Not much here about why some younger women are attracted to older men. Here is a pattern I have seen, which is best described in Jungian terms. Some women are attracted to older men because they have conflated the Magus and the Animus into a single male partner. This is a mistake in my opinion. Very often, when a woman tries to see her lover as also her guru or teacher, she ends up having his babies and darning his socks, and then gives up her own ambitions. Sometime this is because the man’s ego will only permit one genius in the family. But I have also seen women who have voluntarily, if unconsciously, obliterated themselves to serve the greater glory of the man’s career, even when the man was actively trying to stop her from doing this.

This doesn’t have to happen, and recently there have been more cases where a husband and wife have become partners and collaborators who work together as equals. In my area of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, there is Paul and Patricia Churchland, Jerry and Janet Fodor, Phillip and Patricia Kitcher, and many others. But in all the cases I know where the woman keeps her own career, the husband and wife were about the same age. They met as fellow graduate students, not as student and teacher. There are also couples who play music together. Although sometimes the couple has to choose between keeping the relationship and keeping the band, and may lose both in the process, there are couples who successfully create music together for years.

My wife and I have played music together and separately for decades. We are literally a May/December marriage as we were born in those two months. But we are not metaphorically a May/December marriage, as we were born only six months apart. This is one case where the metaphorical meaning is the real one.