Jan 7 1989 etc.
If a man is with a younger gal, she clearly has other options, and is not SO worried about what he is doing. She is not only sack hot, but just basically more enthusiastic and willing to try things as activities that older gals get jaded about…and want to control men away from them.
The older gal sees that and realizes that the man is N OT under any womans control and he is enjoying life…cant have that can we?
I read here a long time ago the comments on Dr Helens site about what gals were calling a “well managed husand”. How offensive is that?
September 11th, 2007 at 8:41 am
It works both ways as well. There is a major feature on CNN today about teenage boys who have been kicked out of polygamy communities because the older married men want more fresh wives and don’t need the competition.
Basically, whenever one gender and age range is in full control of a government, they act in their own interest.
In the polygamy communities, older married men are in total control…so they exile the young males to stop competition.
In the US Congress older feminist women are in total control, so they harrass men who date younger foreign women and pass laws like IMBRA and VAWA.