RTJ - a trend succeeds…

In the past few years it could be observed in the press, that mature men are involved with considerably younger women. Here are a few examples of celebrity couples:
Brad Pit (40) and Angelina Jolie (29)
Tom Cruise (44) and Katie Holmes (27)
Paul William Scott Anderson (40) and Milla Jovovich (29)
Rod Stewart (58) and Penny Lancaster (31)
Flavio Briatore (56) and Elisabetta Gregoraci (26)
Woody Allen (64) and Soon-Yi Previn (29)

All these couples have one thing in common: HE is above 40 and SHE is under 30 years of age.


Why is that ?

Dr. phil., Dipl.- Psych. A. Meinhauser comments: " With these couples a psychologist tries to find out, what made the younger and even more the older so attractive when they first met. Often younger women seek security in a mature partner. A mature man is attracted by youthfulness,vitality and beauty of younger women."

What are the prospects for success for such couples ? "As in any other relationship, differences in the other person should not be fought but rather be considerd as another possibilty for existence. Also the approach to sexuality is a very important factor in any relationship. The Institute for Sexual Research in Hamburg /Germany compared four different agegroups (men and women) regarding their approach to 13 different arrays of sexuality. The result proved that approaches are basically independent from age. This indication shows that difference in age does not have any negative effect on sexual harmony. Approaches to sexuality are deveolped early on and hardly change later in life. If anything it can be noticed, that younger women do favour a more mature and thus experienced sex partner."

Another survey made by HMAG Institutes brought the following statistics concerning the desired are for marriage.

Percentage of women wishing a partner 10 years or more senior
- women up to 26 years: 49 %
- women up to 35 years: 32 %
- women above 35 years: 18 %

Result: approximately 50% of all women up to 26 years of age desire an older partner for marriage, while this wish considerably decreases with women up to 35 years of age.

Even though there is a noticable trend nowadays the issue „mature gentleman – young lady" is by no means new. Goethe was 74 years old when he proposed marriage to nineteen-year-old Ulrike von Levetzow. Julius Caesar was already 45 years old when he fell in love with twenty-year-old Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

Of course big differences in age are burdened by stereotypes: He is looking for a lolita, who helps him forget his mid-life-crisis – she is money-hungry and suffers from a „father´s complex". While it is easy to understand what the older part gains from a relationship with a younger partner, many can only asume financial motives for the younger part. Surveys with such couples from the regular population brought rather unspectacular results:

Younger women seek security, experience and stability in mature partners. Mature men often have more intuition and are more tolerant and even-tempered compared to men of the same age as the woman. They often are patient and interested fathers to their mutual children.

The mature man is looking for spontaneity and naturalness, which pull him out of his established routine. Experience and impulsiveness often complement each other in an ideal way. Sometimes another reason is to start a family with children again. According to many media reports the reason first mentioned is the desire for an attractive young female body to inflame erotic life once more, which mostly plays a major role in the early stages of a relationship. After a few month this motive takes second place behind other incentives.

In conclusion: The specialized contact forum "Reif trifft Jung" is an extremely good alternative for establishing such partner constellations. Here young women and mature men conciously seek and find each other