The Truth About Toy Boys And Cougars.

A 28-year-old employee of mine introduced me to the joys of younger men on a work trip last summer.

A 28-year-old employee of mine introduced me to the joys of younger men on a work trip last summer. At 42, I was fresh out of a 10-year marriage and most likely to spend my evenings at home reading the BBC Good Food magazine. It had never even crossed my mind that anyone, let alone a younger man, might find me attractive. When I split up with my husband, one of his parting shots was that nobody would ever find me attractive again, and that he was the only chance I had left. At the time, I believed him – so much so that even before I succumbed to this new fling, I had to get the fling to repeat himself four times before I believed that he wanted to go to bed with me. But, as it turns out, there are plenty of young men out there who are keen to date older women. Now, I date them exclusively. And I’m not alone. There are 100,000 members of www.Cougarmatching.com, an internet dating service created specifically to introduce younger men to older women. So far, I have been out with several men in their twenties, including a nuclear physicist who was quite geeky, and one who lied about his age and turned out to be just 20. At the moment, I’m seeing a 26-year-old. I receive about 10 e-mails a day – far more than your average dating website – and all of them are totally over the top. And when you have come out of a marriage to a man who didn’t pay you any compliments, it is pretty strong stuff. I met my nemesis in the form of a 23-year-old estate agent called Charlie. He was gorgeous, and his attention was hugely flattering. He would text obsessively and constantly send e-mails. So when a few months into the relationship he started cancelling at the last minute and going Awol for several days at a time, I suspected that I might not be the only woman he was dating. I set up a fake profile – not to entrap him, but just to see – and, sure enough, after a mere two days he made an approach. Then I noticed a post from another woman on the website’s forum, saying that she’d had a bad experience with one of the boys, and some of the details sounded familiar. I contacted her and discovered that, yes, it was Charlie. She had even confronted him, and he had gone demented, saying that lots of people were in touch with other people on the website. Which is fine, but he hadn’t been honest about it. I remember he had even said to me at dinner once: “Why would I need to be on that website now I’ve met you?” In the end, I didn’t confront him myself, I just broke off contact. I simply sent him an e-mail saying he had been found out and then never heard from him again. I’m not naive, I do expect some fast and loose behaviour: at 23, you don’t really know what you want, and I’m sure I did the same at his age.