Retired Army officer, failed presidential candidate, and prolific foreword-writer Wesley Clark has a girlfriend: Ahalife.com CEO Shauna Mei, an ex-Goldman banker who graduated from MIT in 2005. Page Six reports the May-December couple (Clark is 68) recently appeared holding hands in the Hamptons. Aww.

As with any such pairing — young/old, ex-military/shopping-website-founder, etc — we can only guess at their motivations. True love? Perhaps. A shared love of thick Russian novels? Who knows. Money? Possibly!

Clark’s desire to be a rich philanthropist-philosopher is well-known. After retiring from the military in 2000, he boasted of plans to "enter business and amass $40 million (a figure he plucked out of the air to have a goal)" in order to steal George Soros’s mantle—an achievement that, incidentally, would actually require substantially more money than that. Instead, he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, during which he questioned the validity of special relativity before his campaign burned out in early February. In the nine years since, he’s plied his expertise in the boutique consulting industry. Which is money, but not Soros money.

His girlfriend’s curated shopping website, on the other hand, has amassed approximately $20 million in venture capital since January 2010. While it certainly lays outside Clark’s interests in energy politics and U.S. foreign policy — “AHAlife’s network of curators include Tim Gunn, DVF, Daniel Boulud, Tina Brown, Carmindy, Bobbi Brown, and many other influential tastemakers” — a business is a business.

[Page Six | Photo via Ahalife.com and Associated Press]