ALLING in love doesn’t always happen the way women expect. Sometimes Mr. Right arrives late and shows up several years younger. Dating and marriage are tough enough without the extra burden of a generation gap, but an increasing number of Black women and men are finding ways to make it work.
One woman who says she found the love of her life in a younger man is Grammy Award-winning singer Gladys Knight, who knew her husband, William McDowell, for 14 years before they started dating. Whenever she went to La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., she enjoyed talking to McDowell, who was the spa’s director. “I never allowed myself to be more than a good friend,” says Knight, who describes herself as old-fashioned and non-aggressive. “We were each waiting for the other to make the first move.”
When Knight divorced for the third time, McDowell, who was also divorced, said he felt badly that her marriage didn’t work out, but told her that she should have married him in the first place. “You didn’t ask me,” said Knight, who at the time was 56 and assumed McDowell was in his mid 30s. “[Anyway], you don’t want an old woman like me. You can have any young girl you want.”
But 43-year-old McDowell, now co-owner of a real estate company, wouldn’t be turned away. He initiated a long-distance courtship–mostly by phone–for about six months. “It warmed my heart that he would be interested in me,” says Knight, now 58. The two wanted a Christ-centered marriage that was not based on physical intimacy alone, so they waited until their wedding day on April 12, 2001, she says, to share their first kiss.
Dating a man 13 years younger was new for Knight, but she says she now feels that she has found her soul mate. So what’s her advice for other women? “Don’t see with your eyes, but with your heart,” she says. “It’s not about how many world years you live. One day the world will stop looking at age.”
Many people already have stopped looking at age.
Some other famous women who have connected with a man with fewer birthdays include Whitney Houston, 39, whose husband Bobby Brown is 33; Vanessa L. Williams, 39, whose husband Rick Fox is 33; and Terry McMillan, 50, whose husband Jonathan Plummer is 27.
But it’s not only famous women who are finding love in younger men. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 1996 (the most recent statistics on the subject) that 48 percent of women who married for the first time between 1970 and 1989 were the same age or older than their husbands. This is up 10 percent from 1945 to 1964.
New York-based psychologist and author Grace Cornish is part of this increasing population. She also found out that love can come in younger wrappings. Cornish was 37 and happily celibate for three years, she says, when she learned that 29-year-old Richard Livingstone was interested in dating her. She turned him down. “I had never dated a younger guy,” she says. “It took two years before I felt ready to settle down, and then I started dating him.” They dated for six months before getting married.
Cornish advises other women not to just swim in the shallow end when looking for a partner. In her book, You Deserve Healthy Love, Sis! she writes: “Sis, wherever you find happiness, if you’re not hurting anybody, nor hurting yourself, go for it!”
However, if women decide to “go for it,” they are likely to have to deal with the longstanding, preconceived notions that are usually associated with older woman/younger man relationships: He’s after her money; she wants to mold him; he’s looking for a mother-figure. Also many people think older women are seeking sex, but Dr. Earl F. Greer, a clinical psychologist in Columbus, Ohio, says it’s more likely to be the other way around. “A 30-year-old man might choose a 40-woman because he thinks she has some tricks that a younger woman might not know.” On the other hand, Dr. Sylvia A. Hamilton, a Sacramento psychologist, says an active sex life is a consideration for many older women who “may be looking for someone who has more energy in general.”
Like other experts, Cornish encourages women not to allow stereotypes to prevent them from being with the person they’re attracted to. But there are considerations, she says, stressing that if a woman is considering dating a younger man, she should make sure he has good intentions.
Cornish, who is 40 and married to the 32-year-old Livingstone (a chemistry professor), says: “Go for it if you’re looking for your soul mate. So what if his spirit is locked in the body of a younger man!”
Miriam Cummings, who is three years older than her husband, says that the trend of older women marrying younger men developed partly because so many older men are pursuing younger women. “Older women find it difficult to find older men because older men are looking for younger women,” says Cummings, who lives in Decatur, Ga. “Older women who are single and independent, with a sense of freedom, are attractive to younger men, especially if their children are almost out of the house.”
Cummings’ mother introduced her to her future husband, Gerald Cummings, who was 36 when she was 39. She didn’t pursue a relationship with him because he had just ended an eight-year marriage six months earlier and had a 4-year-old son. Cummings herself had been married for 11 years, divorced for eight years and had teenaged children.
After an icy first meeting, Gerald Cummings, a computer network administrator, got Miriam Cummings’ work phone number from her mother and asked her out for coffee. “I thought he was being pushy,” says Cummings, now a 42-year-old marketing and communications consultant.
After dating a couple of months, they both knew they would get married, but they dated a little more than a year before getting married. “He called me every day and pursued me to marriage,” Cummings says with a laugh. “The only time age comes up is when we’re listening to music and I’ll say, `What do you know about that youngster?’”
Cecka Green also says age doesn’t matter in her marriage. She met her future husband, Marvin Green, at Florida A&M University when she was 20 and he was 17. They didn’t date. In fact, she didn’t remember him when they were re-introduced by a mutual friend after she graduated. “I thought he would be too young,” says Green, 35, the vice president of a public relations firm in Tallahassee. “I thought he would be a good friend, but that he wouldn’t understand half the things I had already experienced.”
But consistency paid off, Green says, because Marvin made her “feel special’ with his thoughtfulness and constant attention. Now that they’ve been married for seven years, she says she and her husband, a college golf and intramural sports coach, don’t talk about their age difference. “Eventually the age thing [just] fades away,” she says.
Even though the older woman/younger man pairings work wonderfully for many, not all older women say that being involved with a younger man is the answer. Carolyn Anderson has been divorced for nearly two years and is “well into my 40s” with children who are ages 22 and 24. She won’t consider dating younger men because she is concerned about society’s stereotypes. She doesn’t want people to say she’s robbing the cradle or that she appears to be desperate, although Anderson says she doesn’t feel that way about her girlfriends in similar relationships.
“For nearly the last two years, every guy that asked me out was younger, and I turned them down,” says Anderson, who travels often as president and CEO of a Decatur, Ga.-based international special events company. She says older men don’t ask her out, and she won’t ask them out. “I’m looking for someone who is compatible and well-rounded. My baby-raising days are well over.”
While the older woman/younger man relationship may create unique problems, experts agree that–as in relationships where age isn’t a consideration–the most important factor is compatibility. Denise Hayes, Ph.D., director of counseling and health services, and assistant dean of students at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., says if you are fortunate enough to make a connection with someone who is not your equal in terms of age, it’s okay. Just proceed carefully. “You should pursue the relationship as you would any other relationship, with the same cautions and [desires] for the same qualities,” she says. “But don’t be so limited by society’s reactions.”
Marsha Gilbert
Tags:Dating and Marriage, older women - younger men, women and men
