Cougar Woman & Cub Breakup
No More Table For Two -- Unless My Laptop Wants To Eat.
It finally happened. The day all my friends predicted. My cub, Michael, and I broke up after almost two years together. We had met under the most curious of circumstances, which you can read about here. He was 26 and I was 45 and at the time and had never heard the word, “cougar.” Now I was a card-carrying member of the cougar club sitting in Bombay Spice, a local Indian restaurant, about to bring my club membership to an end.
I couldn’t stay long because I was racing off to some networking event. I got to the point quickly.
“Look, you know I’ll always love you,” I said patting his meaty hand. “It just doesn’t make sense for me anymore. We’re at such different places in our lives.”
Michael gave me a questioning look. “It’s not like the age difference just suddenly appeared,” he said. “Why does it matter now?” Michael had just come from the gym. His black hair was combed neatly and his cheeks were rosy red. He leaned forward on the table waiting for an answer.
“Uh, because you’re busy building your empire,” I said. “And I’m busy doing nothing except wondering how to restart my life.”
“I never got in your way from doing that,” he said. “I only encouraged you.”
Of course, Michael was right. Even at my age, I still had to fight the tendency to make a guy the center of my life. It was as though the gravitational pull of a man was just too powerful, and if I didn’t have enough ballast in my own life, I’d be sucked in to his.
“You know I just pretend to be a strong, empowered woman,” I explained. “I need to get a life—a creative life, say.”
“You have a life,” he said. “Maybe it’s not the one you want right now but it’s a life.”
“I need to find the life I really want,” I said. “Not just the one I fell into. I should probably get a job, too. A relationship is too distracting.”
Michael shook his head in disbelief. Then he crossed his arms and leaned back as though wondering if life had a particular direction or it was all just random. “What about sex?” he asked finally. “Can we still have sex?”
“As in no-strings attached sex?” I said raising one eyebrow. “Is that really possible after being in an actual relationship?”
“Anything’s possible,” he said. “Except for you going without sex.”
It’s annoying when someone knows you better than you know yourself, but I held firm. I explained I was entering a new phase in my life, one where my creative passions would reign supreme, where my dedication to my writing craft would hold me in the only relationship I could control – the one between my laptop and myself. He rolled his eyes, laughed hard, calmed down and shook his head. Then he went back to his lentil soup.
“That’ll be the day,” he said.
I finished my iced tea and raced off wondering why it seemed so funny, this idea of me pursuing the cloistered creative life. I’ll show him, I thought to myself. And then it hit me. I was free at last to do the one thing that I’d been itching to do for months now, the one thing that had caused Michael to look at me with fright and horror in eyes. I would cut my hair short and let it go gray.
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Comments
Hi Pam,
there was nothing ‘inevitable’ about you breaking up with your cub – let’s not cave into the age-attraction stereotypes here. The only thing ‘inevitable’ about human relationships is that they’ll provide us with hours of fascination. Maybe, your friends ‘prediction’ is self fulfilling prophecy rather than objective causation.
I do not wish to upset you, but I feel that the narrative presented at your first meeting is one in which you purposefully put yourself in a submissive position: “wondering” how to “restart” your life ? ! Come on Pam, you are one of the most liberated, self aware, women that I’ve read on the net, albeit met in reality.
Let’s be Buddhist about this :- your existential position is way beyond “restart”ing your life.
OK, let’s be basically clear about this: you’d have scared the shit out of me when I was 22 (i.e. a cub), however I’m now 38 YO (a nether world, I like to think), I can immediately see the strength of a woman who has grown to know herself – this is a much sexier trait to men who have been at the ‘throwing plates in the kitchen’ scenario than men who have only been at the “I need to grow” scenario.
My plea for experience over youth is unfashionable in these parts, I know. But, I’m 38, so I’ve got to play for the team (the grey team) !
At the end of the psychobabble are some irredeemable (evolutionary) truths in your relationship with Michael:
1) You are a sexy, and sexualised, woman who had a lot of fun. (& possibly expressed your sense of transactional protection ?)
2) He is a younger, sexy & sexualised, young chap who had lots of fun. ( & possibly expressed his oedipal self?)- it’s a boring stereotype, I know.
3) you found your inner sense of self, and happily expressed it with your hair cut. The true self is victorious over all projected, imagined and fantasised images of self.
Game, Set & Match – to Pam, IMO.
If you were in Hong Kong (my home town) I’d have to join the queue of much younger suitors who’d be much more than highly eligible than me.
as Zimbardo showed; situation is everything, the individual is minimal,
keep on keeping on,
Dx
Hello dear funny Pamela,
I am lovin’ your blog. I went to it for the first time last night sitting on the couch with Alex. He and I snickered together over a few posts.
You are a great writer. I love your sentence above about the “gravitational pull of a man” when we (read:female) are in that floating, bobbing-along state. How I can relate! But more to the point..that imagery you created there, wow I can really feel that, and have been pondering it since last night. I’ve never put into words before, or even conscious thought–that feeling I’ve had in my body, around my solar plexus and heart area, of being energetically seized and inhabited by a powerful, brilliant man. In one black hole episode, I strangely, quite literally felt/heard my magnetic paramour’s name as a chant in my body, a freakin’ mantra I couldn’t shake for hours! Eek! Yah, not so sure I like that feeling. Very “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”! Oh the woes and passionate intensity of that rollercoaster! If only the very elusive powerbroker I’m specifically thinking of (and his big beautiful schlong) had inhabited my actual vagina more frequently, …..sigh. Though I’ve wondered if that was one way he captured my psyche, since in real life his copulatory talent was mediocre: size of magnificent screwdriver inversely proportionate to duration of screwing.
Anyway, got off on a tangent there. Whew! Keep up the fantastic, thought -provoking, laugh- inducing writing. Bravo!
Dawn
I have so many comments but my most urgent one is for Dawn: Where did you find this man of yours?? I want that shaking in my solar plexus!
I find myself speechless — you, my dear readers, are much too smart for me, and I thank you deeply and with greatest appreciation for your thoughts. First, to Phil, although all that I wrote is true about why I broke up — the distracting nature of a man and the need for copious amount of time to write — there was another aspect to my relationship with Michael. I’m not saying it’s true for all men in their twenties but often they can’t appreciate the depth that say a guy like you can Phil. So while the sex is great and fun at first, if there isn’t a deeper knowing going on–a meeting of minds and hearts and not just genitals — then frankly the sex becomes objectified. I feel like an object and maybe he does too. And then I just can’t do it anymore. Second, to Dawn: such an interesting comment. It makes me think of how tantalizing passion is, how exciting, and yet it has its dark side too, possession. I think that is the next phase of love, to experience the passion without the possession. To be truly free amidst an incredible union, to not get attached to the attachment. And finally, Michelle: the last time I had a shaking in my solar plexus I was having an anxiety attack. It lasted for a couple of years. Love y’all.
Huh. and here I thought you had figured something out about relationships with younger guys – MUCH younger guys that I hadn’t.
I dated a hot shot 25 year old Air Force fighter pilot when I was 40. When I say hot, I mean H-O-T. Smoking, sizzling, after-burner kind of hot. Damn.
Anyway.
I sensed very early on that we would never have that mental connection. It distressed me so.
But, I really know what you mean here. If one can find it and make it work (I still think that Demi kicks Ashton’s butt on a regular basis cuz I’m just that cynical) then yea for you.
But, it seems really tough to do if you ask me. My husband and I currently enjoy a 7 year age differece. But, he’s one of those scary smart engineer lives on a different wave-length kind of guys and so……he’s more mature than moi in so many ways.
Besides, he’s FULLY supportive of my need to cloister away, drink wine and peck at my keyboard writing. That’s cause he finds flow-charts and differential equations sexually stimulating.
I’ll shut up now.
Sorry about the break-up.
Nicely done, Pam, nicely done. Love the way you leave us hanging with the haircut … as if that’s something truly frightful instead of a choice that has made you hotter now than ever!!!