Why Choosing a Hot, Sexy Mate May Make You Miserable.
Learn how to date and what choices to make.
Old men, young women
Only work in the beginning
She’s the past in summer dress
He’s a ride in a red Corvette
She’s a prize, he’s winning
She thinks it is what it isn’t.
And neither one can change what’s missing.
Old men, young women.
“Old Men, Young Women,” by Lori McKenna
Maybe I’m stating the obvious, but who you choose to spend your life with matters more than just about any decision a person could make. In my fantasies, I am the sole purveyor of marriage licenses, and no one can marry without my approval. Why do I want to control people’s choices? Most individuals who have married, left to their own free will, have done a disastrous job. So, what can we do to change that?
It’d be helpful if people put more than a little thought into it. When a person is 22 and focusing on hot guys, hot women, and those who can party down, the odds of the marital deal working out are slim to none. To me, the most important thing you can do is 1. Allow yourself to get past your 20s and get to know yourself and what matters to you. Who you are at 20 or 25 is not remotely who you will be at 35 or 45. 2. Focus on finding someone solid. This means they are healthy mentally and emotionally, free of addictions, do what they say they will do, are who they say they are, and you can count on them in all the different ways that matter. 3. Be able to tell yourself, “Man, this person enhances my life so much that I’d be a fool to let them go.”
Another thing is that although opposites can and do attract, that is not the best way to select a mate. Over the long haul of a life spent together, you’ll want someone who can be your best friend and cherished companion, who is flexible, who goes with the flow, and who is kind and capable of the back-and-forth giving and taking of relationships. If you knew you’d have one car to see you through your entire life, wouldn’t you choose something solid and reliable that could see you through all stages of life, from youth to parenthood to old age?
Also, the more similar a couple is in various power differentials like age, beauty, education, socioeconomic situations and backgrounds, and culture, the more likely they will last long term. Put a couple together with a significant age gap and financial situation from two different cultures, spiritual and/or political beliefs, and you will see relationship experts biting their nails at the quick.
A common mistake people make is using their gut — “I just knew they were the one.” Another is choosing a mate for what you can get out of it, like financial support, ego-boosting, and rescue from whatever bad situation you might be in. I once worked with a client I’ll call Tom, who loved rescuing single mothers from their plight of financial struggles and abusive men. When we met, he had already rescued and divorced one woman and was about to divorce number two.
“I married Teresa,” he said. “She was in a terrible situation, and I came in, paid her bills, put her through nursing school, got her on her feet and feeling confident, and then the kids went off to college. I felt like I didn’t have a job anymore and realized I wasn’t needed as I was before, and the only thing left for me was to move on.”
Tom wasn’t interested in learning how to be happy in a relationship where he wasn’t rescuing and fixing someone. “It’s who I am,” he said.
We’ve all seen successful older men and a younger trophy wife. Although some are true love matches, I believe that if one of you stands to improve your situation through marriage, it’d be a much safer bet if the person benefiting could support themselves well and stand on their own with or without the wealthy older man. Have an education, your own nest egg, a career you can turn to if you want or need. If a wealthy man marries a beautiful woman who is younger and has no ability to support herself, they are entering one of the unhealthiest marital dynamics there is. A fact of life is that dependency in a marriage, of one person on another, ensures that the marriage cannot and will not be on solid footing.
These mismatches are probably not a deep soul-level pairing in their most common form. Instead, each one is getting something from the other. Young, beautiful women have a contagious energy that makes an older man feel more youthful and alive. Sadly, many sexy women understand the power they wield over certain men and consciously use it to get the things they want. All you have to do is be an attractive adult female for 10 minutes to understand how others react to you. Doors open, opportunities arrive, and you realize how much effort men will make to get what you have. It can be intoxicating. Age a little, gain some weight, stop maintaining the seductive image, and you become invisible. That’s why I always tell my sexy, beautiful female friends and clients who are in or contemplating a relationship with a man who will fully support them, “You better have a backup plan in case this gig goes south,” which it often does.
I once worked with an average-looking man who had rescued a single mother from her evening job as a cocktail waitress. She was strikingly beautiful and had the kind of figure that makes some men twist in their seats. Once the new was off their relationship, she began cheating. Everywhere she went, men pursued her, and the validation and raves became her drugs. Certain types of men will tell you whatever you want to hear if you have a Barbie-type figure and flaunt it. Her actions have made him miserable, and no one could guess whether she would ever stop. She certainly wasn’t remorseful. But he was now attached to the children she brought into the marriage; they also had a child of their own. If I’d met him when they were dating, I would have done all I could to warn him of the pitfalls. He made a classic male mistake: lured by intense sexual attraction and feeling needed, he chose an immature mate who used her beauty and sexuality to make her feel better about herself. Was he a tool used by her in the end? I believe he was, but that’s how we learn, right?
There is a world of shallowness and vanity in our culture that I’m unsure how to discuss. All human beings are valuable at their core, of course, but there are those who are so immature and lost that they believe a flashy lifestyle will make them happy. Beauty, money, materialism, ostentatious lifestyles … as the person who writes continually about relationships, I would put a warning label on any person who has developed this as their game plan. The odds of someone who obsesses about the latest designer bag and how many karats are in their ring being a substantial, solid adult you can count on to weather the ups and downs life always brings are close to nil. My experience tells me that if a person presents a seductive and materialistic public image, they will probably be miserable as mates.
Susan was a client who was in her 50s and was as seductive a woman as I have ever met, often arriving in tight stone-washed jeans and spiked high heels. She came to me every time whatever relationship she was in was on the rails. In the five years we worked together, she married and divorced twice. She described each relationship as passionate and highly sexual (of course), the men she chose were jealous and controlling (of course). They would get physical, throw things, and sometimes the police were called. Each time she would wriggle free of one of them, I’d plead with her to be alone, work on herself, and grow up. We also discussed whether her seductive image was attracting the type of mate to her life that she truly desired. She agreed that it probably wasn’t. When I’d think she was turning the corner, she’d meet some man online and they’d be off to the races in another chaotic fireworks show. She decided in the end that therapy wasn’t helping because she couldn’t stop the cycle of seducing men. A couple of years ago, I was scrolling through TikTok and saw a video she had posted dancing to a suggestive tune, rubbing her hands through her hair and licking her lips. It made me sad.
Do men really need a Marriage and Family Therapist like me to tell them to steer clear of super-sexy, materialistic, or seductive women? My advice is the same for women who desire a Chippendale-type man. People with a need for these types of relationships are affected in a way that makes them unable to have healthy relationships with anyone, and often, the types of issues they have are not reparable. Plenty of attractive women and men have a wonderful physical appearance, intelligence, a sense of humor, and other qualities that will make life more enjoyable over the long term. In real life, good looks are temporary anyway. If you don’t believe me, head on over to the nearest retirement and assisted living facility. Former beauty queens blend in with everyone else when they’re 85. Find someone similar to you in background, values, and beliefs and whose company you thoroughly enjoy. And when someone asks you if your new interest is a solid person, be able to say yes.
I’ve seen human behavior enough to know that most of us can do very well in attracting quality mates, no matter how you look or what you have. It takes the ability to be alone and patient in dating … meaning if you see red flags waving or something isn’t right, you go no further. I would do anything if single people would be more discerning in choosing the right mate.
I recently saw a Vogue photo spread of 59-year-old Amazon founder and billionaire Steve Bezos and his fiancée, 53-year-old Lauren Sanchez, taken by famed photographer Annie Leibowitz. It was so blatantly sexual in tone that, for a second, I thought steam was coming from my iPad screen, but it was only a smudge on my contact lens. In the photos, the couple looked like they had just had sex and were about to do it again. I was embarrassed to look on some level. Ever since Bezos’s affair with the Barbie-doll-figured Sanchez was whispered about, then revealed in 2018, I said one thing to myself, “This is a man who looks very, very horny,” and that’s a professional opinion.
Ever since Bezos entered public awareness, he was a geeky guy from Seattle who had started Amazon in 1996 with his author wife, MacKenzie. In recent years, his appearance began to change to a more cutting-edge look from head to toe. He went from nerd to metrosexual. Not only was he dressing more fashionably, but he began to work out and the changes in his physique became obvious. In days gone by, I would have thought nothing about this. Still, after having worked with couples and seeing others who have suddenly made drastic physical changes and patterns of behavior, I smelled a middle-aged Renaissance. Gone was the business nerd, and in his place was a more sexually appealing man. Why would any man change his appearance in this way at such a life stage?
One of my graduate school professors told me that men work out to have sex. Okay, I thought. It appeared to me, as an outsider looking in, that Bezos had achieved everything he could ever desire, and once you have everything, you look around to see what else there is. Some people seek self-actualization, become spiritual, and explore the meaning of life. But in Bezos’s case, it appears the man needed passion, seduction, and romantic love to fill whatever voids remained. There is no doubt that the Barbie-shaped Sanchez has created a seductive image, posing in skimpy swimsuits and outfits, all meant to tantalize the male brain. Bezos’s ego must have needed to have one of the hottest girls he could find to spend his free time with, why? Because he can.
In the case of middle-class Americans, I would bet most of what I have against a pairing like Sanchez and Bezos’s relationship lasting the long term. The only way he could ever know if Sanchez is in it for the right reasons is to lose everything he has and be forced to move to a middle-class house in Miami’s middle-class Bay Harbor Islands and drive a Camry. If they called me right now, I would at least want to know what they have going for them besides sex and passion. But this relationship may last because when you’re as rich as Bezos is, you can literally give your woman whatever she wants without resentment, and what woman would not love that? She couldn’t upgrade to a more successful man if she wanted to, and he is attractive and interesting, which I can’t say about all later-in-life billionaire pairings. So long as she gives Bezos what he values, which is apparently a voluptuous brunette woman with an hourglass figure, whom other men will envy, and plenty of sex, it could be a go. Even if she is married to the man for only one day, she can’t lose. She will be richer than almost anyone, whether it works or not, so there is very little for her to lose except for a few ugly family dynamics that divorce always brings.
Except for the unpleasant affair they had under the nose of Bezos’s wife, MacKenzie, which is never okay, and the untidy fact that they both have children and are now creating a stepfamily, which I caution against, money may be enough to make them all happy enough to make it work and stay for the long haul. Or they may learn the hard way that beauty, sex, and skimpy outfits just don’t cut it after the sizzle turns into a dribble.
In the end, Dr. Phil used to say that when we look for mates, we can only expect to find about 80 percent of what we were hoping to find — you just need to ensure that the 20 percent they don’t have are not deal killers. I agree. Personal experience tells me that many people don’t put enough thought into who they choose to be their life partner, and I wish that wasn’t so.
Becky Whetstone, Ph.D., is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Arkansas and Texas* and is known as America’s Marriage Crisis Manager®. She is a former features writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and has worked with thousands of couples to save their marriages. She can work with you, too, as a life coach. She is also co-host of the Call Your Mother Relationship Show on YouTube and has a private practice in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a life coach via Zoom. To contact her, check out www.DoctorBecky.com and www.MarriageCrisisManager.com. Don’t forget to follow her on Medium so you don’t miss a thing!
For licensure verification, find Becky Whetstone Cheairs.
