With house prices rising and becoming unaffordable in many countries, fueled by a massive input of printed money by national central banking institutions, many women have resorted to dating older men, treating them as a sugar daddy or future husband. Instant gratification is the name of the game in this computer online society. Many older men are ditching their wives for a younger more attractive and initially more compliant model.
Age differences are increasing, and many men in their mid to late fifties are finding second wives in their mid twenties. It is a deal which suits both sides: the younger woman gets a lifestyle that she could not afford on her salary, – foreign trips, a nice house with plenty of bright shiny things, and the husband gets to feel rejuvenated.
The gym culture has changed the look and feel of old age. Men are sliming down, working on their physique, and getting their teeth done. While fifty is not the new new thirty, it certainly does not need to be old anymore. Six months to a year with a personal trainer can knock years off your appearance, and give you a slim waistline and attractive appearance. But the years inevitably catch up, and many women find themselves wondering just what the hell were they thinking, transformed from love interest and provider of sexual therapy, to carer for a sick and infirm husband who is just waiting to die while they play nursemaid, not in naughty cosplay but for real.
Some women factor mortality into the deal. The power dynamics of gender and money over youth and beauty has always existed in a male patriarchy but women are reversing this to achieve some form of parity, trading on the allure of youth for economic stability.
Lucy was a barmaid in a pub in Devon where she befriended Mark, a successful insurance broker who had just sold his firm in the city for fifty million. For Mark, married with three children, it was lust at first sight, and Lucy showed him some master bedroom delights that he had never experienced in his thirty year marriage to his prim and proper wife. He moved out of the family home and rented a house in prosperous Virginia Waters. installing Lucy there, and when the divorce came through marrying her. To keep her happy, he set up a company managing superyachts – and made Lucy the CEO.
Lucy traveled widely to exclusive yachting destinations, supposedly for work. She learned to ride and fly a plane. She lived the high life. He went to the gym daily.
And then Mark became frail, struggling to walk, facing difficulties walking up the stairs. Lucy became his carer, spending weeks at home, looking after her elderly husband, no longer the prime attraction he was when they first met. When he died, his estate, which passed to his family, closed down the superyacht company. She found out that Mark had left his money in a trust to his children before marrying her and that she was set to inherit very little.
Lucy has a small house now, with the money she got from the marriage, and enough to get by. Her new boyfriend is her age. ‘It is such a relief,’ she says, ‘to know that I can get old with him, and not worry about his sickness every day. It is a normal life.’
Despite the disadvantages, the attraction of the much older and wealthier man is alluring to many younger women who are beaten down by the grind of the high cost of living, the difficulty to heat their homes, and even pay their rent, let alone buy a small apartment. It is a job, and the dating process is like an interview for employment.
‘You have to flutter your eyes, smile, pretend to be interested and give them the right amount of attention, while playing a bit hard to get,’ says Mary, 29, a beautician from Colchester. ‘I don’t fool myself that there is any love, on my part. It’s a business transaction masquerading as romance.’
Mary is set to marry her older man as soon his divorce comes through. She is checking the small print and rejects any suggestion that she is a gold digger.
‘It’s a transaction in a man’s world. I make sure I read the correspondence with his lawyer because I got played before. The man who I was set to marry was not even married. I won’t get fooled again.’
