Younger Men, Better Sex?
In the '60s, the women's sexual revolution paved the way for protests, "the pill," and new possibilities.
Since then, women have come a long way. And for Lynn Snowden Picket, 45, the sexual revolution today is about power and confidence.
"You know what you like. You're not so worried about what the guy's thinking, that you're finally able to decide what's important for you," Lynn tells Correspondent Maureen Maher.
Lynn, who lives in New York City, often writes about relationships for magazines like "O." She was married to a man who was five years her senior.
When she got divorced in her mid-30s, she said she never thought she would fall in love and marry again.
"After 12 increasingly dreary years capped by a wrenching divorce, I couldn't imagine why women in my situation complained about the prospect of re-entering single life. Wasn't that the good news," says Lynn.
But she discovered her dating pool had changed.
"The older men didn't seem to want to do the same things I wanted to do. I wanted to go out and have fun and go to clubs and go dancing and be out and about," says Lynn.
"They were just dying to settle down and have a rut. And I didn't want a rut. That's what I just got out of, and I wasn't eager to step back into one."
Lynn knew she was entitled to more, so she started doing something men have been doing for years – dating someone younger.
"I saw him and I felt the very quality of the room change. I went from being cynical to seeing hearts in my eyes," says Lynn, of her relationship with actor Bronson Picket.
Bronson says he had no idea what he was going to find six years ago when he attended a black-tie gala in New York City: "I saw this gorgeous face and I thought, 'Oh, my dear God, this woman's gorgeous. It was Lynn."
"The best way I can describe it is it was like a chemical reaction," says Lynn. But it's a chemical reaction with a younger man. Lynn is 45; Bronson is 31. It's almost a 14-year difference. When they first met, she was 38 and he was just 24.
When they began dating, Bronson's parents had some reservations about the age difference.
"WIth me starting in my career, they were concerned that you may end up cutting that short because you're going to have so many other responsibilities if you decide to follow this relationship though," says Bronson.
"My family was, of course, delighted. What's not to love," says Lynn.
But Lynn admits that her older male friends felt threatened by Bronson: "They were dying to tell me all of his flaws. They're assuming he's an idiot, he didn't read, he's going to be staring at the mirror more than he's going to be looking at you. All these things."
Both noticed that they were being judged because of their age, but they knew they were right for each other. Now, they've been married almost four years.
What's the benefit of love and sex in a relationship with an older woman?
"Your appetites are just about the same or right in sync, which is pretty neat to say the least," says Bronson.
"I'm not gonna lie and say, 'Oh no, I wasn't interested in hot sex. Of course, it was on my mind. I was thinking about it a great deal," says Lynn.
Actress Demi Moore, 41, is the most famous example of this emerging trend. She's dating actor Ashton Kutcher, 25, and 16 years younger than Demi.
A recent study, however, reports that today, one-third of single women over 40 are dating a younger man.
Susan Winter and Felicia Brings, authors of "Older Women/Younger Men," say these new younger men are helping to define the new sexual revolution.
"They are probably an entire group of men that look at the whole woman. They see the whole picture, and they're capable of embracing power and they love a strong woman," says Winter.
"It's not that, you know, 'Oh, I have a young boyfriend, and there I have power.' It's quite the other way around," adds Brings. "It's you have the personal power to embrace and be open to having a younger man in your life."
Besides the cliché of great sex, what's the advantage to an older woman in being with a younger man? Is having a good sex life integral to having a good life?
48 Hours asked Dr. Jennifer Berman, a urologist, and her sister, Laura Berman, a sex therapist and one of the country's foremost experts in women's sexual health.
"Feeling beautiful. Feeling attractive. Feeling young. Being appreciated as a woman for all that you are and all that you've learned and all that you've become," says Dr. Jennifer Berman, a urologist.
"We're starting to pay real attention to helping women reach their full sexual potential," adds her sister, Dr. Laura Berman, a sex therapist.
"For women, it's part of their femininity. It's part of their self-esteem. It's part of their general power," says Dr. Laura Berman. "The tricky part about women is that we're complicated animals. The main sexual organ is the brain, and if a woman is not attending to the emotional and relationship aspects of her sexual life, no amount of medication, no medical device is going to work."
For now, Lynn says it's all working: the emotion, the relationship, and of course, the sex -- to the point where she's now thinking about something she hadn't considered in her first marriage – children.
"I thought, 'Wow, it'd be so much fun to raise kids with this man.' I always thought of it before as a sacrifice and now I think of it as something that would just be wonderful."
To Lynn and Bronson, age is just a number: "American women find it easy to summarily reject younger men. Too bad. They could be denying themselves the most wonderful relationship of their lives."