Should older men (widowers) date younger women?

Question:
A conversation came up between my co-workers (ladies
only) regarding older men dating younger women.
A woman said that men who date younger women have got
some kind of "girlish fetish" and they should be put
in jail. What about a man who is 65 dating a woman who
is 42 year of age. Personally I don't have a problem
with people finding love with someone that might be
younger enough to be his daughter.

What is your opinion on this subject? If you would
like to comment.


Answer:
There is nothing wrong with widowed men dating younger
women. Neither is there anything wrong with men who
have never been married dating younger women.
Sometimes there might be a question about why the
younger women date the older man.

What would be the motive in an older man dating a
younger woman from his standpoint?
1. When older men become widowed they find themselves
unique in a large field. Most people widowed in a good
age are women. Men who are widowed find themselves
with a wide field to search for relationships in. They
are not competing with other men in the same way they
felt they were when young.

2. Women with some age and loneliness are often highly
predatory in seeking out eligible partners. Men who
get past the initial impulse of wanting to replace or
regain the wife that they have lost are put off by
that because they are interested in enjoying
relationships and the things in life that might have
had to be foregone during years of childrearing and so
forth.
3. Younger women often make older men feel younger and
they bring a freshness into relationships that might
have been missing even in their marriage for many
years. Remember that men are most often widowed by
catastrophic and sometimes long term illness in their
partner, they often need those feelings of freshness
to give them a kind of renewal. Dating someone of your
own age can appear to the man as making himself more
vulnerable to the situation of having someone to care
for without the depth of devotion that came to them in
their first marriage over time.

4. You are right in saying that the difference between
ages when speaking of ages like 42 and 65 are not very
significant. The differences between say 19 and 42 can
be greater even though the number of years are the
same. The differences of course have to do with things
like desires. A 19 year old woman might want to have
children where a 42 year old woman wants companionship
and hopefully a lover in the person they are dating
with matrimony in view. I have known several marriages
between older men and younger women that went very
well, so I think it is important to not condemn
something like this out of hand.

5. What is a "girlish fetish?"
It is certainly not something that is looked for in a
42 year old woman. Older men can rapidly tire of too
much "girlishness," the charm begins to wear and
passing fancies pass. But some women will turn to much
younger women who fit into the "girl" category as kind
of a last fling in life. The girls who are willing
partners in this have their own motives in getting
into these relationships. I remember one case in
Florida where a retired soldier, who had lost his wife
after she died from a long term illness, married a 21
year old girl . There arrangement was quite up front.
She would be with him till death they do part and when
he died she inherited all he had. He owned some
property but was no millionaire by any means. She made
him feel younger, renewed him sexually and made the
last of his life pleasant instead of lonely. Some of
his family objected to the arrangement, but she had it
in writing. She had earned her "wages." And, that is
what gets some families up in the air about daddy
either dating or marrying a younger woman. They want
to protect their potential inheritance.

6. Men could not date younger women if younger women
were not willing to date them. Some women see benefits
in dating older men like.
(1) Security
(2) Maturity
(3) Honesty
(4) Self restraint
and other things not mentioned here. If there is not
some unhealthy problems in the relationships what is
the problem?
Mary, the mother of Jesus was about 14 (an age at
which most "girls" today have not enough maturity to
even be allowed to babysit today) and Joseph has been
considered to be somewhere in his thirties or forties
by several writers. The only problem I see in the
relationship was the number of years a woman is likely
to spend as a widow. I was 7 years older than my wife,
and I told her before we married that statistically
she would spend 14 years a widow if she did marry me.
I asked her if she was prepared for that? She said she
was, but that she was not going to give me permission
to go ahead of her.

I don't have a problem with people dating and marrying
with a wide disparity in their ages as long as they
know what they are doing and are honest with one
another about their motives for the relationship. 




Your statement about case:
She told us that her father brought his lady friend to
her house for Christmas, and she gave this woman the
cold shoulder, at which time the woman decided to
leave.

Later on she told me that father called a meeting to
discuss the treatment of his girlfriend, at which time
my co-worker told her father he should date
women's close to his age. My co-worker's father told
her if his girlfriend wasn't welcome, then he would
not come back to any of his kids house. 

I think:
There is no excuse for rudeness. She was not only rude
to the woman, she was rude to her father by extension
and the motives might extend well beyond some concerns
about the woman's age. It is not at all uncommon for
people to resent a parent, particularly a father for
putting another person in the mother's place, and
daughters are worse about this than sons. I think the
woman should take an inventory to discover what he
feelings really are and at the very least she owes her
father an apology because at any age he is due her
honor by command of the Lord. The Bible teaches that
we should honor our parents that our days might be
prolonged. Who knows she might one day be seeking to
feel a gap in her own life that causes overwhelming loneliness.

__________________________________