When the 27-year-old French guy I recently matched with on Tinder says he wants to cook me dinner at his house for our first date, I’m not all that surprised. The French tend to be more romantic than Americans, even when it’s just about sex. But six hours before our date, he blows up my phone with food questions.

“You eat goat cheese, sweet Melanie?”

Yup!

How about salmon? Crepes for dessert? This or that for appetizers? What kind of wine?

“I’m sure I’ll love whatever you cook, don’t worry,” I say, partly touched, partly annoyed.

“But it’s the first time I see you. I want everything to be perfect!” he texts back.

I’m sure it will be, I assure him. I’m a 41-year-old woman with the sex drive of a teenage boy and we’d already established that we’re both just looking for a “sex friend,” as they call it here in France. All this effort on his part is nice but totally unnecessary.

When I arrive at his place, damn does it smell amazing. The table is so heavy with platters it looks straight out of a medieval feast. And even more food is cooking in the oven! “I made this sauce just for you,” he says, holding up a platter of breads, spreads, and fancy French cheeses. This special sauce—which, he informs me, is called “Melanie’s Special Sauce”—makes my knees buckle.

Over appetizers, he waxes poetic about what a strong American woman I am—I climb mountains, travel the world alone, I’m fearless. He launches into a monologue about how impressed he is with all I’ve done with my life so far and how he hopes I’ll find him even half as interesting. “I’m just so happy you’re willing to date someone as young as me,” he adds.

Of course I am. Who else is there, anyway?

I was so worried about turning 40, certain I’d suddenly become invisible to men—like Cinderella turning into a pumpkin in the middle of a party full of twenty-somethings. If my Tinder matches are any indication, that fear isn’t totally unfounded: Dudes my own age just aren’t interested anymore.

At first, I worried this meant I had in fact become an unfuckable dried-up old hag. Society has told women our entire lives that men won’t want us after 35. Hollywood casts age-inappropriate women for almost every leading man while at the same time casting women my age as the mothers of their peers. For women in America, turning 40 is a death of sorts. The loss of all our sexual capital. Nobody will want us or our bat wings. And bless your heart if you’re a woman in Los Angeles who refuses to get Botox and is edging toward 40.

I’ve come to realize, in my infinite old-woman wisdom, that this all bullshit. And if men in their forties no longer want to date me, well, that’s a good thing. Frustrated with my desolate Tinder inbox, I finally thought, Screw it, and set the age minimum on my dating app to 25. Whew, boy! Almost immediately my inbox caught on fire, filled with twenty- and thirty-something men just dying to take me on a date. Younger men not only want to date older women; they think we’re amazing.

I didn’t set out to be a “cougar,” but it seems like Tinder is chock-full of lonely cubs. I have never had this much sex—let alone good sex—in my life. These younger guys are more progressive, have less emotional baggage, and love dating a confident woman who knows what she wants and tells them what to do. I’ve never felt so sexy and attractive.

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