Older Women Love Younger Men for Sex and More

March 2 -- The so-called "Mrs. Robinson phenomenon" — older women dating younger men — has made its way out of Hollywood and into the "real world," according to a recent survey.

Dr. Jennifer Berman, a urologist whose husband is four years her junior, says ladies aren't ruling younger men out anymore for various reasons.

"Women are definitely feeling more empowered, younger, more vital and want to live that through all aspects of their life. Not only the workplace but the bedroom," said Dr. Berman, co-director for the female sexual medicine center at UCLA.

Dr. Jennifer Berman's sister, Laura Berman, a sex therapist and director of the Berman Center at Northwestern University in Chicago, says that while sex is a part of the reason women choose younger men, it's not the whole reason.

"She's emotionally secure. She doesn't need a man to give her status. She wants to have fun and romance," Laura Berman said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.

The AARP survey, published in the organization's October 2003 magazine issue, found that, among those polled, 34 percent of women ages 40 to 69 have dated younger men

Bye Bye Boundaries

Dr. Jennifer Berman says she believes the increase in the number of women dating younger men has more to do with the destruction of old-fashioned boundaries.

"Compatibility doesn't have anything do with age," Dr. Jennifer Berman said. "It all depends on the couple, and I think now there is not a barrier or a taboo for a woman to be dating a younger man," she said.

Obviously it's not taboo in Hollywood, where Cameron Diaz, 30, and Justin Timberlake, 22, are now catching up to Demi Moore, 40, and Aston Kutcher, 25, as the most celebrated gender-reversed May-December relationship out there.

But Dr. Jennifer Berman says people shouldn't get too caught up with what's going on in Hollywood and whether or not those relationships last.