Tag: cougar

What Not to Expect From Online Dating

~ Midlife Dating Adventures ~ 8 Comments

Don’t Expect Too Much

Don’t expect truth and honesty, simplicity and easy silences, satisfying sex and ready-made intimacy, trust and transparency, straight-forward, no-games relationships. Do these qualities or destinations even exist?

Don’t expect to meet your match immediately. Don’t expect people to be true to their word. Don’t expect someone to show up at the time and place you’ve agreed to meet. Don’t expect someone to share their surname, or even their first name or phone number – for a while at least.

Don’t expect him to be monogamous, or her to be direct. Or vice versa. Don’t expect to be believed, honoured, appreciated or adored. Start with a blank canvass, reduce your expectations and then you won’t be disappointed. Expect the unexpected. Revel in the unknown. Explore your inner adventurer. Embrace opportunity.

I’m not going to lie to you about what this blog is and is not.

If you want to live vicariously through fluffy fantasy or saucy tell-all stories, or you’re searching for a simple, loose-ends-tied, neat and cheesy ending, this blog is not going to satisfy you. There’s no sugar coating here. There are blunt, difficult, confronting subjects butted right up against heartbreak, desire and soaring emotional highs.

And an awful lot of confusion.

I’m not here to dispense advice or paint myself as an expert. I won’t be telling you how to get laid, or how to increase your hit rate on a dating app. I’m clearly not expert at anything other than being authentically myself. Not that long ago, I was just an online dating virgin on a quest to enjoy life and give it my best shot.

I Gave Online Dating a Go for 3 Main Reasons

Firstly, as my colleague pointed out that day in the Asian diner, I wasn’t going to meet anyone new by sitting at home. I have little or no opportunity to meet men in any other way, in more traditional ways, if they even exist these days.

I’m beginning to think that these other avenues are no longer present in society. Research has shown that 61% of adults who have tried online dating say that it’s easier and more efficient than other ways of meeting people. I’m also a single parent in a small-ish city. My workplace or my children’s schools seem unlikely to deliver a person-of-interest. I love the way my life is so full but the downside is finding actual time to ‘date’ or meet men.

Secondly, online dating filled a niche for me and provided a world of opportunity. I need to insert a disclaimer at this point and make it clear that most of my dates were conducted in the day time. This does change the dynamic and also prevents some issues that can come up at night.

Thirdly, I wasn’t looking for Mr Right. Prince Charming was not on my agenda. I wasn’t even sure whether I was looking for anything. One thing was for certain, after a couple of decades in a monogamous marriage, I wasn’t looking to replicate the experience any time soon. I’ve heard that this attitude is not uncommon among ‘cougars’ online. In many ways, we are the antithesis of the stereotype often found in the media of the ‘desperate’ woman over 40!

We are looking for fun, on our terms.

As you read my stories, you might wonder why I haven’t just given it all up – decide to become a hermit who’s best friends with her vibrator. At times, the idea is tempting but I have stuck with it through thick and thin. I have been prepared to take the good with the bad, and to learn from and enjoy each interaction and experience as part of my journey as a human being.

In many ways, I’d led a sheltered life after being married so young. A couple of decades later, I was determined to live as fully and mindfully as my circumstances allowed me.
And I’ve certainly had a collection of mixed experiences, ideas and emotions that, together, offer a contrary narrative to the poplar ideal – the conventional story of Finding Love On The Internet.

‘Love’ by whatever name we give it, whether it’s romantic love, lust, affection, adoration, desire, infatuation and so on, drives so much of human behaviour and interaction. We all want some of it, we all want a taste and some of us want to live and breathe it and never let it go. Some of us want only the one bite, and others want to salivate lasciviously over the potential for sexual gluttony.

Wherever we feel we might sit on the spectrum will usually change as we live our lives. And I want some of it, in the name of life experience if nothing else.

What Happens When You Get A Dating App on a Whim?

~ Midlife Dating Adventures ~ 16 Comments

If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself in a bizarre new world of dickpics, sexting, hook-ups, friends-with-benefits, MILFs and the general collapse of what ‘dating’ used to be like.

And, you’ll probably be labelled a cougar, even if you don’t like younger men!

I came to embrace my ‘cougar’ self as a tongue-in-cheek recognition of the way society pigeonholes women over 35.

Apart from being a romp through cougarland, this blog is unashamedly about reclaiming my midlife sexuality, post-motherhood. The tumultuous ‘dating and mating’ rollercoaster forced me to grow and develop as I figured out what I like, what I don’t like, and ultimately what I want in this second half of my life.

In fact, I now see the word ‘cougar’ as a rebellious take on the outdated, patriarchal notion that women (unlike men) have a use-by date defined by their reproductive abilities, their appearance, their value according to men, and their clickability or appeal on social and mainstream media.

I’d even go as far as declaring that to be a cougar you can be a feisty, forthright and sexually empowered woman of any age – you don’t have to be attracted to younger men. You don’t even have to date men! You can date whoever you like!

At first, the cougar stereotype did not sit easily with me. I was a slightly awkward, intense and naiive online dating virgin. But though I may have been innocent in that regard, I was certain that I would be no young man’s teacher, experimental sex plaything or time filler. If they were crazy enough to want me, they had to take me on my terms – and that included (ideally) having a strong intellectual bond, as well as a certain openness or lack of pretension.

But right back at the start, to use a quaint Aussie phrase, I didn’t know my arse from my elbow.

Picture This – The Defining Moment

Two workmates huddling intently over a smartphone screen in a tiny, steamed-up Asian diner during our lunchbreak. The air filled with the delicious aromas of Laksa and Pad Thai, smoky with quick wok frying for the throng of hungry customers.

“Go on,” she said. “It’s fun – and you’ll never meet anyone sitting at home.”

The dating app in question was called Skout and it changed my life. My friend persuaded me to install it on my phone, and from there, it was an instant whoosh of energy on that exhilarating joyride to somewhere new.

At first flirting came as naturally to me as pedalling the cobwebbed mountain bike in my shed, after a good decade of being ignored.

But within a very short time in this new world – exciting, ego-boosting but also crushing and disturbing – I needed to express what I was experiencing, to try to make sense of it. No longer wide-eyed and youthful, I wasn’t used to being single. I was a dating ingénue.

I needed to relieve myself of the weight of strange experiences crowding my head, and to listen to the voice that said, ‘What the fuck?’ (And later, the smaller voice that said, ‘What the actual fuck?!’)

Writing it all down is natural for me but I also debrief with close friends, trying to figure out what I feel and get some insight into other people’s motivations or behaviour.

As time has gone on, I’ve continued this habit, mainly because I need to express and make sense of my experiences but increasingly, as this blog has grown and reached more people in the same position, because I love to share and read people’s reactions and advice.

As far as the WordPress community goes, blogging about dating, sex and relationships is great fun and an extremely supportive community.

The internet is an unpredictable space where almost anything goes. Social norms might fluctuate; vitriol and prejudice may be openly on display – but I prefer to remember that, underneath, we are all human. How we behave online is a topic I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.

There Are Some Very Rude People Online

The things people say to others online, when they are tucked up on the couch with their phone or sitting safely behind a keyboard and screen half way across the country (or the world,) really are incredible.

I reckon keyboard warriors are the bane of our modern world. And goddess help you if you are a woman on a dating site who says no, sorry you’re not my type. Or that you’re not interested. Or if you refuse to send a pic of your naked boobies, or worse, a pussy pic. FFS people – are you serious? How can you go from ‘Hi’ and polite chit-chat to ‘Will you send me a pic of your boobs?’

I like what sista blogger Fabulous and Forty has to say on this topic, especially what she terms FUCKBOYS. They are probably the most prominent population on dating sites, equally matched by those desperate to find a partner before they lose all of their hair, or get even more unattractive or just plain old. Straight talking yes, but it’s scary out there.

Take a deep breath and prepare for the great variation of humanity if you are venturing online as a woman in the 21st Century. Brace yourself for dick pics, insults, insistent requests for nude photos, and best of all, ghosting.

These are all topics I love to explore, so if you haven’t had a good look in the sidebar of topics and stories I’ve covered, head over there now for some fun!