Can cougar love stories have a happy ending?

(These love stories are all true. Only the names have been changed.)

We’re all familiar with the Hollywood version of cougar relationships: Demi and Ashton, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, J. Lo and her latest boy toy, Drake.

But what about closer to home, in real life — can cougar relationships really work?

Let’s talk about Kate, 42, and Tom, 27: both actors who share many mutual friends, and who would see each other at shows and premieres. Tom friend-requested Kate on Facebook, where they found an immediate connection, geeking out over thespians they both admired and arcane Star Wars lore. It wasn’t long before Tom took it private, PM-ing Kate videos and gifs they would endlessly comment on.

When they would see each other in person, though, he was “very quiet,” according to Kate.

“Earlier on I knew she was older,” Tom says. “Siyempre nahihiya pa ako sa kanya.”

That dynamic only changed after a party when Tom got jealous seeing Kate flirt with another guy. Through a mutual friend, he mustered up the courage to ask her to a movie.

Kate, meanwhile, was wary of dating younger men. She’d been involved with a guy 10 years younger who treated their dalliance as a “shame relationship,” acting affectionate when drunk but once sober would disavow anything he said or did with “let’s not make too much of this,” or “let’s not go too fast.”

That experience soured her on younger guys and Kate vowed she “wouldn’t go younger than 28.”

Tom was 26 when he asked her out, and Kate was about to shut him down but found she didn’t want to.

Their first date ended up being 12 hours long. They discovered even more shared interests, like a mutual love for Scotch and pork, and at the end of the night, he asked, “How old are you?”

“I’m 41,” Kate said.

While Tom didn’t react outwardly, inside he was thinking, “No way!” He was surprised — maybe even shocked — “but it wasn’t a big deal for me, because prior to going out with Kate, I was dating older women — 29, 32. I couldn’t deal with the dramas of my own age. Older women are more stable.”

VERONICA & LOGAN

Veronica and Logan met at a film festival in the United States. She was a Filipina director; he was an American animator, and they both had films in competition. When Logan was late for a movie he’d planned to catch, he walked into Veronica’s screening instead, and loved the movie he saw so much he stayed for the Q and A afterward, catching Veronica’s attention because he was familiar with the Pinoy music she’d used in the film. They continued their conversation at the after-party, and their common interests overshadowed any difference in age: she was 34 at the time, while he was 24.

“It was obvious I was a lot younger, but her age wasn’t obvious,” Logan says.

“I was scared of revealing my age,” Veronica admits.

So Logan Googled her and actually found out how old she was on Wikipedia. “I was surprised because she doesn’t seem it,” he says. “For me it was more like we were always on the same wavelength, so that never really was a factor.”

JILLIAN & DAVID

Jillian, 42, a lawyer, and David, 37, who works for a bank, are both avid gamers. Their parents knew each other through business, but the couple met through an RPG, or role-playing game.

“We played it for a long time as friends,” Jillian says.

“I didn’t care much for girls — ick — cooties,” David says, but “I liked my video games and she liked them, too. Go figure.”

For a long time David didn’t know they had a five-year age difference until he helped her get a visa to Canada, where he is based. “I never really bothered to ask her since we seemed to be around the same mental age anyways,” he says.

“I just kind of skirted the topic because I thought, ‘Eh, this isn’t going to be permanent! Who survives a long-distance relationship?” asks Jillian. “We had a long talk about it after but in the end it didn’t matter.”

DOES LOVE CONQUER ALL?

You’d think that, for couples with shared interests, an age gap doesn’t really matter. But in the real world, does love conquer all? Even age?

For Veronica, who’s nearing 40, there’s the issue of the ticking body clock. “I want to have a kid and my window for that is small, so we have to make a decision pretty soon.” At a fertility clinic, she and Logan looked into the option of freezing her eggs, but costs can be daunting: around P250,000 to preserve that “window” of time for having a kid.

Jillian and Kate aren’t sure if they even want kids, but they do know the facts of physiology. “People are like ‘You should freeze your eggs already,’” says Kate. “If it was easy and cheap I’d do it tomorrow, but it’s not.”

Meanwhile, their younger partners, who are still building careers and stabilizing finances, might not be ready just yet for the lifetime commitments of marriage and family.

“There’s no point in rushing,” Tom says. “I’ve thought about it and I want a family… when the time is right.”

Logan says, in the transition from being single to being in a relationship, he’s making healthier life choices now. “Not living for myself anymore, I don’t just go out with my friends and drink till 5 a.m, or drop P5,000 on a videogame. I have the freedom but not that desire anymore.”

For the younger man with more opportunities to play the field, what is the lure of an older woman as opposed to a girl his age?

“Girls in my generation, I couldn’t stand most of them because they were all really self-centered,” Logan says.

Tom echoes similar sentiments. “Because I go through a lot of my own drama, if we’re both in the same state it’s so hard to get out of it.”

He appreciates the stability of older women, and the fact that Kate doesn’t make excessive demands on his time. “We make the most of the time we do spend together.”

For her part, Kate likes the fact that Tom’s mature enough not to play mind games, so their relationship progressed really fast. He also likes to talk about problems as soon as they crop up — a trait he learned from his parents. “We may not be able to solve it, but we deal with it right away,” he says.

Thus far the age — or gender — difference, can usually be felt in the couples’ styles of communication. Younger males of the Internet and videogame generation might think nothing of pulling out a smartphone during a conversation, for example, but that might not play so well with their older female counterparts.

“Tom will look at his phone during a meal,” notes Kate, while Veronica says Logan will be playing a game on his phone while she’s trying to talk to him. “I’m like, ‘Can you get off your game first?’”

Jillian and David are luckier about the gaming aspect. “Jillian and I both like technology and thus, it’s never an issue,” David says.

COUGARS VS. MANTHERS

Looks-wise, standards are tougher for the cougar than they are for the “manther” — the older man who prefers dating younger girls.

“There’s a bit more pressure in the looks department because you don’t want to look older!” admits Jillian. “Lucky I have dermatologists for that.”

It definitely doesn’t hurt if the cougar is a hottie, or looks younger than her age. “Veronica looks younger than me, so people assume I’m robbing the cradle,” laughs Logan.

There’s also the matter of work and career. Since the women are older, chances are they’ve achieved some success or are more established in their careers.

Logan says it helps if a cougar and her cub are on career paths that allow them to collaborate but not compete. Veronica used to date a guy five years younger who had exactly the same ambitions she did: “That was not a good relationship because we were competing against each other,” she said.

Since she and Logan work in the same industry but have different career objectives, they can be each other’s biggest supporters. “I want my own successes but I don’t take (hers) for granted,” Logan says.

As actors working in the same scene, Tom and Kate are in a similar situation, but they say respect for each other’s work goes a long way towards the relationship succeeding. “You can’t critique each other,” Kate stresses.

TELLING FAMILY & FRIENDS

While friends’ reactions to these cougar couplings have been universally positive — “Women my age are like, ‘Yeah, 15 years (older)!’” enthuses Kate — breaking the news to family can be more difficult.

“Tom hasn’t told his parents yet,” Kate lamented after three months, “and I haven’t asked him why.”

As the months wore on she became even more apprehensive, but Tom finally introduced her to his parents after almost half a year. “His mom was a little cool towards me at first, but it’s gotten better the more I see them.”

With all the challenges a cougar faces, would she recommend this kind of relationship to her friends?

“I would definitely tell a lot of my single girlfriends who have a hard time dating that younger men are more modern thinking, so I recommend it,” Veronica says.

From the male side, David muses, “Practically speaking, men die younger, so maybe this gap is a good thing. One of the things I liked about Jillian was that she wasn’t some flighty, boy-crazy chick. She has a good head on her.”

Perhaps, after all is said and done, cougar relationships — even more than other types of relationships — prove the cliché that age doesn’t matter.

“If there’s chemistry, it works,” Tom says simply. “Then you adjust through time. Nothing’s set in stone — that’s what I learned.”

“If you find someone with whom you are intellectually and emotionally compatible, that’s all that matters,” Jillian says. “Both of you have to be in the same headspace and find a commonality of spirit.”

David adds, “The end goal is to have as few stressors as possible in the relationship. Age can influence compatibility, but we also live in a world where you have 40-year-old brats and 20-year-old sages, so go figure.”

HAPPY ENDINGS

So, unlike Demi and Ashton, is there a happy ending for a cougar and her cub?

Jillian and David got married last year, after being together for almost 17 years (“I have commitment phobia,” claims Jillian). After mutually deciding not to have kids, instead of a nursery they plan to install a game room in the new house they’re decorating.

Last month Logan sprang a surprise marriage proposal on Veronica at the film festival where they met. In true cinematic fashion he got down on one knee, presented a ring and declared his love Jerry Maguire-style in front of a roomful of people. (One of their director friends was quick-witted enough to capture it on video.) They plan to get married in late 2018.

Having recently celebrated their six-month anniversary, Tom and Kate are more in love than ever but taking it one day at a time. Early in the relationship she told him, “I don’t want to waste your time. The age gap is weird, so how’s this going to last?”

His response was a long text message: “Kate, bottom line is I like you and I hope you don’t think you’re wasting my time because I definitely don’t think you are. You are the sun and I yearn for you like the moon yearns for the sun. This is not merely an infatuation. I want to try to see where it goes and see where it ends. It’s not of the norm but what the heck, I like being different anyway.”