Not true.
As a woman with hobbies that are more traditionally appealing to men (poker, football, sports in general, politics) who found herself suddenly single in her 40s...
Younger men were constantly hitting on me, much more so than the older men. It was constant enough to be annoying. The young ones see them as "cougars" who can "teach" them and make them feel more manly. Not to mention they are attracted to having a relationship with woman who is more emotionally mature and not dependent on a man to make her feel good about herself.
And it wasn't just my personal experience. I saw it all the time. There's nothing unusual about a man in his 20s persuing an older woman.
Oh, I don't doubt it. There are instances of young men being attracted to women older than they are, but on average, when there is an age difference in a couple, more often than not, it is the man who is older. If you think of the married couples you know, who tends to be the older one in those marriages, the man or the woman?
You said it was constant enough to be annoying. Is that because they were young or for some other reason?
I've heard about the cougar thing, and when I first heard about it, I thought it was a fad. I don't know if that phenomenon is just as prevalent as it once was or not. It's my impression that the cougar phenomenon was usually young men looking to have a fling with an older woman as opposed to a serious relationship with the possibility of marriage.
It makes all the sense in the world why typically, woman go for men a little bit older than them and men go for women a little younger than them when they are looking for someone to marry. While a man can become a father at almost any age, a woman's time window for becoming a mother is much briefer. If two people, looking to marry and start a family are a man who is 24 and the woman is 36, they're going to have to hurry to have children while it's still safe. Is a man in his mid-twenties likely to be able to support a wife and kids? Probably not. He's just starting to work his way up to his full earning potential and money will be tight int those first few years even without children, unless the woman has a high income. But if she's decided to become a mom and wants to spend time at home with her kids until they're old enough to start kindergarten, then her income goes away and the man is supporting the family. It's far more likely that a man who is in his mid-thirties will be able to support them than he would have been ten years earlier when he was likely earning considerably less.
Which could have actually been INTERESTING and a chance for JR to have some emotional growth - if the writers had bothered to try
That would have been a very positive step for the show. Do you think there was still time to turn the show around to what it was like in its glory years, or do you think it would have been a case of too little, too late?
