Older Women, Younger Men. Felicia Brings
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as more and more people learn that the objects of their bias also have rights. This includes the right to be treated with respect in public. So take heart and fear not. Change happens. Most of us do evolve, some faster than others. These are, after all, extremes used merely to illustrate a point. Fortunately, older women/younger men couples are not typically victims of bias crimes, but merely of occasional prejudices, fears and very bad behaviors. Our advice? Be cool. Don’t respond. Don’t act out. Remind yourself that you are living a different reality and it’s one that suits you just fine no matter what other people think. Their attitudes are their problems, not yours. Hold your head high and remember that you are not the one exhibiting poor taste by having this relationship. Those who are making snide remarks, pointing and staring are the tacky ones! Realize that you are being acknowledged by your young man as the beautiful, exciting, sexy creature that you are. Focus on the positives, on the good news that there is love in your life and that he is appreciative and good to you, and that he has the sense to value you as the goddess you really are.
After being with Claudia for five years, I was ruined. I couldn’t stand talking to a young woman all night. They were all so empty compared to Claudia.
Tom (age 25, referring to Claudia, age 46)
Some empowered women have, throughout recorded history, chosen mates as well as lovers from the population of younger candidates. These women, who have practiced medicine, entered big business and the arts and sat upon the thrones of empires despite the predominating male-driven cultures of their eras, have oft times hidden such relationships.
These days, many women we think of as having money, power and the freedom to choose less than conventional paths are often in the press. Known for their success, their beauty and their talent, all aspects of their high profile lives are covered by the media and paparazzi so that their choices of younger men rather than their counterparts become public gossip fare. Some of them are very familiar—Carlos Leon, the father of Madonna’s beloved daughter, Lourdes, is a man eight years her junior. The tabloid media grotesquely repudiated Cher’s romance with the man she has publicly acknowledged to be the “love of her life,” Rob Camiletti, (the so-called “bagel boy”), because he was eighteen years younger than she, despite the fact that many male stars take much younger lovers and brides without scrutiny. There is frequent comment upon the age difference between Susan Sarandon and twelve years younger Tim Robbins.
In Hollywood, the older woman/younger man phenomenon is prevalent. Some notable couples include Jacqueline Bissett and Vincent Perez (he is twenty years younger); Juliette Mills, married to actor Maxwell Caulfield (he is eighteen years younger); Kirstie Alley and her thirteen-years-younger partner, actor James Wilder; and television favorite, Mary Tyler Moore, married to sixteen-years-younger Dr. Robert Levine. Joan Lunden recently married ten-years-younger Jeff Konigsberg and Courtney Cox has married her seven-years-younger sweetheart, David Arquette, while Joan Collins has long been happily domiciled with Robin Hurlstone, who is twenty-five years her junior. Collins has written about Hurlstone, with whom she’s been involved since 1988: “he was much younger than I, which rather bothered me, but didn’t seem to bother him at all.” Kim Novak’s husband, Robert Malloy, is seven years younger, while Raquel Welch married her fifteen-years-younger partner, Richard Palmer. Handsome Ralph Fiennes proudly shows off his significant other, seventeen-years-older Francesca Annis. Even Sly’s mother, Jackie Stallone, married her nineteen-years-younger doctor, Stephen Levine, and Olivia Newton-John had a long marriage (now ended) to the ten-years-younger Matt Latanzi. The fabulous James Bond girl, Ursula Andress, had a long-time love affair with the younger actor Harry Hamlin, which produced a son. Lucille Ball married six-years-younger Desi Arnaz in 1940, despite warnings that “He’s too young for you.”
Audrey Hepburn’s final years were spent in the company of Robert Wolders, a man seven years her junior. Of Wolders’s relationship to Hepburn, biographer Alexander Walker, author of Audrey: Her Real Story, writes, “His fidelity to her would be her greatest aid and comfort as she entered on the last and most moving stage of her life.” Before settling down with Wolders, Audrey Hepburn had been married to Dr. Andrea Dotti, who was almost ten years younger than she. The marriage lasted ten years. Prior to meeting Hepburn, Robert Wolders had been married to Merle Oberon, a woman twenty-five years his senior. Alexander Walker describes Wolder’s marriage to Oberon: “They had several years of happiness together before Oberon’s death in 1979. Though married, they behaved like lovers. They strolled hand in hand along the beach in Malibu. They sailed their yacht together off Catalina Island. They checked into small hotels along the Pacific coast of California, using assumed names, like honeymooners rather than husband and wife. When Oberon had to undergo a triple bypass operation in 1977, Wolders kept a sleepless vigil at her bedside.”
The attraction between older women and younger men leading to satisfying relationships may be found outside of Hollywood as well. The writer Anais Nin was involved with Henry Miller and was forty-one years old when she became lovers with Bill Pinckard, age seventeen. At the age of forty-four, she became involved with Rupert Pole, age twenty-eight. They were together until her death thirty years later. Jacqueline Mitchard, author of the best-seller, The Deep End of the Ocean, is twelve years older than her husband. Writer Terry McMillan’s man is twenty-four years younger. The playwright Garson Kanin married the considerably older actress Ruth Gordon. Dorothy Parker, famous wit of the Algonquin roundtable, married Alan Campbell, eleven years her junior. Comedic monologist and actress, Ruth Draper, met the love of her life, Lauro de Bosis, when he was twenty-six and she was forty-three. And then there is Colette, whose many younger lovers included her thirty-one-years-younger stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenal. Not that she was alone in favoring a family affair. Back in the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I, at the age of fifty-three, took up with the twenty-year-old Earl of Essex who was the son of her former favorite, Robert Dudley.
Another historic figure, Catherine the Great, had frequent liaisons with younger men. When her son, Paul, was born, it was unknown whether he was the offspring of her husband, Peter of Holstein Gottorp or of her young lover, Sergey Saltykov. After Paul’s birth, Saltykov went abroad, and Catherine took on a new young consort, Stanislas Poniaowski. Later, she embarked on a third relationship with a younger lover, Grigory Orlov, by whom she also bore a son. The relationship lasted twelve years. In 1773, Catherine began an affair with the great love of her life, Grigory Potemkin, a man ten years her junior. But he was far from the last. Biographer Isabel de Madariaga, author of Catherine the Great, A Short History, writes, “As the Empress grew older, her favorites became younger.” Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, the most powerful woman of the twelfth century, married the eleven years younger Henry Plantagenet. Lest we jump to the seemingly obvious conclusion that only powerful women can opt for such an unusual and socially unsanctioned union, keep in mind that in his youth French King Louis XIV kept the significantly older Madame de Beauvais as his mistress. We know, too, that Mrs. Christabella Wyndham, the mistress of King Charles II of England, had been his wet-nurse when he was an infant.
In more recent times, notable women from all walks of life are known to have engaged in relationships with significantly younger men. Helena Rubinstein married Prince Artchil Gourelli-Tchkonia, who was twenty years younger than she. Adelaide Johnson, a well-known and much-admired American sculptress, married Alexander Frederick Jenkins, thirteen years her junior. Tobacco heiress Doris Duke had a long-term affair with jazz musician Joey Castro, fifteen years her junior. Margaret Eaton, the wife of a member of President Andrew Jackson’s cabinet, married at the age of fifty-nine a nineteen year-old Italian dance instructor.
Another woman who chose a younger lover, Aline Frankau Bernstein, was the first American woman to achieve professional renown in the field of theatrical design. Starting with the design and creation of the costumes for numerous productions at the Neighborhood Playhouse, she went on to make her mark at the Civic Repertory Theater, the Theater Guild and in several plays by Lillian Hellman. Though her successful career spanned almost three decades, she became better known for