Don't Panic Cougars | You Die Earlier Married to Older Guys, Too

Courtney Cox of “Cougartown”

If you’re an older woman dating or married to a younger man, don’t jump out the window just yet over the latest mortality news out of the Max Planck Institute. The NY Post picked up the Daily Mail UK headline My toyboy hubby may shorten my life - but he makes this Cougar purr!

One quick-thinking New Yorker used it in a CL ad last night: “Sorry, Cougars: Boy Toys Hazardous to Your Health- NYPost.com” Intentionally or not, he quickly made the search engines, and we fell for it.

Smart Guy gets an A+ for clever, quick thinking in finding the right woman:

I’ve finally realized that women are right. There is no justice in the world. The article below comes from today’s New York Post. In short, it says that research in Germany has concluded that women who take younger lovers are more likely to die sooner. However, men who take younger lovers are more likely to live longer.

To all the women posters here who might be looking for boy toys, I say take me instead. I’m not a boy toy by any stretch of the imagination, so you’ll stay healthier and live longer - probably a lot healthier and longer given my age ( 58 ). I’m willing to do this even though the study says I am likely to die sooner than if I opted for a much younger partner. I’ll risk my life for your pleasure. That’s a sacrifice no one else will make for you!!!

After spending a sleepless night about just how to organize her life going forward, Anne felt better reading Kiri Blakeley’s column in Forbes about the other half of the research conclusion:

But what the press failed (or deliberately decided) not to scream in lurid prose (or even acknowledge in many cases) is the fact that the study also concludes that women marrying older men die earlier too. In fact, the 20% increase in mortality that a woman marrying a man seven-to-nine years younger suffers (at least in Denmark, where the 2 million couples in the study lived) is almost exactly the same as the mortality rate of women who marry men 7-to-17 years their senior. But, oddly, I didn’t see one headline along the lines of, “Marrying a sugar daddy kills you as fast as marrying a boy toy, so might as well go for the hot stud!”

Reality is — and this is not the first time morality table reviews have confirmed this fact — marriage is better for male mortality rates than female’s. Women take care of men; the reverse is much less true.

So rather than spending endless hours speculating on why Elena Kagan hasn’t married — perhaps she’s just one very smart woman. This fact better qualifies her to be on the Supreme Court, where level-headed, clear-thinking is required.

Note: Anne isn’t at all against marriage, but we do want to get out the facts to the world’s women. The Daily Mail piece is a bummer, without the other half of the story, thanks to Forbes.