YOU’RE ALL JUST JEALOUS PRUDES!
She caused uproar when she dared to reveal in the MoS how – aged 60 – she raced through a string of lovers in their 20s. Her incendiary response to her critics? THEY should be so lucky . . .
MONICA Porter has barely had time to think. In the week since the grandmother’s sensational memoir about internet dating was featured in The Mail on Sunday, she has been subjected to a relentless barrage of attention from all over the world.
Her unabashed account of having sex with 15 men, most in their 20s and 30s, in a year of dating – using the nom d’amour Raven – has attracted tens of thousands of internet hits and has been front page news as far afield as Turkey and Malaysia. She has suffered a deluge of disapproval from critics who branded her exploits ‘distasteful’, ‘sad’ and ‘cheap and demeaning’.
Others – particularly men – have admired her candour. Indeed, thousands of men from 18 to 80 have emailed asking to meet her, and it is a torrent that shows no sign of abating. She continues to be bombarded with requests for television and radio appearances even before her book Raven: My Year Of Dating Dangerously is published.
But those hoping Monica, who has just turned 61, might feel chastened by the whirlwind her racy revelations have prompted are in for a disappointment.
Today, she is not only unrepentant but more outspoken than ever, and pulls no punches in her assessment of her ‘jealous’ detractors.
‘I care about the views of people I respect, but I have no respect for people who are prudish, narrowminded, jealous and nasty,’ she says. ‘A lot of the most vicious, unkind remarks have come from other
‘I’ve simply had the temerity to enjoy myself’
women, and I can only assume they are borne out of jealousy.
‘They should be so lucky as to get attention from some of the hot young men I’ve met. All I’ve done is have the temerity to know how to enjoy myself in the sack at the age of 61, instead of settling down in front of Downton Abbey with a cup of cocoa.
‘Maybe if they were getting some action themselves they wouldn’t seem so bitter and vitriolic.’
Monica, a divorced writer from North London with two sons, Adam, 36, and Nick, 30, decided to embark on her hotly debated adventures after splitting from her long-term partner shortly before her 60th birthday. She joined an online dating site, chose the username Raven and gave her age as 54.
She found, to her surprise, a host of twenty- and thirtysomething men willing to provide her with ‘uncomplicated enjoyment’, which she has chronicled in her book. She believes that in admitting to her erotic encounters with much younger men, she has highlighted a practice which may be taboo, but is far more common than may be assumed.
‘I know that there are a lot of women my age having sex with younger men. It’s hidden, but it’s widespread,’ she says. ‘People don’t talk about it, but so many younger guys I met told me they and their friends often have relationships with older women. They’re interested in what we have to offer.’
She says she realised her confessions would be controversial but admits she has been taken aback by the overwhelming worldwide reaction. ‘When I saw one particularly inane comment accusing me of being a paedophile, I had to laugh.
‘People spew out such rubbish on the internet,’ she says ‘You’d think that I’d been drowning kittens instead of just enjoying myself with other consenting adults. Nobody got hurt. Nobody broke the law.
‘Is this really something worth getting so exercised about in this day and age?
‘The response from women has been very different to the response from men, which is interesting. I have had encouragement from women, but a lot of the remarks have been very unsisterly. When you do something a little bit different from the norm, people seem to feel threatened.’
Men, on the other hand, have been much kinder. One Spanish man told her ‘What you did is a celebration of life’, which, she says, ‘perfectly expresses how I feel’. Monica explains: ‘I came to a juncture in my life where I could have said “It’s the Women’s Institute for me from now on”, or I could see what else there was out there for me.
‘I’m not going to apologise for not giving up. I was amazed and delighted to find I could still be of interest to a range of very nice young men.’
She has been painted as a ‘cougar’, a term she rejects because of its predatory overtones. Initially, she says, she did not set out to snare younger men, but found the fifty-and sixtysomething men on dating sites disappointing.
‘I went on dates with men my age, but they would often bore me to death talking about their baggage: their ex-wife who cheated on them; the children they no longer talk to,’ she says. Monica had first registered on a dating site for older peo- ple, giving her age correctly as 60, and hoping to meet someone special. But she clearly didn’t appeal to the older men on the site – nor they to her – as just a few approached her.
It was only after she dropped her age, on the advice of a friend, and
‘A lot of women have been very unsisterly’
registered on a more mainstream site, that the floodgates opened to reveal hordes of eager young men.
‘I discovered there were young men who didn’t have these issues who were interested in me. They were straightforward, fun, engag- ing and they had better bodies – no beer bellies, bald heads and bad teeth. I would have been an idiot not to meet them.’
She says her efforts to look young for her age made her more appealing. Indeed, in the flesh she could pass for at least a decade younger. ‘You have to look after yourself,’ she says. ‘You can’t slob out in front of the telly with a pack of biscuits and expect a hot 25-year-old guy to be interested. I go swimming five times a week and try to look my best.’
However, according to Monica, her most powerful weapon was not her appearance, but her conversational skills. ‘Often they would tell me they found it hard to speak to girls their own age, because they found them silly or clingy.
‘With me they found someone
who’s had a lot of interesting experiences; someone with something to say. They told me they appreciated that. And I wasn’t demanding anything from them. I’m an independent woman who doesn’t need anybody to look after her.’
Monica says that since last Sunday, she has heard from ‘nine or ten’ of the young men she encountered.
‘Mostly they wanted to know I was keeping them anonymous, which I assured them I was,’ she says.
‘But a few of them said the book sounded great and promised to read it. One said, “Who do you think is going to play me in the movie?”’ Amid the vitriol, she says she has received thousands of messages of support from strangers. Most praised her courage and honesty and, inevitably, many have been from twentysomething men asking her out – offers she says she will not be taking up. Her family has also been supportive. ‘I told Nick and Adam about the book as I wrote it,’ she says. ‘There’s no way I would have written anything like this without making sure they would be OK
with it. I didn’t go into details, but they knew I was dating and having some unconventional encounters.
‘I was with Nick and his girlfriend Chloe after they’d read the paper last Sunday and they were fine. Chloe is French and very relaxed about these things, which I think encouraged Nick to be relaxed too. They’re grown-up and good-humoured, and they just want me to be happy.’
One person she neglected to tell about the book is her former partner, who left her but unexpectedly returned to the house they once shared for financial reasons late last year, thereby ending her experiment. Both are in the process of moving out.
‘In retrospect, it might have been kind to warn him, but I wrote the book at a time when we were no longer together,’ she says.
‘The year of dating was a reaction against the break-up of my relationship with him, which had been very committed for 13 years.
‘It was a shock to me when he left. Why would I share what I was doing with him? Of course, he’s aware of it now. With admirable equanimity, he quipped, “I see you’re the lady of the moment.”’
Her former husband – the father of Adam and Nick – has not spoken to her about it. ‘I think he’s too embarrassed to talk,’ she said. ‘But he called Adam last week to check his son was coping with the sensational revelations and warned him to be cautious about the press. He’s a lawyer and always guarded and careful.’
Despite Monica’s emphasis on the goodwill she has received, she admits she was hurt at first by some of the criticism. ‘One piece in particular I read about myself was designed to make me look foolish and pathetic,’ she says. ‘Using a deliberately terrible picture of me didn’t help. And it suggested that I would end up lonely, but I’m not at all short of love – I have a wonderful family around me.’
She believes she has been a victim of the double standards applied to women and men, which dictate that while men can have flings with much younger women, older women should never succumb to such temptations.
‘Mature women are supposed to have coffee mornings and shop at M&S for slippers and devote themselves to their grandchildren,’ she says. ‘I do all that, but it’s not all that I do. A lot of women reach a stage in their lives where sex is no longer important, but not all women are the same.’
She has now stopped using online dating sites and is taking a break.
‘I have no regrets about what I experienced, but by the end I’d become fed up with the uncertain nature of internet dating – ordinary rules, like keeping dates, don’t apply,’ she says. ‘I’m sceptical about finding love, but that doesn’t mean I’m not open to the possibility.
‘I’ll always be an optimist and believe that life is a great adventure and you should make the most of it.
‘I’m not ruling out the possibility of more encounters with younger men, but for a long term-relationship, I must admit I’m more likely to be drawn to a man my own age.’
Raven: My Year Of Dating Dangerously, by Monica Porter, will be published later this month by Thistle Publishing Ltd, priced £9.99 paperback and £3.99 e-book. It can be pre-ordered at raventhebook.com and will be available on Amazon when published.