You're only as young as the woman you feel, goes the adage. If that were true, then actor Michael Douglas is a 30-year-old, dark-haired, Welsh beauty, and geriatric billionaire Howard Marshall II would be a blonde, buxom, Playboy centrefold, were he still alive.
A few weeks ago, 55-year-old Douglas married his young flame, Catherine Zeta Jones, in a lavish showbiz ceremony in New York. The message is clear. "Look at me," he's saying. "I'm Michael Douglas, and I've pulled a cracker. Don't you envy me?" Well, as a matter of fact, Mr Jammy Bastard Douglas, we do. We're bloody green with envy. Satisfied?
Howard Marshall II probably got more than enough satisfaction out of his pneumatic trophy wife, Anna Nicole Smith. The 90-year-old oil magnate from Texas died - presumably with a smile on his face - just 14 months after wedding his most bounteous acquisition, who was just 26 when she became the crude-oil man's legal plaything, more than 60 years his junior.
Older men and younger women: it's a time-honoured tradition, but the notion stirs mixed emotions among observers. The immediate reaction is often disapproval, followed by nagging envy. In order to suppress that envy, we turn up the distaste gauge even higher. Suddenly, our would-be Michael Douglas becomes an "ageing Lothario" or a "dirty old man", and his girlfriend becomes "jailbait" or "Lolita", even if she's already into her mid-20s.
We all know about the male menopause or, as one friend aptly puts it, the "meno-Porsche". Man turns 50, starts to panic, gets a buzz-cut and a nipple ring, trades in the family estate for a sports car, swaps the suit for a leather jacket, and dumps the wife for one of his students. He's what another friend calls the "last-minute shopper", panic-buying the lifestyle he's always wanted, in an attempt to hide his own built-in obsolescence.
Some years ago, a friend turned up at our local pub with a gorgeous, Catherine Zeta Jones-look-alike in tow. He had recently separated from his wife and was obviously getting back in circulation by getting the circulation racing. He was still only in his late 30s, newly single, no kids, and in possession of all his hair. In other words, he was lookin' good, and his date needed neither a guide dog nor parental supervision. I, however, was indignant, and accused him of flaunting his mid-life crisis and making a fool of himself. Truth is, however, it was me who was having the crisis: I was burning with envy.
Lately, though, I can't complain. In the past year, I've dated girls of 23 and 24 - and I haven't felt the same stabs of disapproval from proper society. It seems the great age-difference taboo is breaking down in modern Irish society, and it's no longer seen as sad or desperate to step out with younger women.
It's not that I go out prowling for younger women - it's just that, as a single fortysomething man working in the media, I tend to meet a lot of women in their 20s and early 30s. When I was a teenager, the prospect of dating a girl two years my junior was horrifying, a cause of shame and embarrassment among my friends. Now, it seems perfectly natural to date someone nearly 20 years my junior, although there's still that nagging feeling that perhaps I should just grow up.
The world is obsessed with youth, sometimes to an unhealthy degree. Sixteen and 17-year-old pop stars such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are sex symbols, and the Internet is awash with "teen porn" websites, I'm told. In our race to turn back the clock, we're in danger of exploiting youth and twisting it to fit our own fantasies. We wanna be Action Man, with our very own Barbie to show off to our friends - but, friends, while it's OK to sing along with The Undertones about getting "teenage kicks", the teen-adult taboo remains firmly in place.
For consenting adults young and old, the world is our oyster, but there are toxic hazards ahead too. Going out with a much younger woman can keep those peacock-feathers fluffed, but it often doesn't make for a great and lasting relationship. That said, Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn's bizarre set-up has so far survived - though you couldn't say the same for the mismatched pairing of Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra.
(I myself have a bit of a gra for a certain bass player in a well-known rock band, but I know it could never work. It's not the fact that she's half my age. The problem is that she's a pop star princess and I'm a music hack peasant - absolutely doomed.)
Perhaps the secret is a good pre-nuptial agreement. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones have drawn up a pre-nup; part of the agreement is that if Douglas cheats on his new wife, he has to cough up $3.4 million. That's a pretty expensive bit on the side. Still, all is looking rosy on the Douglas-Jones horizon: two successful movie actors, a bouncing baby and blanket coverage by a doting media. The only cloud on the horizon is that when Michael hits 70, Catherine will be a strapping, sexy 45year-old, so he'd better keep doing those press-ups.
In the real world, the great age-difference debate still rages, if not so passionately as before. Now the argument is about older women and younger men, fuelled by the high-profile coupling of Madonna and Guy Richie. Here, the social stigma still seems to be holding fast. It may be all right for us middleaged men to cop off with pert young things, but when older women trade their balding, beer-bellied old crock for a younger, more muscular model, our insecurity finds expression in outraged condemnation. We think nothing of destroying our wives' self-esteem by running off with the babysitter, but we go mad if our exes dare to dip into the delights of youth and virility.
As one of the sexiest pop stars on earth, fortysomething Maddy is hardly a sad, old slapper and thirtysomething movie director Richie is certainly no gigolo, so why can't ordinary old girls have a toyboy too? After all, women are supposed to reach their sexual peak long after men have passed theirs, so why waste all that energy on a husband who is too knackered after a hard day down the nightclub dancing to Britney Spears?
In my own experience with younger women, I've discovered that most of the old cliches don't apply. The twentysomething women I know are intelligent, mature, self-assured and independent - age is hardly an issue when you're dealing with a whole person. Of course, I've met lots of dizzy bimbos too - some of them as old as 40. In a complex, fast-moving world, there are more than just age differences to contend with: there are ideological, cultural and moral differences to deal with too.
Just because someone is in the same age group as you doesn't necessarily mean they're on the same planet. Age matters, but it doesn't matter as much as it used to. And if everything else in the relationship adds up, then it hardly matters at all.
manoverboard@irish-times.ie