The importance of being frank
From: Globe
and Mail
By: SARAH HAMPSON
Published: January 10, 2008
With experience comes candour, but after a roll in the hay,
some men want to cuddle while the lady wants to leave.
“Are these women you write about real?” asks a
man over his beer.
Well, he is real – an intelligent lawyer in his mid-60s,
if you must know – and so is his question. Which raises
some interesting, though not necessarily surprising, issues
about men's perceptions of women and their behaviour.
Some men find it hard to believe that MLW (mid-life women)
are anything but de-sexualized matrons. “Methinks your
interviewees are talking dreams,” offers one male reader.
Wow. I felt a renewed sense of empathy for Hillary Clinton
and her struggle with the gender issue on the political landscape.
Being a woman sometimes feels like a piece of performance
art, calibrated carefully to withstand the fiercely judgmental
scrutiny we endure.
Pass the sex - hold the love
Last week, I wrote that some MLW I've encountered want sex
but not a full-blown relationship with a man. They think of
men as dessert and side salads in their lives, not the main
meal, because they already have that – a big meaty life
with a good job, a house, maybe a few children, friends and
a retirement plan that doesn't include finding a rich husband.
“Why would I want to take on somebody at this point?”
is a common question MLW have on the subject of long-term
relationships. “I don't want to be someone's nurse or
bank.” All they are missing is an appendage of a certain
kind.
The male reaction was intriguing – a peek inside the
locker room of their psyche.
Many assume that women are always desperate to mate –
with them. One man, a 68-year-old who was briefly married
and has been active on Internet dating sites, reports that
all the women he is interested in – the over-50s –
declare on their posted profiles that they want a long-term,
committed relationship. “I just don't see the phenomenon
you're talking about,” he said.
I don't profess to speak for all women (they are just as
varied in their desires as men are) but I will say this: Hello?
Few women are going to advertise that they just want lovers
because it makes them appear slutty, which, in turn, welcomes
all sorts of unwanted male presumptions.
This very same man went on to tell me that on one date, a
mid-life woman let slide the suggestion that men are great
as lovers but – she flicked her hand in the air, dismissively,
he said – it would be wonderful if they would just vamoose
afterwards. “I was really surprised,” he confessed,
as if he had just discovered how to split the atom.
But the most incisive comment came from a man who wrote this:
“What a curious twist of fates and roles. As men reach
that certain age, they are looking for what women were looking
for when they were younger, while the women are looking for
what the men were looking for when they were younger.”
Neil Chethik, an American author and speaker on male issues,
confirmed this curious reversal of desire. In middle age,
many men – he doesn't pretend to speak for all older
men in the world, either – want committed relationships
more than ever.
“For men, their lives are on this constantly rising
trajectory. They go to work, they move along in their career,
make more money hopefully, rise up the corporate ladder. In
middle age, the decline begins, physically, but also they're
nearing the end of their careers,” he explains. “Women
represent a possible relationship that can help bring us up.
Men are often willing to invest a lot in our relationships
with women at this stage, whereas women, especially those
who have been married and made sacrifices to have children,
are investing in their work and friends.”
I spoke to another man, in his 50s, who is dating a woman
in her late 40s, who has made it clear that she has, and wants,
several lovers on the go at this point in her post-divorce
life.
“An erection has no conscience,” he offers with
refreshing frankness, when asked if men object to being used
for sexual services. But when feelings do become involved,
his in particular, it's hard when the woman draws boundaries
that prevent him from being more involved in her life exclusively.
“I'm not needy,” he states earnestly, explaining
that he doesn't need a mother, housemaid or a chef. “But
I don't want to be hurt.”
Still, most men – at least the ones who can imagine
that MLW have romantic and sexual options – see the ability
to discuss preferences and desires openly as a good thing.
It's certainly a change from their younger years when women
often goose-stepped their way to fulfilling the cultural script
of what they should want (a man, a marriage and a baby) without
a second thought.
Michael Coogan, co-author of Know Your Pig, a book for women
about the simplicity of how men think, says that MLW's candour
“creates a dialogue of reality, and that's win-win for
everyone. From a male perspective, the biggest fear after
divorce is that if they start dating, they're going to be
on that roller coaster again of [female] expectation.”
Mr. Coogan adds some advice for women who are not afraid
to speak and act as they want. “It's definitely an attractor
for men that a woman is independent. No man is going to chase
after a woman who immediately gloms onto him. But there's
a fine line between the super-confident woman who is stylish
and sophisticated and knows what she wants, and that feminazi
who says, ‘I am woman, hear me roar. I don't need any
of you.' When guys hear that, they're like, ‘Good luck
with that.'”
At the end of the day – or more appropriately, at the
end of the night – all these dating behaviours should
perhaps be viewed with some degree of forbearance. “It's
all posturing,” sighs Ian, a friend of mine in his early
50s who recently started living with a woman for the first
time in his life. “I've been in the dating scene for
close to 40 years,” he says, laughing. “People are
so defensive.”
Both men and women – and here I venture to say that
I speak for many, if not all – want love from another
human being at some point. It's just that they are often cynical,
angry, burned, choosy or, in the case of the mid-life, post-divorce
set, experienced enough to know that it's wise not to assume
that just because you sleep with someone you like you should
immediately start picking out a china pattern.
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