Shortly before I decided to quit dating apps for good, I matched with a guy who was four years younger than me. For context, I was 40 at the time. After a rather tedious to and fro covering what we did for work and whether or not I’m a member of Soho House (I’m not), I was seriously questioning my decision to do this to myself again. And then he hit me with it: “So you’re a cougar, are you?”

Excuse me? Am I a what? To repeat, he was all of four years younger than I am but here he was, talking to me like I was Stifler’s Mom! We could have been at school together! He would have ticked the same 35-40 box that I would on any customer service questionnaire. Was it that he viewed me as being significantly older than he was, or rather that he thought of himself as being much younger than he actually was? Either way, I was pissed and deleted the dating apps right there and then.

I have never liked the “cougar” label. I don’t particularly like Milf (mother I’d like to f**k) either, but we’ll get to that one later. For the uninitiated, a “cougar” is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man.”

Now, if we are being literal, I did fit that description when I reacted so violently to the Tinder Twerp. Obviously, I am planning on living to 100, but I will concede that the average life expectancy in the UK is 81 years old and 40 is midway through that. I am middle-aged and I actually really like being the age I am. I have no problem with being described as “middle aged” at all.

It’s also true that I was potentially interested in a romantic relationship with a “younger man” during that exchange, what with him being a whole four years younger than me. I have dated men younger than me, some of them a whopping five years younger than me, and have no issue with any woman who wants to do likewise. So what is it that I find so objectionable to being called a cougar?

I hate it because it categorises women’s sexuality into young and old, and then others the older woman as something exotic and unusual. It can’t be that women just continue enjoying sex into middle age and beyond, oh no. These women need to........

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