The Lure of Eros and Why Women in Midlife Fall for Younger Men
- Brainz Magazine
- Jun 3
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 4
Tanishka is an author and speaker who is passionate about helping people navigate their life transitions. She leads retreats for women in midlife. Beloved as ‘The Moon Woman’ for her blog followed by half a million people, she helps people understand how the cycles of nature initiate us to mature, ancient wisdom that’s essential for social sustainability. Her work has been translated into multiple languages.
Have you ever found yourself judging an older man with a younger woman on his arm, or an older woman or gay man with their ‘toy boy’? Whether we realise it or not, we’ve been culturally groomed to accept the former. Think back to the ‘programming’ of free-to-air television, featuring middle-aged male game show hosts and news anchormen cast alongside their younger female co-hosts, while the reverse was never represented.
That was until the release of the controversial film The Graduate, starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in 1967, which portrayed Mrs Robinson as a calculating older woman who preys upon an innocent young man to satiate her ego desires rather than confront the reality of her unfulfilling marriage. In 2001, further negative associations were applied to older women who dated younger men when the book Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men by Valerie Gibson was published.
This is in direct contrast to the social status afforded older men who win the attention of younger women. Men are described as ‘silver foxes,’ a flattering term implying that they outwitted the object of their affection. Cultural bias aside, if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us have judged those who fit the stereotype of a midlife crisis, ‘trading in the old model’ of a same-age partner for the ‘new and improved’ version, as part of the midlife makeover that sees many update their hairstyle, wardrobe, or car for something that feels more hip.
My experience of Eros in midlife
As someone now in midlife, I have been humbled to concede upon reflection that I, too, bought a new wardrobe in my 40s that my mother would’ve once described as ‘mutton dressed up as lamb.’ I also experienced a moment on a dance floor where I felt so seen by a much younger man, the intense attraction led me to throw caution to the wind and declare my feelings via a private message. He declined to reciprocate, much to my embarrassment.
What’s been more surprising, as a menopausal woman now in my mid-50s, is the amount of male attention I’m currently receiving, especially from younger men. I would question whether I’m delusional had I not experienced numerous requests for my contact information or declarations of desire.
In the instance when I consented, I regretted my decision directly afterwards, but instead of feeling remorse, I felt grateful for the lesson and the memoir postcard it bestowed on my life’s journey.
This was when I momentarily took a young Moroccan lover, 20 years my junior. I can honestly say that it was not his muscular physique and swarthy looks that drew me in, but that he was conversant in the love arts. He spoke three languages and had completed a degree in French literature. Unlike other men I’d encountered, he confidently initiated an impressive mating dance, serenading me at sunset atop an ocean cliff with flamenco guitar. He then cooked me a tagine, alternating between tenderising me and the lamb by caressing my erogenous zones, before slow dancing to Latin rhythms and serving me a lovely meal. Suffice it to say, once a pot of water is simmering, bringing it to the boil is a fait accompli. However, despite his artful wooing, his lack of conscious awareness and maturity flagged the need to set a boundary, lest I pay for it with a dysregulated nervous system.
Observing midlife women with Eros
My experience is not isolated. Many of my midlife female friends are dating significantly younger men. My Instagram feed tells me so too, Madonna and Cher! But what I observe are women whose happiness declines the longer they try to capture and keep the devotion of a younger man. One friend didn’t even offer me a cup of tea to welcome me when I went to stay with her recently, as she was so preoccupied with torment after her young buck brought a love interest home, despite him ending their sexual relationship months ago.
Another confided in me that she was being emotionally manipulated to bankroll her 20-something lover’s lifestyle. While another teared up in a restaurant, telling me her young lover was shagging a 60-plus woman on the night of her birthday, while texting to say he was just dropping her home and was on his way.
Guinevere and Lancelot: A cautionary tale
Ever since Arthurian times, we’ve been sold the premise that true love is unrequited, as personified in the tale of the knight, Lancelot and his Queen, Guinivere. The queen, who enjoys the steadfast love of King Arthur, is brought undone by her attraction to the young knight. A tryst that causes a scandal and injures her reputation. Similarly, the latest Bridget Jones sequel, It’s All About the Boy, shows Bridget succumbing to the amorous overtures of a beautiful young man, only to suffer the consequences of his unintegrated psyche, when he can’t reconcile his desire and fear, and abandons her.
This is a stark contrast to the messaging in the film The Idea of You, starring Anne Hathaway, released in 2024, which depicts a middle-aged woman falling for a 20-something man, the lead singer of a boy band. In this instance, the ill-fated lovers are sabotaged by the public vilification that ensues due to the breaking of the societal taboo of an older woman being seen with a younger man. This film portrays the young male protagonist with emotional intelligence and maturity well beyond his years. With many young men now embracing personal growth and healing more readily than their older counterparts, perhaps there are exceptions to the rule!
Since women in midlife are more inclined to scrutinise maturity levels in potential partners as a dealbreaker, men, regardless of their age, would do well to invest in their relationship with themselves if they want to appeal to women who possess the qualities for enduring love, rather than those who are fixated on perfecting their appearance but lack relationship skills.
Unpacking the lure
To avoid getting hooked on the arrows of Eros in midlife, we need to understand the underlying dynamic of the tragedy of the ill-fated love affair. Before Guinevere and Lancelot, we had the Greek tragedies to warn us of the power of our choices in love. Such as the beautiful boy, Narcissus, who was so self-absorbed, he lacked the capacity to love…to see, hear and understand others, and respond accordingly, let alone feel empathy.
The archetype of the unavailable young man is reiterated in the myth of Eros and Psyche (meaning soul). Eros dazzles Psyche with his charisma under the cloak of night, but in the light of day, he is aloof and inconsistent. Such hot-and-cold behaviour flags the immaturity of one who falls victim to their inner conflict, as they haven’t integrated their conscious desires and unconscious fears, the inner work that is essential to heal the fear of commitment.
These medicine stories help us heal our psyche by enabling us to see life through an archetypal lens. So, rather than get played by a player, we possess the ability to cast the players who present on our world stage according to the comedy or tragedy they offer us, to avoid getting caught up in ‘karma drama.’
Narcissism: A universal trait
Such as the character of Narcissus. Today, the term ‘narcissist’ has become a fashionable slur by serial daters who trauma bond by slagging their ex to avoid taking responsibility for their own unconscious choices. The truth is, we all embody the traits of Narcissus until we integrate our light and shadow, our conscious and unconscious behaviour. The younger we are, the greater the chance our psyche is unintegrated, so our behaviour is akin to the ‘push-me-pull-you’ from Doctor Doolittle, who expends equal energy in opposite directions, simultaneously seeking to meet their needs while also sabotaging them. The older we are, the greater the chance we’re self-aware and take responsibility for our saboteur. Not that age is necessarily an indicator of maturity! Narcissism is rife in our modern society ever since Rome outlawed the mystic rites that once initiated the collective with re-enactments of these cautionary tales that matured the collective psyche and ensured the capacity to love.
Regardless of age, those proclaiming the loudest, “My ex is a narcissist!” like a sensational tabloid headline or pop art Warhol print, are often deluding themselves, scapegoating their disowned shadow on others to deflect self-reflection. These are the love addicts whose saboteur compulsively seeks validation from potential love interests to bolster their self-image by offering proof they are lovable and beautiful. Love addicts fall victim to their unconscious behaviour. They attract mirrors of their own unconscious behaviour - those who are seeking to feed their own need for validation…so once they’ve secured affection, they move on to their next conquest.
So why is the lure of Eros so prominent in midlife?
Midlife is when we revisit our past to distil lessons learned. For women, this is when we revisit the wounds of our ‘inner maiden,’ as an opportunity to champion our younger self and set her free from the disempowerment of our past. Essentially, midlife is a window for revision, a time to review, reflect, and reimagine what’s possible before moving forward with the second half of our lives. First, we need to ‘get our house in order.’ We do that by opening Pandora’s box and integrating the aspects that are not healed, such as shadow Aphrodite.
In Greek myth, Aphrodite is the mother of Eros. So if we are not mothering ourselves sufficiently, we fall for ‘Prince Charming,’ the patriarchal pin-up boy sold to our inner maiden as the ideal mate, someone who’s all talk and potential. Flattered by his attention, we feel young at heart, defying Father Time like a rebellious schoolgirl, only to find in the light of day that our bedfellow is our son, someone who unconsciously expects us to orbit around him, like Venus orbiting the sun. This is a modern tragedy that echoes the archetypal myth of the young hero Oedipus, who inadvertently marries his mother.
That we attract such a scenario as we throw off our maternal responsibilities in midlife makes sense, as this is, for many, when our children individuate and leave the nest, so we have freedom to make new choices, such as birthing our creative gifts and exploring our unfulfilled potential.
But without initiation to navigate the complexities of midlife, many women in our patriarchal culture instead choose to expend their energy nurturing the needs of a younger lover in exchange for short-term gratification. Encountering Eros is part of our midlife rite of passage, a test to navigate as a revision of self-worth.
Midlife is also when women experience a kundalini awakening, a surge of life force energy that detoxes both the physical and subtle layers of our body (like a fever) via hot flushes that promote longevity naturally. It is the ignition of this inner light that attracts Eros to us, like a moth to a flame. After all, Eros is the root of ‘erotic love.’ But this precious energy is intended to serve as a crucible for our alchemical transformation, not expended for transactional sex by our unconscious ‘inner maiden.’
Perhaps the most covert reason so many women in midlife fall for younger men is the programming of our subconscious mind over the past two millennia of patriarchy. Consider the dominant image we’ve been fed in the Western world that depicts male-female relations. It’s not the archetypal ‘holy couple’ of God and Goddess that was venerated in the ancient world, a pairing whose coupling nourished the land as they enacted the sacred marriage known as the Hieros Gamos. What replaced it was a patriarchal distortion of the holy couple, the persistent iconography of Madonna and son as the saviour of the world, an image perpetuated by the cult of Rome, Christianity, where the father figure was removed from the family unit as a distant sky god, leaving the woman alone as a sexless figure whose value was found in her role as the nurturer of her son.
So, how do we transcend this imprint?
Reinstate the mystic initiations that help us navigate our life transitions so we possess the wisdom necessary to embody the archetypal holy couple who, together, save the world by first saving themselves.
Read more from Tanishka The Moon Woman
Tanishka The Moon Woman, Author, Speaker, Retreat Leader
Tanishka is a world-renowned author, speaker, and facilitator who’s passionate about supporting people to transform times of chaos and crisis into empowering turning points. Beloved as ‘The Moon Woman’ for her blog followed by half a million people, she helps people understand how the cycles of nature initiate us to mature, ancient wisdom that’s essential for social sustainability. Her work has been translated into multiple languages.
