Talk of cougars and sugar daddies!

Kereeditse Lefatsi
Correspondent | Wednesday October 12, 2011 00:00

 

The first thing people would obviously assume is that the girl is in it for the money. The man would be known as a 'Sugar Daddy.' Times have changed, though. We now also see or hear of older women dating and even marrying much younger men. These women have been dubbed Cougars. You would wonder if those who coined the term somehow associated the women with the large, tawny cat of North and South America, which is now greatly reduced in number and endangered in some areas. And yes, intergenerational couples - are a worthy topic of discussion during Happy Hour at the watering hole.

Typically the discussions are centered around the taboo aspects of what the relationships could mean: So the man becomes the Sugar Daddy if he is the older one in the relationship. Now this is what they mean by 'Sugar Daddy,' according to urbandictionary.com: 'A man who lavishes a woman with money, gifts, etc.'  Nonsense, says one woman, we shall call her Trinity. The dictionary meaning is a stereotype, she says. 'The idea that all sugar daddies are rich is a stereotype and clich. Fact is, sometimes all a poor or needy female wants is for you to help her provide food and basic things for her children she can't afford or maybe help her afford cable television or an education. It's not how rich you are that matters; it's how poor she is. Poor females are very open to sugar daddies of all income brackets (well, except maybe poor ones), ' she argues.

She further asserts: ' 'Sugar daddying' young women is generally seen as 'immoral behavior' but most believe that the origins of that taboo has more to do with society's hatred for older men dating young women than money itself (a hatred likely invented by older women and indoctrinated into us via the mothering process). Because of the somewhat taboo nature of having a sugar daddy, most of these types of relationships are top secret and hush hush.'A Cougar on the other hand, according to a definition from about.com, is said to be; 'an older woman who is primarily attracted to and has sex with significantly younger men. The most commonly-accepted definition of a cougar is a woman 40 years of age or older who exclusively pursues very young men. The onset of the cougar years is hotly debated. Some feel that a cougar can be as young as 35, but women of this age would not be viewed as cougars unless their sexual conquests were no older than 25; the 10-year age difference seems to be an unspoken but accepted minimum between partners.'

Time Magazine online published an article written by Tim Padgett, which looks deeper into the so-called trend of cougars. 'There are cougar celebrities - 47-year-old Demi Moore married 32-year-old Ashton Kutcher - cougar books, cougar cruises and, perhaps the ultimate affirmation, cougar sitcoms, including the popular Cougar Town, starring real-life cougar Courteney Cox. What further proof do we need of this species' existence?' Testimony from one 'cougar' in the afore mentioned article asserts that they are women hot on the market, 'Miss Cougar Canada, Alison Brown (who 'won't admit to being anything more than 45'), is a divorced single mom in Toronto who has her own online art gallery and is a personal trainer: 'What I've noticed on dating sites today is that younger men are coming on to me, and it's not just because we're 'easy marks' for sex.

It's because we're successful, intelligent, looking great, and we don't play games like so many of the younger girls they date.' All good relationships take effort to maintain and are not without their own problems without having to deal with issues such as age differences. Someone who has had a fuller experience of life through age will definitely have a very different perspective on life than someone younger than him or her. What people looking in on these relationships always wonder is why these two people are together and how they make it work. A love and dating website, futurscope.com explores these questions, offers some answers and touches on some of the challenges they face.

'The reasons for either party entering into an older man- younger woman relationship however, doesn't always make it work or make it ideal for the couple in question. In fact, many such relationships have often encountered problems, not least among them insecurities (older man is afraid younger woman is no longer happy with him and actually has her sights set on hot, young neighbor), uncertainties about the future (younger woman fearing she'll be left alone or a widow when he dies), feeling like misfits (often they find they can't gel with each other's group of friends due to age differences and conflicting interests), or simply the younger woman sometimes getting tired of making all the adjustments because the older man is set in his ways.' Interestingly, I embarked on this article with a view to all but condem intergenerational relationships.

After thinking deeper about it as writing will make one do, I have decided that I really am not bothered by it.  I simply have too many of my own problems - including relationships to be concerned about how intergenerational couples make it work. At the end of the day, everyone wants to be loved and deserves it. Their place of love may appear out of the ordinary - at least as determined by society, but they do deserve to love and be loved.