Looking at my middle-aged male friends, I see why women crave younger partners

Move over, pashminas and Prada handbags – the ultimate accessory for a woman in 2025 is a toyboy draped over her arm. A recent study published in a US journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, quizzed more than 6000 men and women searching for a long-term partner and discovered that women were just as likely as men to prefer younger candidates.

Society is used to blokes cradle-snatching (just think, somewhere right now, Leonardo DiCaprio’s future lover is being potty-trained). But Paul Eastwick, a professor of psychology at the University of California and one of the study’s authors, concluded: “This preference for youth among women will be shocking to many people.”

Bridget Jones has moved onto a younger man. She’s not alone.

Is it, though? Economic independence means that women don’t need an older man for money or status. Birthdays are now just Mother Nature’s way of telling a woman to take a younger lover. Celebritocracy offers many examples, such as 51-year-old model Heidi Klum, whose husband, Tom Kaulitz, is 35. Actor Priyanka Chopra is 42 and married to Nick Jonas, 32. At 78, Cher has a current paramour, Alexander Edwards, who is 38.

Looking at my middle-aged male friends, it’s easy to see why women crave younger partners. While blokes tend to give in to elasticated sweatpants and orthopaedic footwear, their wives are contorting themselves into human origami for hours a week at yoga and Pilates classes. When a menopausal woman says she wants to get rid of her “unsightly fat”, there’s a good chance she’s referring to her couch potato husband. Love may be blind, boys, but not to bulging bellies and moob droop.

Hollywood has picked up on the trend. There are so many recent films about older women bedding younger blokes that New York Magazine has christened “MILF cinema” as a new genre. To name just a few, there’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Babygirl, I Want Your Sex, The Idea of You, A Family Affair, Between the Temples and, coming soon (pun intended), Laura Dern with Liam Hemsworth in Lonely Planet.

The toyboy fantasy is tempting, but what is the reality? After my divorce, I too dived headfirst into the dating pool of younger males. Yes, the sex was good (his headboard should have come with an airbag) but also nerve-racking. Dating a younger man means constantly reversing out of rooms so he can’t see the backs of your thighs and compare them to the last model he bedded.

Then there’s the pillow talk. A younger bloke may have a strong libido, but can he spell the word? He probably thinks it refers to the lyrics in an opera. Except “opera” isn’t in his vocabulary either, unless it’s next to the word “soap”.

But does it really matter? Yes, a toy boy’s vocabulary may be small, but who cares when he ends every sentence with a proposition? Just because a woman is edging closer to her pension, why does “a bit of rough” have to refer to a lettuce leaf and not a tattooed Adonis so handsome he looks underdressed without a plinth?

Another plus side to younger men is that they’re house-trained. A toy boy advertisement would read: “Will adore you, not bore you, and will do all your chores for you.”

However, be prepared to be judged. Even though men regularly leave their wives for teenagers, an older woman hooking up with a younger man is still deemed scandalous. You’ll have to cope with caustic cracks from friends wondering why you didn’t childproof your love life. You’ll jokingly be told to be sure to buy a booster seat for your car. My advice? If some sanctimonious prig sneers disdainfully “where’s your self-respect?” just reply, “I don’t know. My toy boy’s the one who puts everything away.”

Of course, the downside to dating a younger man is that he may just want a woman he can bank on. A wealthy older woman fits the bill, literally. A girlfriend of mine is dating a personal trainer the same age as her son. She keeps telling me how much they have in common, and I think, “Yes … she has a Byron Bay beach house, and he wants one.”

This is a woman with money to burn, and in this gold-digger she’s met her match. He’s so deeply in love with her stock portfolio their wedding ceremony will have to be held in an accountant’s office. “Do you take this woman to the cleaners, for 50 per cent of her income, from this day forth, for richer and richer? I now pronounce you Man and Mansion.”

But, apart from never marrying a man you’ve just met (you should at least have things in your fridge that have been around longer than he has), what this latest trend proves is that, unless you’re a building, a cheese or a wine, ageism has passed its use-by date. So, ladies, happy shopping at ToyBoysRUs!

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