Some guys love dating cougars. Older women have cool houses, expensive cars and lots of money — but is it really worth it? Gardy Chacha finds out
Life is a hassle! And for many young men, you can either choose to go dirty and survive, or suffer the misfortune of living a life of poverty but maintain the good image.
When the late Wambui Otieno and a then nondescript stone mason Kamau Mbugua married and subsequently confessed to have had something going on between them, many were astonished.
It was hard to fathom why a seemingly young man would leave his young, nubile girlfriend to be with a 68-year-old woman, rich to the skin and endowed with life’s niceties. But it’s a jungle out there; every breath you take as a young man not only keeps you alive but also gives you more time to worry about how you will survive —because survival is for the fittest and if you are not fit, you might as well be fitted.
Kevin Njoroge who graduated from a local university last year is conversant with living a life bankrolled by a cougar. He had the choice of struggling to make it with the little finances channelled to him by his folks but he didn’t want to live the hardship when most of his campus buddies seemed to be getting by just fine. In the campus cafeteria, he met and began dating an older woman undertaking her Master programme. To him, it was something he had to do though he was certain that neither his friends nor parents would approve of it if they got to know.
We are in a new era where older women are dating younger men. You need to look no further than our society to see the trend. In fact, dating sites where you can meet sugar mummies are proliferating the Web. Blogs and many other social networking sites are teeming with cougar life.
Kimani Githongo, a counselling psychologist, explains that the most fundamental and basic layers of the Maslow pyramid contain deficiency needs which are: esteem, friendship, love, security, and physical needs like breathing, water, food and sex.
Sugar mummies, therefore, desire to have satisfaction of a basic need that is sexual in nature. In the process, they also satisfy an ego — the sheer feel of being in control over a man.
Older woman
Kevin says that being in a relationship with an older woman is not as tragic as people may think because apart from being older, the woman still has ‘womanly’ features which, according to him, are still desirable. At the onset of their relationship, he would get creepy feelings when they met in public but that waned with time and things eventually settled. Their relationship was mutual — he got comfort while the woman got companionship and love.
According to Githongo, greed and lust on the part of young people who are lazy, lack motivation and are clueless on how to win the love of women their age, or younger, is a fundamental drive in initiating sugar mummy relationships.
