Keeping up (or not)

Speaking as someone whose own daughter met her partner via an internet dating site, I have never made any secret of my concern at the direction in which the modern world of technology and omnipresent social media has taken human relations and most particularly sexual ones.

I guess it was a sign of the times that when I expressed my misgivings about her lack of regard for her personal safety after learning of how they ‘hooked up’ (which I think is the expression of the moment), my daughter laughed indulgently at me and replied “Oh Dad, do get with it! These days life is so hectic that twentysomethings cannot be bothered with hanging around waiting to meet people and parties and/or in bars or clubs …”. My private reaction to this was amazement that this was how the younger generation now operated mixed with [this as I was on the cusp of reaching my sixtieth birthday] an overwhelming sense of relief that I was the age I was rather than forty years younger and facing a dating world in which anybody could bonk anybody … and probably did.

I suppose another way of looking at it is that – in nearly all areas of life – ‘we get used to what we get used to’ and become wary of venturing outside the comfort zones and the guiding rules as to how to operate that we and our peers of both sexes learned as we were growing up.

In the past fortnight there have been a number of media stories relating to older generation female sexuality.

Emily Watson, 50, is currently starring in Apple Tree Yard, a a new three-part drama thriller on BBC1, which she plays a high-powered scientist in a ‘tired’ marriage who suddenly embarks upon a lust-filled affair with a younger man she meets at the House of Commons who entices her to have sex in a broom cupboard and down the back of various London alleys.

Sundry female newspaper columnists are hailing the piece as a breakthrough and an acknowledgement that ladies over a certain age – hitherto regarded as menopausal or beyond – are not necessarily condemned forever to bake cakes at the WI and look after cats and grandchildren, but can still be objects of sexual attraction and indeed have healthy sex lives.

In the Daily Mail Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng, 48, once rumoured to have harboured a tendresse for Tony Blair, is being both envied and ridiculed for having a toyboy lover, 21 year old male model Bertold Zahoran.

Meanwhile 47 year old Assie warbler Kylie Minogue has recently got engaged to her actor boyfriend Joshua Sasse (28) and – as you might well expect given her decades-long track record – Madonna, now aged 58, is currently walking the red carpets with her latest squeeze, one Aboubakar Soumahoro (25).

The age of the cougar (older female on the prowl for younger men) is being widely covered, not least by female columnists, themselves of a certain age, who seem to split neatly into those who celebrate this phenomenon of supposed female liberation (“You go girl!”) and those who feel that these ageing female celebrities should stop trying to kid themselves, accept that they have reached an advanced stage of life, and (like said columnists?) should be living in quiet decaying solitude dressed in bathrobes, hair curlers and fluffy slippers whilst watching the latest episodes of Eastenders and Corrie on the television in the corner of their living rooms.

Only last week there was a wave of media stories about how women over 50 can now enjoy resurgent and more fulfilling sex lives than ever before without the worry of having children – supported by a queue of fiftysomethings testifying to how wonderful their recent dating experiences have been, whether with older or younger men.

As a sixtysomething male who considered himself glad to have reached this stage of life without too many disasters and catastrophes, I have found this new interest in sexual activity amongst us oldies rather an unedifying development (I hesitated just now to type unwelcome). I mention this because there’s a danger of the natural herding instinct of human beings kicking in and forcing us to do things that we don’t feel comfortable with, just because we don’t want to get tarred with the brush of being ‘past it’.

On the topic of which, this morning I spotted the following article by Dr Petra Boynton, somewhat redressing the balance and/or giving the other side of things, on the website of the – DAILY TELEGRAPH

I think it was Canadian songstress Joni Mitchell in her ditty Big Yellow Taxi who sang:

“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Till it’s gone ..”

Mind you, in her case she was talking about the authorities paving Paradise and putting up a parking lot – and these days some of us feel that Fate has intervened and concreted over any feelings that once, in days of yore, we used to have below the waist!