Madonna has long been a fan of the cougar lifestyle and says younger men’s zest for life makes them better partners.
“People who are older and more determined in their ways are probably not as adventurous as someone who is younger,” the pop superstar told the newspaper. New York Daily News in 2015.
But research suggests that having a toyboy could send women to an earlier grave.
a Research from 2010 found Danish women who were just ten years older than their partners were 20 percent more likely to die prematurely from any cause, compared to women who were partnered with people their own age.
This could be because women experience more stress in a relationship than men, which causes them to age faster, Stacey Litam, an assistant professor at Cleveland State University and Forbes Health Advisor who studies sexual well-being, told DailyMail.com.
Cher, pictured here with her boyfriend, rapper Alexander Edwards. There is an age difference of forty years between the two.
The study found that the opposite was true for men: Danish men with the same gap between their female partners actually lived 11 percent longer than other men married to women of the same age.
But experts told DailyMail.com that aspiring cougars shouldn’t be put off by just one survey.
68-year-old Kris Jenner is currently linked to 43-year-old actor Corey Gamble. That creates an age difference of 25 years between the two.
The study, published by Professor Sven Drefahl, sociologist and demographer from Stockholm University, drew its conclusions by looking at an older dataset on the lifestyles of 1.8 million Danish people over the age of 50 in heterosexual marriages.
Often, having a large data set for a scientific study makes it more robust.
But when it comes to articles like this, which look back at data sets to draw conclusions, a large number of variables can actually be a disadvantage, professor Richard S. Balkin, a sexual health researcher at the University of Mississippi, told me. to DailyMail.com
He explained that if you involve as many people as are included in this study, you can find relationships between variables that are not actually related.
“If you have a lot of data, you can get a significant finding that isn’t actually meaningful,” he explained.
Therefore, he was not convinced by the newspaper that all women who enter into relationships with younger women are doomed to die earlier than other people their age.
Furthermore, these relationships are actually relatively rare in the US, so it may not be accurate to translate the Swedish study to Americans, Stacey Litam, an assistant professor at Cleveland State University and Forbes Health Advisor who studies sexual well-being, told the DailyMail.
Only left eight percent of heterosexuals couples in the US have an age difference of ten years or more, compared to 25 percent of gay men and 15 percent of gay women in relationships.
In roughly nine in ten of these heterosexual couples, the man is older than the woman.
But if you go to the land of the rich and famous, you might think that living a cougar lifestyle is more common.
Take the goddess of pop, Cher, who at 77 is in a relationship with someone 40 years younger than her: 37-year-old rapper Alexander Edwards.
“The reason why I date young men is because men my age or older – well, now they’re all dead – but before they just never were, they were always terrified to approach me,” Cher said as she were talking The Jennifer Hudson Show.
Then there’s mommy manager and reality show Goliath, 68-year-old Kris Jenner, who is currently working with 43-year-old actor Corey Gamble.
There is also the public fascination with the 24-year age difference between 33-year-old Aaron Taylor-Johnson and 57-year-old director Sam Taylor-Johnson. Although the couple has been married since 2012, the internet was ablaze with renewed anger over the couple last year.
Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 33, has been married to his partner, 57-year-old Sam Taylor-Johnson, since 2012. There is a 24 year age difference between them.
Sociologists have long believed that men who marry younger women have longer lifespans.
This idea extends from a hugely popular study published in 1984 it was found that men aged 70 to 79 who married younger women lived longer than others in their age group.
Conversely, several studies have shown that men benefit more from long-term partnerships throughout their lives than women. Survey Center on American Life.
‘Regardless of age, women carry disproportionately more stress and emotional burdens compared to their male partners. This is due to societal and family expectations based on gender roles,” Professor Litam said.
Many theories have emerged to explain why so many men seem to choose younger women.
The prevailing idea has to do with evolution and biology, Professor Litam said.
Older men like to be with younger women because they have more reproductive viability and energy — which would have been an evolutionary advantage, she said. And younger women tend to partner with older men because they tend to have amassed more resources.
In addition, men tend to be less socially developed than women, Professor Balkin said. “If we understand that women biologically develop faster than men, then that also applies to brain development,” he said.
So a younger woman, in terms of maturity, might be a better match for a man whose age is older than her contemporary, he explained.
But as for the toy boys, the jury is still out, Professor Balkin said. ‘There is a social norm. We know it’s there, we don’t know why, and this study doesn’t tell you why, it just acknowledges that it’s there.”