I Adore Youner Men

Annette Wheeler didn’t recall the exact moment she first heard the term “cougar,” but she did remember dashing to her computer to look it up. To her shock and bemusement, there was a new term to describe what she had been doing most of her life—dating younger men.

Wheeler, a fiery redhead who lives outside Baltimore, leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I adore younger men,” the 60-year-old purred. “I liked younger guys even when I was in high school—like a year or two younger. I was a cougar before there were cougars.”

Indeed, Wheeler’s pre-marriage and post-divorce dating history reads like a steamy screenplay. She listed a string of young men with whom she had various relationships, occasionally punching numbers into a calculator to determine age differences she had never considered in the first place. She never analyzed her attraction to younger men (or their attraction to her), but with “cougar” an increasingly popular term used to describe older women dating significantly younger men, her longtime preference is suddenly in the spotlight.

For Wheeler and other women like her, younger men—many of them 15 years or more their juniors—are a natural fit. Boomer women are looking and feeling better than ever. Widowed, separated, or divorced, a growing number seek young men for dating and companionship. And since men have been dating younger women for ages, why are so many of us surprised—shocked, even—that women would follow suit?

For Wheeler, younger men have been a natural fit for an energetic lifestyle that her male peers have never quite matched.

“I can’t explain why, but I’ve always been,” she said, pausing. “Without even knowing someone’s age, you can be sure I’m going to gravitate toward the younger guy. And I don’t know if it’s a function of I’m attracted to younger guys or younger guys are attracted to me. It’s just their energy, their enthusiasm” and—the biggie—“less baggage.”

In fact, the stuff of the past may be what keeps her from dating men closer to her age altogether. That and music, of course.

“They’re always going on and on about their exes and the kids,” she said of her male peers. “The baggage, the baggage, is the main thing. And being stuck in the music they listened to in college. I want to know what’s new. I want to hear what’s new. Younger guys seem to have more to contribute to my life, and they’re just adorable.”