- Cindy Gallop, 62, is a consultant and founder of Make Love, Not Porn, a platform for real-world sex.
- She's never wanted marriage or kids, and only dates men in their 20s in part for their sexual stamina.
- This is Gallop's story, as told to Anna Medaris.
Cindy Gallop, 62, is a brand and business innovator, consultant, coach, and keynote speaker in New York City. After a career in advertising, Gallop launched Make Love, Not Porn in 2009. The platform aims to help people have honest conversations by sharing videos of everyday people having real, emotional, messy sex.
Gallop's own experience dating younger men — many of whom she could tell had only learned about sex through porn — inspired the project.
"I was going, 'Whoa, I know where those moves are coming from.' And a lot of overtly porn-influenced sexual behavior is driven by the best of all possible motives because they want to impress me, and they're gonna break out those porn moves because they think that's what'll impress me," she said. "And I am absolutely going to take on the task of re-education."
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gallop. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I grew up as socially conditioned as the rest of us. My father was English, my mother's Chinese, and I grew up in Brunei. And Asian culture is all about: You get married, you have children. So in my teens and twenties, that was the backdrop.
But over time, I realized I have zero desire to get married. I have zero desire to have children. I am just one of those people who is happiest on their own.
I'm enormously fond of my own company. I adore living alone. I love being single. I cannot wait to die alone. I date younger men casually and recreationally for sex — and it works really well.
I don't date men my own age because I actively do not want a relationship. And then, I want sex. And when it comes to sex, I'm a big fan of lots of stamina and very short recovery periods. I'm not going to get that with men my own age.
I'm public about all of this because we need more role models of how to live your life very differently from the way we're expected to, and still be amazingly happy.
First, I stopped looking for 'the one'
There were a couple of landmarks along that journey. The first is the day I decided to stop looking for "the one."
From the moment we're born as women, everything around us tells us that our entire life is a search for "the one." But at some point in my 30s, I just went, "Fuck it. I'm not looking for 'the one' anymore."
Oh my God, the joy, bliss, and relief, because then I could just go to social events and enjoy myself without being preoccupied with, "Will he be there?"
The second landmark was when I began dating younger men, and that happened by accident.
Twenty years ago, I was running an advertising agency, and we were asked to pitch for an online dating brand called uDate. To experience the client's product and the entire competitive landscape, I created a profile.
I was pleasantly surprised, first of all, to get an avalanche of responses. That's very good for the ego. But secondly, I was amazed that 75% of those responses were from younger men.
And I suddenly realized that I was every young guy's fantasy: I was a woman with a high-flying career who did not want to get married, to have kids, to settle down. Instead, I just wanted to have some fun. I've been dating younger men very happily ever since.
Younger men appreciate my confidence
When I ask the men I date why they are on these cougar dating sites, what I hear most often is, "Girls my own age are so insecure." I really empathize with that because I remember myself in my 20s.
But if you are a young man and you are dating a young woman who is fabulous, but nevertheless is worried about how she looks and is insecure in bed — and I mean literally doing that thing about "don't turn the lights on," and "I can't go on top because my tummy will pooch" — it's a joy to be with a woman who doesn't care what you think about her looks.
In fact, I've never been told I'm beautiful as often as when I began dating younger men. Because I don't care what anyone thinks of me, that allows me to be vocal in my appreciation of my dates as well.
My number one criteria for the young men I date is that they are very nice
No matter how casual the relationship, I have one fundamental criterion before anything else: They have to be a very nice person. I have only ever dated utterly lovely younger men in an atmosphere of mutual trust, respect, affection, and liking.
As a result, rather ironically, my so-called casual-ships go on a lot longer than most people's so-called committed ones — sometimes on and off for periods of two, five, 10, 15 years.
I've met men who are the first person in the family to go to college. I've met men who are supporting their entire family. I've met men in military intelligence, doing really interesting, dangerous, and impressive things.
They may go on to date women their own age, they may marry women their own age. We stay friends. And then every so often, their relationships end, and they come back. It's very nice.
So I do have relationships, they're just not the kind of relationships that society tends to think of as relationships.
People looking for committed relationships could benefit from my strategies
There is no better starting point for finding your soulmate than making "must be a very nice person" number one on your list of criteria.
The second principle is to strip out the consciousness of social judgment of that person's looks and genuinely ask yourself: Am I attracted to them?
Because too often, when you walk into that bar or that coffee shop and you set eyes for the first time IRL on that person, your first thought is, "What will my friends think if I walked into a party with this on my arm?" You are looking for socially endorsed attractiveness.
Now, in my case, I'm not. My only thought is, "Am I going to want to take them home and fuck them?"
The third principle is: When we meet for that first date, the last thing I want to do is talk about myself. I just want to hear about them.
When you're a 20-something man, you've rarely encountered somebody as interested in hearing everything about you and what you have to say. And that adds to their attraction for me.
Good sex is all about communication
When we don't talk openly and honestly about sex in the real world, porn becomes sex education by default, and not in a good way.
Porn teaches many of us that sex is entirely dick-centric. It's all about how big it is, how hard it is. We have this unfortunate jack-hammering syndrome. We are made to believe that it's all about penetration, when there are amazing ways to have enormous fun with non-penetrative sex.
I've had that moment in the bedroom where I thought, 'OK, I'm gonna have to say something about this, and the moment I do, the atmosphere in the bedroom is going to change, but I have to do this for every other woman he will ever sleep with."
What I've found is that men are extraordinarily receptive to being guided on what will really show a girl a good time. When you replace those porn behaviors with, "Here's what would be really fun," boy oh boy, they absolutely love it.
The three things that I have to say most often are "slower," "gentler," and "don't touch me down there til I'm begging you to touch me down there." That's the shortcut version.
But honestly, all it is is just talking them through what you'll enjoy.
The single biggest turn-on in the entire world is to be in bed with somebody and know they're having a bloody amazing time because of you. Not enough people get to have that experience. When you communicate, that is what you are enabling for each other.