Should Love Recognize Age?

 

cougar - noun - slang term for a middle-aged woman who pursues romantic or sexual relations with men ten to fifteen years younger (Google).

For whatever reason, I've been spending time reading biographies this summer, which is something I used to do as a teenager. I have regressed to a literary adolescent state as I am running out of classic fictional titles that interest me, and nothing that has been published within the last twenty years is even close to being well written. (Please leave me a comment if you think I'm wrong because I'd like to be.) I just finished James Kaplan's massive, two volume biography (1700 pages) of Frank Sinatra, and now I am just about through Woody Allen's autobiography Apropos of Nothing. Other than both gentlemen being born under the zodiac sign of Sagittarius and knowing Mia Farrow in the biblical sense, initially, I didn't think they had too much more in common. But they do. For one, both men married much, much younger women: Frank, Mia and Woody, Soon-Yi. Despite each couple's tying the knot 31 years apart, upon hearing the news, true, judgmental conservatives all dropped their jaws simultaneously, apoplectic with rage. However, the fervor in both cases died down eventually as everything grows old with time.

Nevertheless, when it comes to May-December romances, I've always thought that there is a double standard. Just recently, Mick Jagger, who is at least eighty, married his long-term girlfriend Melanie Hamrick, who is 44 years his junior. If I married a young man 44 years my junior, you better believe most of my friends and relatives would have something derogatory to say about it. I wouldn't be a cougar, I'd be a jaguar, and I'm not referring to the automobile - or maybe I am?

But should love recognize age? Are numbers significant? Case in point: as the three of you who read this blog religiously already know, I am dating a man whom I refer to as James Bond. James, his actual name, has two things in common with Frank and Woody. He just happens to be a Sagittarius (like I am) and his last girlfriend was 35 years younger than he. But I can tell you why he did fall for her. 1. She was gorgeous. 2. She hit on him. 3. James has the mentality and body of a 35 year old even though his face looks and is 65. They broke up because she wanted to have his child, and he just wasn't selfish enough to say yes because let's face it. By the time the kid was in college, he would most likely be deceased, something Mick didn't think about when he had his eighth child, his six-year-old son, with Melanie. James also didn't want his lover to wind up having to take care of him in twenty years when he would be 85 and she, only fifty. Ergo, he left her and is with me, someone a year older and much, much wiser, not nearly as problematic. In James's mind, age does matter when it comes to romantic love. 

In order to sidestep hypocrisy (if I am indeed being a hypocrite), my name did show up under the nomenclature of "Super Cougars" once when I dated a guy twenty years younger than I, but it came down to one date exactly. The young man, as well as those who surrounded him socially, was just too immature. And then there was my cousin, a private school English teacher, who gave me a hard time since this young man had been a former student of his too recently. I didn't wish to get on the wrong side of a family member.

In closing, let's return to the aforementioned questions in paragraph 3. Perhaps what matters most is simply the notion of love itself, something I kind of skipped over until right now. Love in all of its forms doesn't have a numeral attached to it. It is eternal. Love whom your heart tells you to love. It isn't a numbers game.

Just sayin'. 

#love, #relationships, #age, #blog, #blogger, #society, #spilled thoughts, #personal essay, #editorial