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Channing Muller had always dated men close to her age — usually a few years older, in fact. But after a horrible breakup in 2019, she decided she needed to try something new.
Her therapist had an idea, suggesting she look at guys outside her usual range.
“He was, like, ‘Go 10 years up and 10 years down and just see,’” Muller, who runs her own communications firm in Chicago, recalled to The Post.
So Muller, then 34, went on the dating app Bumble and changed her age preferences. She was surprised when a 24-year-old almost immediately reached out.
“He asked me out on the date, he planned the date, and before the first date was even over, he was, like, ‘When can I see you again?’” she said. “Then he offered to come and pick me up for the second date.”
She was taken aback. The guy was so clear in his intentions, so mature, so with it — especially compared to her ex. At that moment, she said, “I realized that emotional maturity and numerical age do not go together.”
Muller is now 40 — and almost exclusively dates younger guys. She once even enjoyed a dalliance with a guy 14 years her junior. (They’re now good friends.)
Sure, sometimes these bright-eyed youths have roommates. Sometimes they have squalid bachelor pads. Sometimes they don’t get her pop-culture references, or seem to need a mother more than they need a girlfriend.
But more often than not, they’re less jaded, more open-minded and more fun than their middle-aged counterparts.
“They’re more open to going on dates without making it seem like, ‘I’m interviewing you for marriage,’” Muller said.
And, boy, do they know how to have a good time.
They will take her ice skating, or mini golfing, or to a dueling piano bar, or a raucous karaoke joint.
“That was a very eye-opening experience,” she said with a laugh.
And she hinted that their curiosity and enthusiasm extend into the bedroom, too.
“I will say that they’re eager,” Muller demurred when asked for more details.
“It is highly possible that my brother could read this!” she exclaimed, diplomatically leaving it at that.
Stars — we’re just like them!
Age-gap relationships are nothing new. But it does seem like the “cougar” is having a real moment.
The gossip pages are full of mature, self-assured women out and about with their younger paramours. Pop icon Cher, 79, is dating a 38-year-old music producer. Madonna, 77, has claimed soccer star Akeem Morris, 29, as her latest boy toy. Actress Sienna Miller, 43, is expecting her second child with hunky 29-year-old Oli Green.
On the big screen, Nicole Kidman turned heads in 2024 playing a high-powered CEO who lets herself be dominated by the office intern in “Babygirl.” Even more recently, Gwyneth Paltrow made a comeback in “Marty Supreme” as an aging actress —who has an affair with the much younger Timothee Chalamet.
These portrayals — complex, nuanced and, yes, sexy — are a far cry from the caricatures of predatory cougars from the past, from Gloria Swanson’s grotesque aging diva in “Sunset Boulevard” to Anne Bancroft’s smoldering-but-depressive housewife in “The Graduate.”
“It does help,” said Junie Moon, a love and relationships expert who specializes in coaching women over the age of 50. “When you see Cher and Madonna, or really anything out there that is showing a woman, like, ‘Hey, I have just as much of a right to date whoever I want to date, just like a man,’ the more [the idea of a woman being with a younger man] becomes normalized, and the more we all go, ‘Hey, why not me?’
“I have these vibrant, amazing women I work with in their ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, and they’re fit, they’re strong, and they want to bounce around and have a big life,” Moon added.
“And they sometimes are finding that men are slowing down,” she continued. “So these women are, like, ‘I think I need to go younger.’ And it’s, like, why not?”
Like mother, like daughters
“I come from a long line of cougars.”
That was how Sharlene Durfey introduced herself to a reporter, one day in late December. She’s a vivacious 50-year-old artist and founder of Intimacy Cards, a deck of playing cards designed to encourage deep conversations among friends and strangers.
And, yes, dating young men does run in her family.
Her mother, Susan, is 11 years older than her husband. (They met at a Michael’s craft store in San Jose, California, 20 years ago.) Sharlene’s older sister, Shari, is in a long-term relationship with a man 14 years her junior — and has a 13-year-old daughter with him.
And three years ago, Sharlene married a guy 12 years younger than her.
“I’m sure part of it is because we look younger,” Sharlene told The Post. “But, really, I don’t think age is that important.”
Shari, who also spoke with The Post, agreed. “It’s not about age,” the 57-year-old wellness professional stressed. “It’s about compatibility and having similar values.”
Shari and Sharlene grew up in San Jose, Calif., surrounded by high-spirited women who often attracted boyish suitors.
Their grandmother on their father’s side was actually 11 years older than the girls’ grandfather, her second husband — something he affectionately teased her about. Their mother, meanwhile, loved to go dancing — and often dressed provocatively when she hit the clubs with her friends.
“I remember being, like, ‘Mom, that skirt is way too short!’ or ‘You’re showing too much cleavage,’” Sharlene recalled.
“She had her first facelift when she was, like, 35,” Shari said.
After Susan divorced the girls’ dad — when Shari was a teen, and Sharlene was 9 — she almost exclusively dated younger men, and told her daughters not to tell her boyfriends her real age.
Not that it mattered.
“My mom has got so much energy,” Shari said. “I don’t think an older man could have kept up with her!”
‘Rarely do we feel the gap’
Shari and Sharlene did not intend to follow in their mother’s footsteps. In their early 20s, they both dated older men.
Shari eventually married a man close to her age, but as she reached her late 30s, the union began to unravel.
That’s when she met her current partner, Keith, online.
The two bonded over music — including the divergent bands Modest Mouse and The Beatles — and literature. “He immediately read the first book I suggested to him,” Shari said, something her first husband never did. She flew from California to eastern Pennsylvania to meet him in person.
When Keith (who asked that his last name not be used, for professional reasons) picked her up at Philadelphia International Airport, she actually asked to see his ID.
“He looked way younger than 27,” which was his actual age at the time, she said. “He looked 17!”
Even though she was almost 40, they connected instantly.
“Keith has a lot of the same social references that I have, somehow,” Shari said. “Only rarely do we feel the gap — mainly because I have a lot of friends of varying ages, I think.”
During one of their early meetings, she proposed they do a “soul gaze,” which is when two people look deeply into each other’s eyes without talking. “That’s when I realized I’m supposed to be with this person: right or wrong, good or bad,” Shari said.
Seventeen years later, they live in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where Keith is a teacher, and Shari is a colon therapist. They have a 13-year-old daughter, who keeps asking them when they’re getting married.
“We’re still together, and we’re still doing really well,” Shari said.
Appalled in the family
Funny enough, cougar-sis Sharlene was the only person who initially teased Shari about her age-gap relationship.
At the time, she was living in Los Angeles, and after a seven-year relationship with an older man, she barely dated. But when she turned 40, she also uprooted her life, moving to Berlin and downloading Tinder.
“I used to be kind of conservative — like, I wouldn’t have sex with anyone if I didn’t want them to be my boyfriend,” she said. “And then I come to Berlin, and I’m, like, ‘Oh, this is my slutty era.’”
She decided to experience her early 20s in her early 40s, and so the men she went out with tended to be younger, too.
“I noticed that it did turn them on when they would find out how old I was and want to see me more,” Sharlene said. “I felt very much more powerful sexually.”
A couple of years after her move, she met her current husband, Philip, at a birthday party. “He made me laugh,” Sharlene recalled. “I wanted to see him again.”
Sharlene had assumed that Philip was significantly younger than her; their mutual friends were all in their late 20s and early 30s. But she didn’t know if he knew that she was older.
“I mentioned that we had a big age difference, and he was, like, ‘I don’t care — it doesn’t matter,’” she said. “I was, like, ‘Really? Are you sure?’ But then, when he did find out, he said it was fine.”
‘Afraid of me dying before him’
Although she said they are well-matched, Sharlene has recently begun to feel the gap in their ages more acutely.
For one, his friends have recently started having children, and Sharlene is no longer able to have kids. And then, since his mother died of cancer during COVID, Philip has been extra attentive to Sharlene’s health.
“He is always afraid of me dying before him,” Sharlene said.
And there are, of course, the insecurities that so many women feel to maintain their looks and figures — now ever-more present in the age of GLP-1s and deep-plane facelifts and Botox.
She can’t help but sometimes feel “this fear that my husband’s gonna leave me because I’m too old,” Sharlene admitted.
“Like, right now I’m fine, but in 20 years, when I’m 70, will he be so happy to be next to me, to be my partner? He says yes, of course, but who knows?”
However, if she ever needs a pick-me-up, she could look to her mother.
Susan, at 81, is as energetic and sanguine as ever. Indeed, the floral designer couldn’t see any drawbacks in having a younger romantic partner at all.
As she put it: “Why would a woman want to be with an old man?”
