90 Day Fiance: Why Cougars From The Franchise Are Asking For Trouble

The cougars of 90 Day Fiancé, including Stephanie Davison from season 8, are bold, unafraid, and often destined to experience heartbreak. For these ladies, hope springs eternal… until it doesn’t. While they say that age is just a number, many cougar-cub relationships featured on the TLC series have been unmitigated disasters. In most cases, viewers saw the doom brewing from the outset, as with Ashley Martson and Jay Smith.

Older women dating younger men is nothing new (actress Susan Sarandon is currently dating screenwriter Jonathan Bricklin, who is thirty-one years her junior). However, society is perhaps more accustomed to older men dating younger women. On 90 Day Fiancé, the older woman and younger man dynamic does tend to evoke heated reactions from fans, with some of them characterizing the young men as gold diggers, or Green Card-hungry, or players (or, most commonly, all three at once). Plenty of viewers think these younger men are bound to leave their older partners alone and sad in the end. Judging by Stephanie (who’s still throwing shade at Ryan) and Ashley’s romantic outcomes, some of these bleak assessments are right on the money. This begs the question, “Are 90 Day Fiance cougars just asking for trouble?” Maybe these women love playing with fire.

Stephanie Davison

Why, oh why did Stephanie Davison think things would be rosy with her “cub” Ryan? Maybe she believed that taking good financial care of him (and his family) would be enough to earn his eternal gratitude? The thing is, gratitude and love aren’t really the same thing, and Ryan Carr is so young. She’s 52 and he’s 27. While there was always a chance things could work (look at older franchise alum Michael Jessen, who’s crazy in love with his young wife Juliana Custodio, who loves him right back), the long-distance thing did not help. Ryan hails from Ladyville in Belize. While she bought him clothes and watches and more, their chemistry was always off onscreen, and she didn’t trust him.

It turns out that he couldn’t really trust her, either, as she did bed his cousin Harris. This really inflamed him. Things got so disturbing when Stephanie accused Ryan of pretending to wear a condom during sex. This was the death knell for this unlikely 90 Day Fiancé pairing.

Ashley Martson

Ashley Martson met Jay Smith while she was a guest at a wedding in Jamaica, and she fell hard for the younger man. Today, she is 34 and he is 22. While the age gap isn’t extreme, Jay didn’t seem to be ready for a lifetime commitment. He also seemed like a person who just might be taking advantage of his partner, although some fans think that Ashley has been devious, too. Some fans even think she was exaggerating or faking her health problems (she has Lupus). This couple just couldn’t click long-term, but Ashley kept taking Jay back, even after he was unfaithful.

Jay cheated on her in a barbershop washroom, and it’s safe to say that his infidelity broke the heart of the blond cougar. Jay may have felt controlled by Ashley sometimes, as she held the purse strings. This theme tends to resurface in cougar-cub romances on 90 Day Fiancé. It’s almost always a power struggle. The lack of financial equality is a huge obstacle to romantic happiness. Ashley filed for divorce three times, and it now seems like she and Jay are never, ever, ever getting back together.

Do cougars and cubs mix like oil and water? On 90 Day Fiancé, it seems that way. However, there may be a pair who changes everyone’s mind about what love between an older American woman and a younger man from a foreign locale really means. Rebecca Parrott and Zied Hakimi from season 8 may be the couple that actually does make fans believe age is just a number.

90 Day Fiancé airs on Sundays at 8pm EST on TLC.

About The Author

Heather Matthews
(89 Articles Published)

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Heather is a writer based in Canada. When she isn’t writing about reality TV, she’s watching it, or rewatching Peaky Blinders.

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