article: The Science of Cougar Sex: Why Older Women Lust

[MatureDJ]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2007422,00.html

Pretty much what everyone here has speculated ...

Our female ancestors grew accustomed to watching many of their children — perhaps as many as half — die of various diseases, starvation, warfare and so on before being able to have kids of their own. This trauma left a psychological imprint to bear as many children as possible. Becoming pregnant is much easier for women and girls in their teens and early 20s — so much easier that they need not spend much time having sex. (See photos of the history of the cougar.)

However, after the mid-20s, the lizard-brain impulse to have more kids faces a stark reality: it's harder and harder to get pregnant as a woman's remaining eggs age. And so women in their middle years respond by seeking more and more sex.

 

[Scaramouche]

Dear MDJ,
What would we do without your cruising round the net?...thanks for that article....again it is head line seeking and very wafery...It makes interesting,even slightly tittillating reading,but are the Ladies on Craigs list really representative?...
To put the behaviour of a small minority of Ladies entirely down to Social Evolution,is pulling a really long Bow...
No I think,that this phenomena,where it exists,can be put squarely at the Door of Modern Society....The Older Lady living on her own,can often be very lonely,and quite delusional,if she has no Kids with Grand-kids to indulge,she often becomes obsessive about Dogs,Cats,Religion,Health,the Environment...
The Local,Masseur,chiropractor,counsellor would be out of business without their patronage....They often hunger not so much for Svex,but for company,emotional support and for a "Handy Andy" to do the endless little jobs around a Home.
Such a Woman gets up in the Morning,looks in the Mirror,with soft lighting the inadequacies of her wrinkled face are not seen,the height of the mirror,will accentuate her uplifted Breasts,she cannot see her fat Backside,varicose veined legs and the rolls of fat under her shoulder blades and stomach....Her Toillette completed,its down she goes to her computer,here the Old photos of 1999,that she hopefully posted then on an InterNet dating site,and has never removed....Have attracted the usual mail from Predators,she might be 52 but she will attract at least one letter a Day from often,quite young Men,usually Guys from racial minorities who are more interested in her Passport,introverted computer Nerds,young guys looking for a Meal Ticket....The list is endless but be assured,there is never a Saucepan so battered that you can't find a lid for it.

 

[Nutz]

There's been a ton of studies on this already. The general consensus is that women do not peak when they're older like many believe, what actually happens is the hormones rebound and it appears like their sex drive peaks. It's an illusion. Women actually reach their sexual peak in their late teens/early 20s when they're most fertile.

 

[Buddha_Mind]

Reasons for this I'm glad to be a man and have a consistent sex drive, and I most certainly hope to age like a fine wine...

I didn't read the article, but my take on cougars, from having worked at a pizzeria and being young dealing with rather rich (well husband was) bored housewives is:

They're bored, as scaramouche denoted, lonely as hell, dissatisfied with their marriage, emotionally damaged, or somewhere with a mixture of all three...(I'm sure I'm omitting some)...oh yes, and some are just selfish-b!tches who have a rich husband but lust after younger men more so than his rich, but wrinkled-@ss...

hehe.

Really though; I had some very selfish cougary women come at me on the job -- and it wasn't always pleasant. If anything, when wifey answered the door and flirted with me so heavily I thought I ought to walk inside (while husband is setting the table) it definitely added to cynicism I held in regards to relationship (ie, g0ddamn are all women such bishes?)...another customer woman where I worked groped my body and the next week I saw her again in the restaurant with husband picking up the tab...I almost wanted to walk over to the guy and let him know his wife was groping dudes and maybe see her reaction when her fund$ have been cut off... (cynical I know...but I'm so tired of the bull$hit).

I mean if you boil it down really, there's probably not much difference in aged single men and aged single women -- there is still a sex drive -- if there is no consistent partner why wouldn't a fit, younger person be sexually attractive?

Scara--you really hit it on the head though--how many are trying to relive their glory days of beauty? My ex-gf who was 27 and still very sexy HB9 in my book, was caught up on her "sexy days" of age 22....argghhh....it was the window of Ultimate Value ... perhaps now forever shut.

 

[Nutz]

Reasons for this I'm glad to be a man and have a consistent sex drive, and I most certainly hope to age like a fine wine...

Remember: men age like fine wine, women age like milk.

 

[scrouds]

Raising the BS flag. Its all about attention and access to sex. They offer it up because that's their best option. The hamster rationalizes it away as a larger sex drive.

Then somehow they fool the crack researchers at time magazine.

 

[Zarky]

false dichotomy, it's probably both.

Reminds me of when I... I mean my friend, ahem.. grew pot back in college. If the female plants are fertilized by the pollen of nearby male plants at any point, they grow poor seedy weed. Whereas if the male plants are removed, as the female plants get older and older they sprout a tremendous number of buds that are very potent. If they're not harvested at that point, then they begin to wither and die. The extreme flowering is their last attempt at producing more of themselves.

I think of women the same way. Before they reach menopause, nature says, "Ok, this is it, this is this chick's last chance at replication." And that's why you get the cougar syndrome.

That, coupled with a woman's waning desirability, is a double-whammy of sexual display and desire.