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Tafadzwa Zimoyo Lifestyle Writer
“I am a 36-year-old single mother looking for a younger, fun-loving guy preferably 28 . . . My husband and I have separated. I prefer someone who is responsible and who is independent, I mean someone who doesn’t stay nana mhamha. Handina kuti ano ndisupporter (someone who doesn’t stay with his parents and this guy should not worry about supporting me . . . ”)
This is one of the myriad Facebook postings about older women who are pouring their hearts out in their quest to be hooked up in relationships with younger men.
While this trend is more prevalent in Western societies like the United States, for instance, where celebrities have broken the age barrier to go to the extent of even tying the knot with partners from a different generation as theirs, the phenomenon is also becoming widespread in Zimbabwe.
In African culture, it is regarded as the norm for men to marry women who are younger than them to ensure that the lineage or family tree is maintained since younger women are naturally still fertile than most women who would have seen it all in life and some would have reached menopause or are at that stage in life when they say to their partners, “now is the time to stop bearing more children”.
Saturday Lifestyle went out on the streets armed with a number of questions regarding this hot issue and the results were as mixed as they were shocking.
Some of the questions asked included:
(a) Would you want to date or be involved in an intimate relationship with a woman who is old enough to be your mother or even more?
(b) Would you want to be seen strolling arm-in-arm with her along Harare’s busiest streets where your colleagues and fellow workmates would all see you in broad daylight?
(c) What attraction would there be in an older woman that makes the young man
(d) Or still, would you take her to your parents’ place and introduce her as your “love”?
These are some of the questions that are burning in the minds of many people as the trend of young men who are dating older women who are far beyond their generation, or rather, it’s the older women who are dating the young men.
But the most bizarre thing to imagine is, “Who between the two approaches the other and what magnetism would have been at play between the ‘love-birds’ to finally decide to cuddle, kiss and take one another to bed, considering the vast age difference?”
Miriam Makone of Southerton, Harare, said some rich women were in the habit of enticing younger men with their financial trappings just to satiate their sexual appetites.
“The majority of them are divorcees or widows who no longer find any satisfying sex from men of their age and therefore decide to go for the young guys who are attractive, virile, energetic and are very experimental when it comes to bedroom issues.
“For instance, it has become fashionable in my area of Southerton such that we even know of such ladies who go out with young men whom they pamper with fashion, money, cars and accommodation for as long as they deliver,” Makone said. Recently, a young South African man shocked people when he came out in the open that he was having a steamy relationship with a woman 14 years his senior.
A similar case is that of a 21-year-old Nigerian guy who tied the knot with his 51-year-old flame.
Back home sometime earlier this year, our sister paper H-Metro published pictures of a 21-year-old who was dating a woman twice his mother’s age and the two were seen partying at a function.
But as these lovebirds go about unashamedly with their love trysts, honeymoons and marriage vows, society itself is reviled by and balks at this phenomenon.
One of such people is a 21-year-old guy from Mabelreign, Harare, called Upenyu Tapera, who advised his fellow youths to shirk this practice which he said was detrimental to their future.
“I think it’s based on money, I think a bigger percentage of the relationship is inclined on the financial benefits on the guy’s side.
“Haungangodanana nechembere, inenge yakanaka zvakadii? Inyaya yedollar, mazuva ano kune US dollar mudhara, mota, holidays, these cougars vane dzimba dzakanaka.
“Even if this woman would be Miss World, it wouldn’t make sense to be seen involved in a relationship with her. But young men are falling because of the power of the dollar which these women flaunt and they also own properties.
“I don’t recommend this kind of relationship, especially in this HIV and Aids era since most of these women don’t like protection and they also exercise too much control over you.
“I think it’s okay for the younger generation to have their future in their own hands and should believe in themselves because if they don’t they won’t go higher in your life. Do away with the dependency syndrome, which leads to comfort zone”, Upenyu said.
Fungai Neni said: “Why is it (the cougar phenomenon) trendy in Hollywood and so unthinkable in my part of the world?
“I suppose that this is because in many African societies, the man is thought of as the protector and defender of the family; the paternalistic god who provides all things. In one of Zimbabwe’s languages, Shona, women have taken to even referring to boyfriends and husbands as “daddy”.
“The connotations that this evokes are very much the ones of childlike deference of a woman to the authority of her man, the father figure in the home. And as Zimbabwe is a largely Christian nation, the Bible plays a significant role in the interpretation of women and men’s relational status — for example, the Bible calls for women to submit to their husbands. I am curious to know if the older woman-younger man dynamic in such an instance would be cause for challenges in submitting to younger male ‘authority . .”
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