"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."   -- Lewis Carroll, "The Walrus & the Carpenter" from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

Yeah, this is one of THOSE blogs.  This one I have had in mind for a while but didn't really have the impetus to write it ere now.  Is it likely to make people a little uncomfortable?  Gods, but I hope so.

First, I have a confession to make.  I'm not really a cougar, not zoological sense nor in the street sense.  I've never sought out younger men as romantic/sexual partners, believe it or not.  That probably doesn't seem too convincing, considering my most recent long-term relationships have both been with men significantly younger than I.  That's just the way things fell.  I almost turned each of them away because of the age difference until they each (and in different ways) convinced me that it simply wasn't an obstacle. In truth, the men I've loved I would have loved no matter their age, and the men I didn't love?  Likewise.

That makes me a faux cougar, I suppose.  Even so, I guess I can clarify some points for those who feel it's their place to disapprove of the romantic choices of others and for those who are simply curious about how such an unconventional relationship can work.  Yes, as you've probably already gathered, there IS something of a political message to this.

The notion that who we love should be subject to a checklist a la match.com is absurd.  Neither of the two men I've loved since my divorce has met more than half the criteria on the virtual checklist I started with, and worse yet, any mainstream dating service would have failed to match us up at all SOLELY based on the age criterion, even before looking at any other factor. 

I grant you, the average 44 year old woman and the average 22 year old man have nothing in common.  They likely wouldn't even see each other if they passed in a parking lot, although if they both drank enough, they might take each other home for a night.  This is the part where I must boldface average.  I'm not average, and I don't date average men of any age.  Therein lies the key.

Some of the disapproval comes from people who question my maturity, mistaking my joie de vivre for immaturity or even shallowness.  I find that losing one's ability to laugh is not a sign of maturity, it's a sign of getting old.  To quote the immortal Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend, "Hope I die before I get old."  I've seen humorless old men of 25 with one foot in the grave and the other stuck in the mud, and I've seen laughing young men of 85 who were very much alive and engaged with life.

Some no doubt wonder why, when Mike can have any woman he wants, why did he choose me?  The simplest answer I have, and it came from him, is that I make him happy.  Likewise, he makes me happy.  And after all, what more can you ask of a relationship or a person than that?

How do we make it work?  Well, it's not always a cakewalk, particularly when people lay a lot of pressure on us in various ways.  From the guy at the national convention who said Mike should have proposed to me on the stage at national (eegads, we'd only been dating 2 months!) to my ex boyfriend who found it "ridiculous" that I should be dating someone even younger than he, to friends who interrogate us in rather invasive and sometimes rude terms about the relationship on a regular basis to those who simply don't approve to the girls who shamelessly hit on Mike when I'm with him, like I'm not even there.  I mean, I couldn't POSSIBLY be his girlfriend, could I?

So the question that comes to mind is, and the ultimate point of all this is, why does anyone outside a given relationship care?  Especially enough to hassle the people for having that relationship?  Why the compulsion amongst certain groups of people to condemn any non-traditional relationship, whether for being of mixed races or same gender or large age difference?  (I do notice society is more "forgiving" of older men with younger women, ostensibly because of the whole fertility thing.)

What I told my son when he was little and people were hard on him for marching to a different drummer was this:  When you fit with people's expectations and assumptions, they're comfortable and accepting. But when you shake up those expectations and assumptions, they become very disturbed, wondering what else is going to get yanked out from under them, and sometimes they lash out, especially when your challenge of their assumptions hits close to home.

For Mike to be a little over half my age and for us to be together does no harm to my neighbors' relationships in the comfort of their homes up and down the street.  Thankfully, there's no law against our relationship.  At least not yet, although the way people get so rabid about it, I have no doubt there will be a constitutional amendment to outlaw age-difference relationships any day now.  But you know, even if it weren't legal, we'd still probably be together.  And it would cause exactly as much harm as it does now, which is to say... none.

In 1954, my parents could not marry in their state of residence because my father is white, and my mother is Chinese-American.  They had to find a state that did not have anti-miscegenation laws in order to express their love for each other.  Their being married did not harm the marriages of the racially "pure" couples up and down the street.

Likewise, it doesn't harm Rob and Kai's neighbors for them to be married.  Legally.  It's a little hard to wrap your mouth around "his husband" the first few times, but at the end of the day, their relationship and the legality of it do no harm to anyone.  And just as my parents' marriage didn't destroy the very fabric of space-time, neither does theirs.

It makes no sense to me that people will try everything in their power to stop an honest expression of love when there's so much hate in the world.  But then, these are the same people who get uncomfortable with public displays of affection like kissing or hugging but who have no problem fighting nastily with their spouses in public.  There's something very wrong with that, people.

So after all this, the cougar's growl isn't as narcissistic as perhaps it appeared at first.  Those of you in California, we have a very important vote coming up in November, and that is the vote on Proposition 8.  I'm urging you, as someone in a very happy if non-traditional relationship, to vote no.  Let's keep the government and for that matter the prying eyes and minds of busybody do-gooder gossipmongers out of our private lives and out of our bedrooms.

Look at prop 8 and remember, what they're asking is, Is who someone else loves really any of your business?  Please make your answer NO.