Monica Porter has featured in the Daily Mail for bedding 20 year-olds at the age of 60. She tells us her story and describes how the media has focused on her family status as a grandmother, rather than her age.
Monica Porter
Raven: My Year of Dating Dangerously
Posted on: Thu 03-Apr-14 10:30:44
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Monica Porter on being sixty and single.
When my 13-year relationship with my partner ended at the age of sixty, I was faced with the daunting prospect of living on my own for the first time; I was scared and I panicked. My knee-jerk proposal was to move in with my son and his family. The granny annexe beckoned. With my two boisterous grandsons around – aged two and five – I knew I couldn’t be lonely if I tried. In the evenings I would cook for everyone and we’d all sit around the table and be jolly. Sorted!
But as the weeks and months rolled on, I discovered I could actually do the ‘single thing’. And even enjoy it. I began to appreciate the new independence, the utter do-as-I-please freedom. So then came the question: what would I do with all this liberty? What next?
With two failed long-term relationships behind me – and a few miscellaneous disappointments in love in between - forgive me if I didn’t set out all starry-eyed to find Mr Right. I had lost my faith in such concepts. On the other hand, I was not about to throw in the towel when it came to having a bit of easy-going fun with the opposite sex. Why should I? Sixty isn’t very old anymore. I was fit and healthy, I looked after myself. So, like many others before me, I took to the internet.
I was not about to throw in the towel when it came to having a bit of easy-going fun with the opposite sex. Why should I? Sixty isn't very old anymore.
Online dating is the ultimate Pandora’s box; anything can fly out of it. And anything did. I came across a number of older men, some slightly dilapidated, some just dull. One or two whom I liked but who didn’t reciprocate my feelings. Then, when I found to my amazement that I was attractive to good-looking, engaging, bright young men in their twenties and thirties, I flung myself with gusto into this enticing area of human dynamics. I didn’t regard myself as a so-called cougar. Only as an older woman lucky enough to be living in a place and time when such excitements were possible.
It wasn’t always great, but it was often good, and in a few memorable cases, truly wonderful. Mine was a journey of enlightenment and I don’t regret any of it. That phase of my life is over now, I have moved on. But being a journalist and author, I can recognise a good story when I’m living it, and although older woman/younger man relationships are surprisingly commonplace in our society today (I was staggered to learn just how widespread they are) nobody has ever written a personal memoir on the subject.
I was expecting controversy at my racy revelations but it soon became clear that the most shocking element to everyone - general public and media alike – was that I had grandchildren. In every screaming headline the word ‘grandmother’, ‘grandma’ or ‘granny’ was writ large. So, let me understand. If I were a sixty-year-old woman without grandchildren would my story be less ‘sensational’? Is it not so much my age which raises eyebrows as my family status? Perhaps, despite living in such progressive times, people still view it as unseemly for a grandma to enjoy sex, instead of just padding about in comfy slippers and baking cakes.
In the story that I had to tell, the fact of my having grandchildren was purely incidental. And while I adore them, as indeed I do my children, I don’t see why I should be defined by them. We grandmothers can cherish our families while also experiencing other aspects of life; there is room for it all. So let’s get the message out.
Raven: My Year of Dating Dangerously, by Monica Porter, is out now through Thistle Publishing, £9.99 paperback, £3.99 ebook. You can purchase a copy from Amazon.
