WORDS Alice Kinsella

ILLUSTRATION Graham Haught

 

“What age are you?”

“Twenty!”

I could practically feel my chirpy innocence shining through my eyes at him. Let’s call him Phil. He was 35, 15 years my senior. When he was learning to drive, I was learning to walk. A sexual relationship with him provoked in me a thrilling sense of the forbidden. He was far too old for me; there was no future in it — why was I so keen?

For the older individual there seems little question as to why they are interested. Young is beautiful; any magazine will tell you that. In our early twenties we’re fresh, limber and often enjoy being unattached. But what is it about sex with an older man that proves to be such a strong draw for the younger person?

Stereotypes suggest that younger people sleep with older men only to be appreciated physically. When you think of this kind of relationship you often think of the wise, older lover, generous and willing to guide the young man or woman sexually. Is this what compels us to seek out and engage with the older man?

I asked a young woman who had had a sexual relationship with a man twenty years older than her. She said it was his knowledge of the female body that made the experience so fulfilling for her. “Older men have an incredible awareness and understanding of a woman’s body that can only be gained with age. No matter how experienced a younger guy can be, the emotional connection he made with me was the result of his wisdom as an older man, not of the number of woman he’d slept with.”

“When you think of this kind of relationship you often think of the wise, older lover, generous and willing to guide the young man or woman sexually. Is this what compels us to seek out and engage with the older man?”

In my experience this rung true. Phil showed no insecurity and with the confidence acquired from experience he saw no problem with asking what I wanted, creating an intimate, comfortable environment. As he was my first older sexual partner, I did not know how “good” a lover he would be. So it cannot only be my cliched expectations of sex that caused me to get involved with him. How much of the attraction to the older man is psychological?

When I asked a friend about why he was attracted mainly to older men he laughed at me and said “daddy issues?” But how much truth is there in this worn-out psychological statement? My friend paused a moment to mull over the question before reconsidering: “They’re authority figures who make you feel safe and secure. They’re successful and they know the world.” In a way this is the same as when he laughingly said “daddy issues”. The attraction is psychological. It is obviously not that we want to make love to our biological fathers. But we like someone in a dominating position, and in the bedroom we like the idea of a protector, someone stronger, wiser and kinder. With Phil, I enjoyed feeling youthful, maybe even a little subordinate. He could pull me towards him with one arm and speak with such confidence and authority that I felt I could trust him sexually.

It’s no secret that a big part of achieving the female orgasm is psychological. A woman engages in the fantastical element of her sexual experience just as much, if not more, as the physical aspects. By engaging in a sexual relationship with an older man there can be an element of fantasy fulfilment. The older lover is an authority figure, who we imagine is capable of both protecting us, and controlling us.

So by engaging in this fantasy of sex with an older figure are we fetishising these men? Looking for something a little forbidden, expecting them to live up to our clichés? We may expect them to fit a certain set of characteristics that we want from this experience, and this of course won’t always be the case. In every sexual experience there are both physical and mental aspects. And the combination of these two holds much of the appeal in a sexual encounter with an older man. For me, Phil embodied both the physical and psychological perks of the experience, but sex with an older partner is bound to differ for everyone. One thing’s for sure though, age is more than just a number.