Older than 40, single and looking for some ideas for your next vacation? How about a Cougar Cruise?
Earlier this month, Norwegian Cruise Lines hosted the Third Annual Cougar Cruise, a 3 night Bahamian trip that departed from South Florida. In the Cougar Cruise group were over 120 singles: mostly older women and younger men looking for companionship and well, other things too.
Sigmund Freud would have a field day with this. It's his Oedipal Complex come to life. Younger men desiring to be romantically involved with women old enough to be their mothers. And the older women actively searching for the younger men as well.
It kind of grosses me out. Not the May-December romance. I believe that love knows no age boundaries. And that there's somebody for everybody even if that somebody is old enough to be your parent or young enough to be your child.
And it's also one thing to meet each other, say, at the gym or in the plastic surgeon's office, and start dating. There's not always a logic behind physical attraction.
No, it's the actively searching out the cougar or the cub, as the participants are known, that I find unsettling. But I was never a big fan of online dating either. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.
On the recent Cougar Cruise, each member was given a bracelet with the word "available" on it so that they could gain admittance to special events on board. And I think more importantly, allow the members to recognize who was in the group without loudly purring. Or staring lecherously at your grandmother.
I can just imagine the conversations at the meet and greets. Her, dressed in a low cut top, short skirt and high heels, "I graduated from college in 1983." Him, wearing a barely buttoned dress shirt and multiple gold chains, "Oh, that's the year I was born."
How about the dance party? How do they decide what music to listen to? The soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever or The Fast and the Furious?
Oh well, to each his own. Just hope they're not on the next cruise I go on. It might make me seasick.
Would you ever go on a Cougar Cruise?
Image via Port of San Diego/Flickr
