Richer, wiser and keen for children - why older men make perfect
partners
By HELENA FRITH POWELL
Actor Michael Douglas is the perfect older husband, as Catherine
Zeta-Jones will happily testify
My aunt always told me there is nothing more boring than a young
man when you're young or an old man when you're old.
Scientists have now confirmed this and, what's more, it's not just
cultural, it's biological.
Mature males who ogle young totty are not just dirty old men; they
are simply expressing 'an evolutionary acquired trait'.
What they know instinctively is confirmed by boffins.
Martin Fieder and Susanne Huber at the University of Vienna
examined a database of more than 10,000 men and women and
discovered that the most successful couples were those where the
man is between four and six years older than the woman.
This comes as no surprise to me. Rather like the Queen, my husband
and I fall squarely in the middle of this age range.
He is 45 and I am five years younger.
The Queen, who is 81, is almost five years younger than the Duke of
Edinburgh.
She and I have known for a long time what the results of this
scientific study show; older men and younger women make more
successful couples.
One of the most obvious reasons for this is that women mature more
quickly than men.
Even aged 16, I found snivelling youths who were the same age as me
deeply uninteresting.
My first boyfriend was four years older than me.
He was from Finland, and at the time was doing military service so
would show up at the school gates in his army uniform looking very
handsome.
To me he seemed so much more sophisticated than my
contemporaries.
He was out in the real world, while the other boys I knew had no
interest in anything beyond comparing the size of their
conkers.
Jñrmo (as he was called) seemed intelligent, sensitive and above
all older. Just being older was in itself an attraction. How
intelligent he ended up working in a mustard factory.
A young, educated woman wants more from a man than a pretty face
and a uniform. She wants someone who can teach her, guide her and
enrich her life, not just arm-candy.
The most obvious proof of this is Marilyn Monroe, the most iconic
sex goddess ever. When she married, aged 30, whom did she chose? A
gorgeous film star?
A young hunk with biceps and buttocks to die for?
No, she chose a bespectacled lanky playwright called Arthur Miller,
who was 11 years older than she was.
My father is now 84.
Jack Nicholson has not even looked after himself - but the younger
ladies love him
In his 'salad days', as he calls them, he seduced literally
hundreds of women, 99.9 per cent of them younger than him.
"Young women are more interested in learning from a man than how he
looks," he once told me. "It is far more useful to go on a date
armed with poetry than a pretty face."
Although aged 84, he is more limited in what he can do these
days.
He still uses his tried and tested formula, quoting Dante at
attractive younger women all over the world.
I have seen the effect it has on them, and it is quite
amazing.
They literally melt.
They love the idea that someone can teach them something.
Women are always multi-tasking, even when they're falling in
love.
But a woman can't live on literature alone. Sex is also important.
And older men are better in bed.
It's just a fact. They even look like they'll be better in
bed.
For example, take Alan Clark versus Eminem.
Who would you go for? Only a fool would forgo all that experience
for a man who may have rhythm, but has little else to recommend
him.
For a man age is no barrier to being sexy.
Warren Beatty is still considered one of the most attractive men
alive. Most of us wouldn't throw Robert Redford off the sofa.
I have an Italian friend called Cosima who used to be a model. When
she was 38 she met the Duke of Edinburgh who was then 80 - and yes
she found him attractive.
"He was incredibly sexy, so English and aristocratic," she told me
at the time (I didn't like to disillusion her.) "I love that
older-man-slicked-grey-hair look."
The other advantage an older man has is that he will often be more
sophisticated than his younger contemporaries. And more
educated.
I did once go out with a younger man. He was gorgeous, sweet and
had lots of hair. But it all fell apart when we were watching the
news coverage about the first war in Iraq and he asked me where
Baghdad was.
A friend of mine tells the story of how she split up with her
boyfriend of the same age just before they went on holiday to New
York.
She asked him if they could go to Tiffany's when they got there. He
had never heard of it. "Is there no end to his ignorance?" she
wailed down the phone to me.
She has since married a man 21 years her senior who is extremely
well versed in international jewellery shops.
I recently made an older friend.
He is your perfect gentleman, he even stands up when you walk into
the room.
This is something a youth is unlikely to do, unless of course you
tell him you've got an X Box 360 in your handbag.
Younger men lack the manners of their older counterparts and
however feminist we pretend to become, I don't know a woman who
doesn't want doors opened for her or dinner paid for.
A friend of mine recently went on a date with a 45-year-old man. At
the end of the meal she said: "I suppose we should get the
bill."
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and the beautiful and younger Daria
Zhukova
"It's all done," replied her date. He had paid while she went out
for a cigarette.
Money, of course, plays a part. You not only need to know where
Tiffany's is, but you need to be in a position to spend money
there.
The older man is likely to be more successful, richer and more able
to provide for you and your offspring.
My father always says that if he had a penny for every time a woman
told him how attractive Aristotle Onassis was he'd be as rich as
the shipping magnate. "He looked like a goat," he says. "But that
never stopped a woman finding a billionaire attractive."
Another upside is that you'll always be the younger woman.
But if this isn't enough for you then y...[Message truncated]
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The above is just for info. There are always pros and cons of
dating and marrying young, midde age and old men.
