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I love stories that encourage people older than 20 to get online and date.
Here’s one that appeared recently in The Guardian:
Finding love in later life
Reaching 60 certainly doesn’t mean we lose the twinkle in our eye. The media often presents a glamorous image of dating, full of whirlwind romances for twentysomethings or enviable hormone-crazed flings by the likes Carrie Bradshaw or a Desperate Housewife. As a sixty-something singleton, it’s easy to feel daunted by the dating scene.
Well, you’ll be relieved to know that the older generation is becoming a major part of it. Increasing divorce rates and the disparity in life expectancy for men and women have led to huge numbers of people facing retirement alone. According to eharmony.co.uk, 30% of men over 65 and a whopping 60% of women don’t live as part of a couple.
The internet dating industry is cottoning on to that fact. Match.com claims the baby boomer generation is its fastest-growing market.
Many niche websites have popped up, specifically targeting an older demographic. The Senior Dating Agency and Senior Dating Group are both free to join and are targeted at over-50s. Singlesover60.co.uk and Online Senior Dates focus on a slightly higher age bracket, with the majority of its members over 60. If you’re stumped on how to write a profile, browse others to gain a feel for how much you need to divulge.
If you’re still not convinced about releasing your details into the cyber abyss, then there’s Dateline Platinum - the equivalent of old-fashioned dating agencies. It offers a personalised introductory service and vets all its members in person.
Traditional courting, without the aid of a keyboard, isn’t dead either. A 35-year-old female friend recently complained her 65-year-old mother goes on more dates than she does - and none of them were organised through cyberspace.
The film industry has also seen an opportunity with the rise of the dating baby boomer. Last Chance Harvey hit cinema screens this month, prompting comment about the unusual choice of 40-plus characters in a love story.
Remember James and Peggy Mason? They are proof you certainly don’t have to be young to get married. They became Britain’s oldest newlyweds in 2007 after their eyes met across a crowded day centre in Devon.
Don’t panic, though; we’re not suggesting a date should lead to selling your home and rewriting your will. Casual companionship is perfectly acceptable. Pauline Stone (64), from Arundel in West Sussex, lost her husband from a heart attack four years ago.
“Being suddenly single made me feel young again. It wasn’t my choice to be on my own, of course, but when you’re thrown into it you either sit and vegetate or you get out. I joined a singles’ club for my area and have met lots of people.
“I’m not looking for someone to move in with, just someone to share a bit of fun and go to dinner. I miss having a person to make plans and go on holiday with.”
Most later-life single status is down to separation or bereavement, and the sentiments surrounding each are very different. The former brings a greater fear of rejection, and the latter can carry a huge sense of guilt. A small percentage of people have never settled down, and others may have an ailing spouse and be seeking a platonic friendship.
Whatever the reason, there’s a huge network of single sixty-, seventy- and eightysomethings who have not lost their lust for life or their desire to be loved. If you’ve found romance after 60, are still looking, or want to share your concerns about returning to dating, post your comments below.
More from Steve about men and dating age-appropriately. See my blog entry for May 29th too.
Dating column readers reiterate: Date your age
By Steve Penner
I figured my last column would generate some interesting feedback.
In that column I advised middle-aged single and divorced men that they would be far more “marketable” to the opposite sex if they were willing to date women close to their own age.
To use a popular analogy (that I hope won’t be misinterpreted by anyone), the whole issue of older men wanting to date much younger women has been the proverbial “elephant in the room” for years. It is an issue that most people are aware of, but few people inside or outside of the media ever want to discuss honestly and frankly.
Here is some of the more interesting feedback that I received.
One local woman wrote “As a 50-year-old woman attempting to date, I truly appreciated your article in the Portsmouth Herald dated 3/13/09. I have noticed that many men my age say they want to date a woman who is closer to my daughter’s age, which I think is just icky. I cannot relate because I have no desire to date an immature, inexperienced young adult; I’m looking for someone who has been tested by life’s experiences and has come to know themselves. Thank you for telling middle age men that they should keep an open mind about age and dating because I know many fabulous women in their 50s who are emotionally stable, financially secure, intellectually stimulating, and looking for a guy their age to date.”
Another woman e-mailed “You did a very nice job with today’s column. I think the best thing about it was the way it reminded men that there are positive aspects to being open to dating women their age (or even older!), such as a larger dating pool, and finding someone with shared interests and life experiences. Thank you! I hope it generates some reflection and perhaps discussions in the coming days, and I suspect women in the Seacoast will copy the column and share it with men they know because there was no negativity or scolding… It was a great perspective on the issue.”
But the most intriguing and totally honest comment came from a man who wrote “I agree with your column completely today. It’s like everything else. There are tradeoffs. If a young woman is willing to settle for a much older man, it’s because she needs to, because she lacks something else that would enable her to snag a younger man. Maybe she is looking for financial security and that’s OK if you can afford her. We men are wired to seek young women of childbearing years who look healthy (symmetric). But do we really want more children when we are old men? I don’t! Once I started to date women my own age, a world of high quality women opened to me. Bright, charming, talented, and, yes, wealthy woman, who can pull their own weight. Now I attend parties with women who talk about their knee replacement surgery but they have so many other virtues that really count.”
Several other brief e-mails arrived from women applauding my thesis, and one man wrote to say “As someone who married an ‘older woman’...; there is a great deal of sense in your advice.”
But the question remains, are men really “wired to seek young women of childbearing years,” or are they merely conditioned by society to lust after younger women?
Obviously the answer is complex, and I would like to add another theory. Basically when it comes to important relationship and dating issues, men tend to mature much later than women. This is especially true among teenagers and young adults in their 20s and even 30s.
Therefore, starting in high school, girls prefer dating slightly older boys and vice versa. Consequently, a pattern is established (and later in life copied and perpetuated) of women wanting to date older men and men wanting to date younger women.
But by the time people reach middle age, most of us have finally achieved what I call “relationship maturity.” What do I mean by that term? Simply that people who have reached that level have finally learned what few young people know.
Simply, that the most important criteria in a relationship is NOT how tall a guy is or how cute a girl is, but rather how well a couple communicates with one another; how well a couple can mutually nurture one another; and how a couple can deal with the inevitable problems and pitfalls that life throws at everyone. These are the factors that are truly important in order to develop a meaningful relationship that one hopes will last for decades.
It is unfortunate that many people arrive at middle age still not having reached “relationship maturity.” It is even more unfortunate that a vast majority of such people happens to be men, which is why so many middle aged men are so gung-ho about wanting to date much younger women.
I further assert most such men are guys who have had limited relationship experience and who, in many ways, are as immature as they were 20 and even 30 years ago.
Show me a 50-year-old man who insists that he only wants to meet women in their 20s or 30s, and I will show you a guy whose chances of EVER developing a fulfilling long-term relationship are about as good as his chances of winning the lottery.
In other words, ladies, don’t even bother buying a ticket to meet him.
Steve Penner is my favorite dating columnist. He is so “right on” (to use a term that probably dates me) with so many dating issues. Here in this entry and my next one, you’ll see two of Steve’s columns on men’s desire to date younger women.
I’d add to Steve’s thoughts on why men (or women) would try to date someone years and years younger than themselves: They are being totally unrealistic. They are agist. They are not accepting of their own aging (no matter how “young” they feel they look and act). No one has EVER told me that they are older looking and acting than their actual age. Not since they were 13 anyway. As Gloria Steinem said. “This is what sixty looks like.” I think it has to do with folks getting “stuck” on what people looked like the last time they were dating. When they start again, they are attracted to men or women who look like the men or women they were attracted to years ago. Plus they have not REALLY looked in the mirror themselves lately.
I remember how startled I was to meet the new boyfriend of my 50ish friend to find him completely bald. And to get a sober comeuppance from her, too, when we were together at a conference in Boston: It was snowy and icy and several times, handsome college guys helped us across the streets. I loved the attention, but she simmered me down with “Don’t flatter yourself. We are old enough to be their mothers.” Wham.
Go out and look around and find people your own age. See what they look like. That’s what you look like too. That’s your market. Get used to it.
The simplest way to raise your dating quotient The Truth About Dating
By Steve Penner
“How can I make myself more marketable to single women?” (Translation for regular readers of this column: “How can I raise my Dating Quotient?") That is a question (in one form or another) I am often asked by single or divorced men. Obviously, for many men the answer is quite complex.
But for men over 45 or so, there is one shortcut that will immediately and dramatically increase their DQ. So I am writing this column specifically for them. (If you are a woman, make a copy and send it to every single, divorced, or widowed man over 45 that you know.) OK guys, you don’t have to get a hair transplant, dye your goatee, develop abs of steel, or even insert lifts in your shoes. Nor do you have to develop a sparkling personality. (Just don’t come across as a totally self-centered jerk.) All you have to do is be yourself (unless you are a totally self-centered jerk) and do one teeny, tiny thing.
Just open yourself up to meeting women close to your own age. And if you really want to raise your DQ, be willing to date women a few years older than yourself!
I know, many of you would prefer meeting much younger women. After all, in every movie, television show, and commercial you see, the men are always considerably older than their wives and girlfriends. But those shows and movies are produced primarily by wealthy Hollywood moguls whose power, fame, and most of all, their pocketbook, are the prime reasons they attract much younger trophy wives.
The fact is that today’s 50-year-old single woman is not “your father’s 50-year-old woman.” To use another worn out expression “50 is the new 35.” Have you guys noticed what many 50-year-old women look like these days?
Improved diet and fitness workouts have kept them in much better shape than women of a similar age from previous generations. Many if not most of these women also have careers, which further motivate them to lead a healthy lifestyle and to look good in the work place.
Unfortunately though, when filling out your profiles at online or personal dating services, so many of you guys foolishly list a “strong preference” for meeting women 10-20 years younger than yourselves. Then you wonder why you have little success.
Moreover, if you are a 50-year-old man who wants to meet a woman 25-39, please keep in mind that not too many 25-39 year-old women will say they want to meet you! Also please understand that by doing so, you are placing yourself in direct competition with much younger men.
To be honest, I realize that so much of what I have written sounds silly, even to me. Age is only a number, and I don’t want to hear excuses like “I am such a youthful 50, I can’t imagine going out with a woman my own age.” Interestingly, I hear those exact same claims from women.
Everyone these days looks, acts, and feels young for their age, but that is because we are comparing ourselves to our parents’ generation. That was a generation that, for the most part, was unaware of (or ignored) the health risks and appearance consequences associated with cigarette smoking and excessive sun worship (both of which produce premature signs of aging). Moreover, fitness clubs were few and far between, as were home gyms. Let’s face it, except for golf and bowling, most of our parents lived a sedentary lifestyle, while puffing away on their Kents, Lucky Strikes or Winstons. And of course active women were encouraged to smoke Virginia Slims.
Today, I implore single middle-aged men to try the following. The next time you complete a dating service profile, list a desired age range that is plus or minus five years of your own. That’s right, state that you are willing to meet women who are (gasp) older than you. Come on; give it a shot. You might be surprised at the quality (and quantity) of the pool of women who will suddenly become available to you.
But then be very strict about every other criterion. If you work out almost daily, state you only want to meet women who do the same. If you ski every weekend in the winter or you are an avid hiker, golfer or tennis player, state that you only want to meet women who are avid outdoors enthusiasts. If you are a Fred Astaire on the dance floor, state very clearly that you must meet a Ginger Rogers. If being youthful to you means that you are open-minded, liberal and love to “rock ‘n’ roll,” then just say you only want to meet women who at least have heard of Woodstock.
I recently received an e-mail from a woman who wrote “I ...; wonder if you could address a topic of dating discrimination that is so obvious and widespread that it affects most of the women I know, yet hasn’t made it into your column nearly as much as your pet peeve of women who shun short men. The discrimination I would like you to discuss is men who refuse to date women their own age.” She went on to say “So, please, I’d love to see this issue in a column of yours. Being shunned for age is as unfair as being shunned for height, both of which are factors beyond one’s control.” I couldn’t agree with her more. Besides guys, if you really are into rock ‘n’ roll, why would you want to meet a much younger woman who thinks The Who is just a strangely worded pronoun?
All of us who find ourselves single and wishing we weren’t need all the help we can get. Since older folks have been looking and finding love online in greater and greater numbers, we are also seeing more and more good advice. Here’s some from Abigail Trafford:
How to Find Love Later in Life You’re never too old to fall in love—or fall apart
By Emily Brandon
Falling in love at age 60 is reminiscent of love at sixteen—just as exciting, and just as risky. Washington Post columnist Abigail Trafford quips: “It’s wonderful to realize that you’re never too old to fall in love, but wise to remember that you’re never too old to fall apart in love.” Trafford spent a year at the Stanford Center on Longevity at Stanford University interviewing couples over age 50 about their personal love stories. She published those stories in a book released this month called As Time Goes By: Boomerang Marriages, Serial Spouses, Throwback Couples, and Other Romantic Adventures in an Age of Longevity. U.S. News asked her to share some of her dating adventures. Excerpts:
What’s different about dating in your 50s, compared with your 20s and 30s?
The biggest difference is you have some experience. You already have a love story inside you. You’re a lot freer. You’ve completed your adult tasks, which are to raise a family and establish yourself in the community. In your 20s, 30s, and 40s, you have a really long to-do list. By the time you get into your 60s and 70s, you have a kind of confidence that comes with experience. You are freer to define the kind of life you want to lead. That’s a wonderful bonus for relationships. You put a premium not on scoring with someone, but on connecting with someone and being who you really are. When you’re young, there’s a lot of pressure to find your mate and settle down. Once you’re in your 50s and 60s, you don’t have that pressure. The urgency is to make friends. You’re dating for fun.
How do you balance commitments to a deceased spouse with beginning new relationship?
People who decouple again after having had a relationship before are able to embrace the past relationship and then move on. I think one of the dangers is that second relationships feel that they are in competition with first relationships. The man and the woman need to be very comfortable acknowledging that each person had a past life. The key is to have confidence in who you are in the relationship right now. Remember the past, but also don’t let it weight you down.
How do kids from previous relationships come into play?
You redefine your relationship with your adult children. They are no longer a dependent child, but someone who is also an adult who you can be very close to. They may think it’s cool that Grandma goes out on a date or [that] adult children may be protective. They want to make sure that their mom is not going to get hurt or their dad is not going to be taken for a ride. Adult children are usually happy that their parents, who have become single from a death or a divorce, are going on dates and have someone special in their lives.
Do baby boomers and seniors frequently look up old flames from high school or college?
This happens quite frequently. Sometimes people wonder what has happened to someone they had cared about so many years ago. Sometimes it is part of a reunion of a college class. Sometimes people look them up with the Internet. You go to your hometown for a funeral and you run into that person’s family. It’s a way that older people like to write their narrative of relations and make a coherent story
What dating mistakes are baby boomers and seniors making?
In the research that I did, finding a partner and being part of a couple is not enough. You really need a network of friends and family to enrich your life. You should have about eight or 10 people in your circle. If you get below three, you may become quite isolated.
More people than ever are over 40, 50, 60 and even 70 and 80 are going online to find love. Goodness knows we need all the help we can get. Here are some suggestions for the over 50 folks.
7 Tips for Dating After Age 50 How to meet new people and ace your first date
By Emily Brandon
Posted February 20, 2009
Dating can be an unnerving experience at any age. But dating after age 50 presents a unique set of challenges. “You have a 50-year-old body with a 20-year-old headset,” says Judith Sills, a clinical psychologist and author of Getting Naked Again: Dating, Romance, Sex, and Love When You’ve Been Divorced, Widowed, Dumped, or Distracted. “You are anxious and giggling the way you were when you were 19. You feel like you have dialed the clock back.” To help you ace that first date, here are some pointers:
Try a new activity. Let your friends know that you’re dating and ask if they know anyone who might be right for you. Also, expand your social circle by taking on new actives such as a cooking class, hiking group, or becoming a docent at a park or museum. “Find a situation that brings people together and offers an opportunity to meet and get to know each other,” says Abigail Trafford, author of As Time Goes By: Boomerang Marriages, Serial Spouses, Throwback Couples, and Other Romantic Adventures in an Age of Longevity. Her suggestions for great places to meet a love interest: community centers, elder hostels, music and book clubs, or other community associations.
Look up an old friend. Remember the guy you dated in college for two years and lost touch with? Do you still think about the beautiful girl your traveled around Europe with for a month? If you remember someone fondly from your past, it could be worth looking them up online. “A large percent of people who get married in their 50s...they find people they met in their past and look them up,” says John Gray, a certified family therapist and author of Mars and Venus Starting Over: A Practical Guide for Finding Love Again After a Painful Breakup, Divorce, or the Loss of a Loved One. Try Googling their name, contacting college or high school alumni offices, or even an old-fashioned phone book.
Go online. Americans age 50 and older are the fastest growing demographic on the dating website Match.com, and they make up 20 percent of all users. “My mom found someone on Match in five months and she is 63,” says Whitney Casey, a relationship insider (her actual job title) for Match.com and author of The Man Plan: Drive Men Wild...Not Away. The stock market slump may further contribute to a surge in online dating. “On days when the Dow went down by 100 points, we found an increase in our site usage relative to when the Dow increased by 100 points,” says Gian Gonzaga, a senior research scientist for the dating website eHarmony, which saw a 20 percent spike in users between September 2008 and January 2009, compared with the same time period a year ago. “Economic news tends to be stressful, and as you become more stressed, you begin to look for things that will offer you comfort and help you out during these tough times.” Post a flattering picture of yourself online, but don’t use a photo 10 years younger than you are. “Get friends to look at [the picture] before you put it online and find the best picture that really represents who you are,” says Casey. You should also avoid exaggerating or downright lying in your profile. “The more descriptive and honest that you are, the better match you are actually going to make,” says Casey.
Keep it light. Don’t turn a first date into a job interview. Go into the meeting with the intention of having a good time. “Let go of the goal-oriented dating of finding a soul mate,” advises Gray. “You want to lower your expectation of finding someone to spend the rest of your life with. Find someone to date that seems intriguing to you.” Be open to experiencing each date and each person for what they have to offer.
Prepare conversation starters. There’s nothing worse than awkward pauses on a first date that stretch into eternity. “You need to have a list of three surefire conversation starters and continuers,” says Casey. Her favorite questions: What is the most memorable meal you’ve ever had? Where do you want to travel to? Movies, books, and television shows are also safe topics, she says.
Mention, but don’t dwell on kids. It’s important to mention that you have children in passing or if asked, but don’t talk about their first words or college choices for two hours. “When people talk about their exes and their children, it’s boring,” says Sills. “Your children are never ever as fascinating to other people as they are to you.”
Don’t mention your ex. It probably goes without saying that by age 50, you have had a few love relationships in your life. There’s no need to give a new love interest the play-by-play. “People in their 50s often have a history of being in a relationship where it didn’t go well,” says Gray. But that’s no excuse for imposing that resentment on a different person, he says. Don’t talk about your dating life, either. “Cute, funny stories about horrible men you have dated do not make men laugh,” cautions Sills. “Don’t bring up your ex-husband or your ex-wife for a very long time.”
Dating advice for the over-40s
By Elspeth McLean
“Germs and sperms don’t know how old you are.”
That is one of the blunt statements Dunedin Family Planning educator Sarah Loftus uses to get across the message that women looking for love in their 40s and beyond can fall into the same traps as teenagers, running the risk of sexually transmitted infections and even unwanted pregnancies.
People tended to think that sexual health teaching was only necessary for younger people, but that was not the case.
Family Planning, with Ministry of Health funding, has produced a new booklet called Upd@te Me aimed at heterosexual women aged over 40 who are getting back into dating and relationships.
Its topics include deciding what you want in a relationship, Internet dating, sexual etiquette, emotional baggage, falling in love, safe sex, deciding if a relationship is healthy, and breaking up.
Ms Loftus said it was felt there was a demand for this type of information booklet, which will be available from Family Planning, doctors’ surgeries and sexual health clinics.
One of the concerns was that people in the over-40 age group, who had not had the same safe sex education as younger people, were becoming a “a bit over-represented” in sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates.
Many of the messages were similar to those aimed at teenagers, because often those in the older age group, when they fell in love or developed a crush, behaved just like their teen counterparts.
Dunedin Sexual Health Clinic’s clinical leader Dr Jill McIlraith, agreed.
“Just because you are older doesn’t mean you automatically get wiser."Teenagers and older women who thought sexually transmitted diseases or unplanned pregnancies would not happen to them often used phrases such as “It won’t happen if I have sex once”, or “He was a nice man”.
People were very selective about how they perceived risk - “I don’t think middle age protects us from that warped perception.”
She saw the book’s production as timely and useful, although some women might not want to think it applied to them.
While the risk of pregnancy decreased from the age of 30, sexually active women should not regard themselves as safe from pregnancy until they had gone at least a year, and some would advise two years, without periods, she said.
Reported cases of chlamydia infections, which can cause infertility, have been increasing dramatically in Dunedin, with the sexual health clinic rates showing an increase of 138% over five years.
Numbers were likely to be much higher because people could be infected without being aware of it.
Syphilis was an STI people had regarded as a thing of the past, but it had also been on the increase in New Zealand in recent years and the average age of those with it was 37.
HIV infection rates had also increased in 40 to 49-year-old heterosexual women.
Dr McIlraith had been an advocate of putting condoms in teenagers’ Christmas stockings, but if Mum or Granny were changing partners perhaps the family could buy them some too.
I love to read the Sunday New York Times, and one of my favorite parts is the “Vows” column in the Celebrations section, where they profile a marrying couple in depth. I’ve noticed lately that about once a month, the couple featured met on an Internet dating site. That’s about right—Around 20% of couple now found each other on the Net. This story is particularly adorable, because the not only did the couple meet online, they are older (she is 45, he 63), but also they share a love of horses, and he is a later life cowboy. Read the story below, and see it too on a video at the NY Times site.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/style/vows/1194811622327/index.html
November 9, 2008 Vows Elise Gutfeld and Tim Hayes
By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER
THE first time Elise Gutfeld rode on a horse, at age 3, she found bliss. During family vacations in the Catskills, she insisted on taking trail rides. By the third grade she was hooked on “Black Stallion” books.
At 13, she told her parents that if she had to go to sleep-away camp, it needed to involve horseback riding.
“I wanted to be with them, ride them, draw them, live them,” she said, dreaming of becoming a jockey, until at 5-foot-7, she realized she was too tall.
As a teenager, her priorities changed. She was a prom queen at Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, N.J., lettered in tennis and softball, and headed to Columbia University. She now telecommutes as a vice president and the senior technology manager for Bank of America.
Five years ago, when her older daughter, Ma’ayan Stein, asked for riding lessons, Ms. Gutfeld started riding again. When her instructor died, she dropped the lessons. Then, divorced for four years, she concentrated instead on finding someone special.
Last year, Ms. Gutfeld, 45, of Fort Lee, N.J., had been Internet dating for a few months when she received a message from Tim Hayes.
His screen name was Happy Trails. Fourteen years earlier, in the wake of a divorce, he had given up a slick go-getter Manhattan-based career producing and writing television commercials and relocated to East Hampton, N.Y., to work as a horse whisperer, teaching natural horsemanship, a tender method of training and riding horses.
After a few e-mail exchanges, Mr. Hayes, 63, asked for her phone number. She demurred, having had a few bad experiences with online dating, but asked for his. When she called two days later, she got his voicemail.
“I am either on the phone on in the barn,” the message said. Ms. Gutfeld said she remembered thinking, “This is it: this is my cowboy.”
His callback lasted two hours. She offered to drive to the Hamptons to meet him and his 19-year-old horse, Austin.
Mr. Hayes’s son, Dr. Rick Hayes, 45, a cardiologist at New York University Hospital, said, “there weren’t any red flags” for his father to say no to this Internet date.
But shortly before their first date, Mr. Hayes was kicked in the mouth while giving a riding lesson. A front tooth was knocked out, and there was no time for a dentist to make a temporary.
Still, he escorted Ms. Gutfeld to a friend’s barbecue, an art gallery in Southampton and for ice cream. He knew she was “a keeper,” he said, when she kissed him — between licks of cookies and cream — “even though I was missing my front tooth.”
The next weekend, watching him sweet talk Austin and ride without a saddle, Ms. Gutfeld was “overflowing with feeling” at how gentle he was with the horse.
He invited Ms. Gutfeld’s daughters, Anna Stein, 10, and Ma’ayan, 14, for a trail ride at Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk. “I could see what a good father he would make,” Ms. Gutfeld said, realizing “that his way with horses translated perfectly to his way with people and relationships.”
They learned that besides the horses, they also shared a love of family, children and movies. One of the problems Mr. Hayes had encountered with prospective partners, he said, was that “there were things I wanted to change about them.”
With Ms. Gutfeld, he said, he “didn’t want to fix or change anything.”
Even though she calls herself a perfectionist, she said, “I could let my hair down and make mistakes and he would love me anyway.”
She personified every adjective on “the list,” which, he said, included being trustworthy, predictable, cheerful, appreciative, emotionally nurturing, sexy and romantic.
“It was the most comfortable, easiest and intimate relationship I had ever had,” he added.
Carl Bernstein, the investigative journalist, described Mr. Hayes, his longtime friend, as someone who “follows his instincts.”
So last April, when Ms. Gutfeld arrived in East Hampton for the weekend, Mr. Hayes told her that earlier that day he had seen seals on the beach. Despite her grumblings about having work, he insisted on going to the beach. There were no seals; it was a pretense. He dropped to a knee on the sand, pulled a ring from his pocket and proposed.
They were hitched Oct. 4 before 50 family members and friends. The Rev. Christopher Stamp, a minister of the Sanctuary of the Beloved, officiated at the SoHo loft of Nicholas Grabar and Jennifer Sage, a cousin of Mr. Hayes.
During a reception that included cheeseburger sliders and mini red velvet cupcakes, Mr. Hayes swooped Ms. Gutfeld into his arms and asked her to dance.
Having found his own bliss, he turned to the crowd and said, “It’s about falling in love with someone who makes you feel like home.” And then they swayed on the dance floor.
Well, this article below is about the Brits, but it’s also about the Boomer generation, of which I am a part. I just LOVED the article, particularly the photo. Do you think the Brits are more liberated sexually? Can you imagine the “strip poker” type of game described below in a dinner party in the USA? Tell me, readers, are American Boomers like the English?
Babyboomers still partying on in their sixties
Toasted teacakes and orthopadeic slippers are definitely out for the new generation of silver partygoers
Hundreds of pensioners disrupt traffic in Melbourne’s city centre, removing their clothes
Jonny Beardsall
Forget about careful driving and wide-fitting shoes — life today is miles more stimulating for baby-boomers. They’re healthier and happier and longer-living than any of their predecessors and, having made it into their sixties with their libido more or less intact, have no intention of going slow in the bedroom. Helped by Viagra and a more relaxed, horizontal approach to relationships and marriage, it seems that double chins, love handles and bingo wings are no longer a turn-off. With children having flown the nest and plenty of savings to splash out, 60 is suddenly sexy. Throw in Joan Bakewell’s appointment as “tsar for the elderly”, Helen Mirren in a red-hot bikini and Carmen Dell’Orefice still modelling at a glamorous 77, you can see why Sagazoners — Saga Zone is a sort of Facebook for grown-ups — are chatting so explicitly online. In fact, a recent survey by the website found that two-thirds of men and women aged 60-64 said they were still sexually active, with almost half of those getting between the sheets at least once a week. It also buried a widely touted myth, with three-quarters claiming that sex does not become more boring as you get older.
Pam, 63, is typical: “If I am honest — and I generally am — sex is just as important to me now as it ever was, and, joy of joys, I can’t get pregnant!” Joy agrees: “Even though we all grow older, it shouldn’t bar us from a bit of rumpy-pumpy, should it?” Likewise Willy: “I would rather be on my own than in a sexless marriage — frustration is a terrible thing.”
It is not only sex that the older generation is so wholeheartedly embracing — they’re behaving in every way like born-again teens. Emma Soames, Saga magazine’s editor-at-large, reports that during a Leonard Cohen concert in the Albert Hall earlier this month, “when he sang, ‘If you want a doctor, I’ll examine every inch of you’, there were audible yelps from the crowd. He’s 74”, she says. “The myth that once you hit 60 your life is over is well and truly dead. At this age, there is less pressure and it’s likely that you feel more comfortable about your body.”
A spring chicken at 90, the writer Diana Athill concurs. “To me, 60 seems rather young,” she says with a dry chuckle. “I certainly enjoyed sex in my seventies. Eventually I lost the urge, but I’ve known many others who went on for a lot longer.” Famous for growing old disgracefully, she detailed her colourful adventures in her recent autobiography, Somewhere Towards the End, in which she writes about several affairs with married men, including a ménage à trois. Suburban dinner parties between consenting pensioners are also witnessing an increase in the use of soft W drugs. And that’s not all. A London dentist reports how his wife began to feel distinctly uncomfortable when, after plenty of wine and a few after-dinner joints, an innocent-looking parlour game in the Cotswolds turned into a full-on strip-fest. “The hostess, who was just into her sixties, couldn’t wait to show off her new boob job and had her top off as fast as a bride’s nightie,” says Robert, 57, whose wife, Jane, 52, had feigned illness and gone to bed in a state of shock. “That left me, two other straight couples and two gays. The boys whipped their trousers off straightaway, which was pretty scary stuff. I’m not proud of my body — I don’t even expose that much when I’m holiday — so I stayed up long enough to be polite, then joined Jane in bed while I still had my boxers.”
Among older people, attitudes to misbehaviour are certainly changing. October saw the publication of Groovy Old Men: A Spotter’s Guide, by Nick Baker, 56. “It’s a state of mind,” he says. “They have a huge back catalogue of film, music and style references and like to pick and choose — they love Amy Winehouse and see her as the new Dusty Springfield.” Now these men have “reached their sixties and they don’t give a shit”, says Baker, who counts Bill Nighy, Bryan Ferry and Paul Smith among their number. “Not trying too hard is the crux. If you are, then you’re definitely not a Groovy Old Man.” For Baker, “there is no question that an older generation is in its ascendancy and older men are able to enjoy themselves in the bedroom. Because of Viagra, which looks after the mechanics, it’s now about choice. Age no longer matters”.
It’s not all just good fun, however. Because older couples have no fear of pregnancy and are of the pre-Aids, free-love generation, few give unprotected sex a second thought. Thus the big fly in the ointment is sexually transmitted infections, which have tripled in the over-65s in the past six years. Some find that they have picked up something rather unpleasant in their retirement.
So an increasing number of them can be found hiding behind their newspapers in waiting rooms at STI clinics with the symptoms of chlamydia, syphilis and genital warts. Syphilis has tripled among the over-65s and doubled in the 35-64 age group. Chlamydia has also risen, by 51% in 35- to 64-year-olds and by 37% in over-65s.
Dr Eoghan MacSweeney is medical director at CityDoc, a private healthcare service in London and Birmingham. “I saw someone over 60 this morning whose lack of understanding was frightening,” he says. MacSweeney believes that sex education should not merely be for the young. “Marriage is not the same institution it once was, and older people have become more laissez faire when it comes to relationships. Viagra is partly responsible, but there has been a twist in sexual behaviour.”
Moreover, the resumption of youthful practices does not suit everyone. “Half of \ prescriptions are not repeated,” says Val Sampson, a couples councillor and author of Tantra: The Art of Mind-Blowing Sex. The initial thrill of the pill may be great, but “what it doesn’t do is sort out relationships, and if you’ve not had penetrative sex for a decade, resuming at the drop of a hat can come as a shock. Mutual pleasure is so not about wham, bam, thank you ma’am”.
Which, one might argue, is something they’re old enough to know.
What’s sex really like when you’re older?
Susan*, 61, is in a relationship with a man in his sixties “I was married for a long time, but it wasn’t good sexually. Since it ended 16 years ago, I’ve been making up for lost time. At my age your inhibitions go out the window — it’s great. I’m not worried about what people think any more: I’m my own person. I enjoy sex now and need it more than ever. My boyfriend has to use Viagra — sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I do other things when he’s not around, too: thank God for the Rabbit.”
Agony aunt Irma Kurtz, 73, is single. “With age, sex becomes less pressing — you might say more cuddly. Nature is no longer agitating for reproduction and the competitive thrust among men especially has a — dare I say — softer edge. Better than ever? No. Just the fruit of a different season. Where love remains, the sex remains, too. But out and out cruising for it and obsessing about it is for the young. For the first time, on moving house recently, I bought a single bed. I have always believed it is easier to give up those things we have enjoyed fully, so I do not miss sex. Just as when I gave up smoking long ago, I found the day had more hours in it.”
Irma Kurtz’s new book, About Time: Growing Old Disgracefully (John Murray £16.99), is published on March 5
Tom*, early seventies. Divorced 13 years ago, he has been dating since. “We grew up in a much more repressed age. The sexual revolution passed me by — I was busy trying to get on with my life and make money. Now, I don’t think sex in your seventies is different from sex at any other age. You hear people saying 50 is the new 30. When my grandmother was 60 she was an old lady. Women my age today aren’t old ladies — they can be extremely attractive. Dress and hair colouring have a great deal to do with it.”
Wendy Salisbury, 62, has married and divorced twice, and has been dating since her forties. “A couple of decades ago, if someone was alone at 60, that would be it for them. But now single old people are dating more than their children do. We all still want love, and the love of family and friends is wonderful, but it’s not the same as romantic love. We embrace sex, talk about it, think about it. Everything ages, except feelings. It’s our children who are embarrassed, not us. Internet dating has made it possible to keep dating — I meet men there and in the normal quarters of life, such as estate agents or policemen. Sixty is a new lease of life.”
Wendy Salisbury is the author of The Toyboy Diaries (Old Sreet £7.99)
Nick*, 66, has been dating for the past 30 years after his two marriages broke down. “As you get older you become more confident about yourself and learn to make the most of it. My last long-term relationship was phenomenally active. We had sex every day — it was like being a 25-year-old. The woman I am dating now is five years younger than me, but has a phenomenal figure and we make love every time we stay over together. If I’m with someone I really want, I have no physical problems.”
Michael*, 59, a widower, is about to marry a woman he met on Friends Reunited. “When I was young, sex was a question of quantity rather than quality. After marriage, it became routine, and, with the advent of children, less frequent. The stresses of time, work, money and kids are not conducive to a wonderful love life. Then there was my wife’s long illness and no sex at all for years. After her death, I went onto Friends Reunited Dating. I didn’t expect to find a new partner, but, amazingly, that is what happened. I think about sex more now than at any time since my teens and early twenties.”
Here’s another article about older folks finding sex online. I’m not quite 60 yet—think about what is in store!
Golden oldies discover love at first byte
Thursday, 23 October 2008 Dani Cooper
Cybersex is not just for the young with older adults using internet technology to liberate their libidos, an Australian researcher says.
Sociologist Sue Malta, at Swinburne University’s Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, says her study shows older adults have a voracious appetite for the internet and sex.
And, Malta says, they are using one to ensure they are not short of the other.
In the study, which will be presented in December at The Australian Sociological Association conference, Malta held in-depth interviews with 45 older Australians and five older Americans about their romantic internet relationships.
Malta says she wanted to examine whether technology was making a difference to how older people’s relationships developed and the longevity of those romances.
She says the results overturn two stereotypes prevalent within our community: that older people are asexual and are not technology savvy.
“That old stereotype that you get to a certain age and you don’t want to do it any more is not true,” she says.
Sexually intimate faster
The participants were aged from 60 to 92 years and included those involved in online relationships and a smaller group that had first met face to face.
She says her findings suggest online relationships between older people become sexually intimate faster and are of shorter duration.
Malta says many of the older women said the cyber romances suited their lifestyles because they “never wanted to live with anyone again”.
“The biggest reason they gave was because they had no wish to become someone’s nursemaid and housekeeper,” Malta says. “They had already been there, done that.”
She says the participants had on average been using the internet for 10.5 years with the online daters averaging 3.5 hours on the internet a day and the non-internet daters about 1.5 hours.
Many of the participants used the internet for more than romance, she says, adding it was a tool for banking, share trading and booking holidays.
Definite views on cyber cheats
The internet romantics also had clear views on cybersex, cyber-cheating and cyber-flirting.
Most felt cyber-flirting was fun, but a precursor to a sexual relationship, while none of the Australian participants approved of cyber-cheating.
Some of the participants had engaged in cybersex, with one older woman saying she would only have cybersex with someone she was not going to meet and all her cybersex encounters were with men much younger.
“She seemed to treat them like casual sexual encounters,” Malta says, but instead of having to go out to a club she could experience it all “from the comfort of her own home”.
Malta says while there was little difference in the behaviours of the two older groups she found her older online group had a markedly different approach to internet dating than a group of Canadian 30-somethings who took part in a study in which she collaborated.
“Surprisingly the younger group was less sexually overt than the older participants,” she says.
Malta believes this is because younger people use internet dating in the hunt for a possible life partner so are more self-conscious about how they present online.
“The older group are not interested in that and can be more relaxed and go with the flow,” she says.
Surprised
Malta says many of the study participants reported being surprised by their own sexuality.
“A lot of them had had big breaks between being widowed and having a sexual relationship,” says Malta.
“For many they said it was the first time in their life where they were about to have real sex,” rather than just lying back and “thinking of England”.
A 92-year-old participant, who had been a widow for more than 23 years when she became sexual again, told Malta it was “fantastic” and that she no longer “felt like an old fool”.
Malta says her study has implications for social policy.
“A lot of the participants had health issues and found sex and intimacy was one of the best things for them and gave them increased vitality,” she says.
As one woman told Malta during the interviews, “I can hardly walk, but there is nothing like a romp in bed to make me feel alive”.
Malta says by 2031 it is predicted 25% of the Australian population will be aged over 65.
“If older people are sexually active and it is good for their health then how do we design nursing homes to cater for that, because if you don’t you are doing them a disservice,” she says.
Malta also suggests computers and internet access needs to be more readily available in aged accommodation to improve residents’ social networks.
I’ve got to admit that this is something I had not thought of yet: The pull of cybersex (excuse the pun) for older folks. Why not? Cyber sex has nothing to do with your actual age or how you really look, right?
When it comes to cybersex, oldies beat youngsters
It’s not just the youngsters who are hooked on to the Internet for their daily dose of erotica, as a researcher has found that older adults are
Adults are a step ahead when it comes to cybersex.
Sociologist Sue Malta, at Swinburne University’s Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, claims that her study provides evidence that older adults have a voracious appetite for the Internet and sex. For her study, Malta conducted in-depth interviews with 45 older Australians and five older Americans about their romantic Internet relationships. The participants were aged from 60 to 92 years, and included those involved in online relationships as well as a smaller group that had first met face to face.
The study was aimed at analysing if technology had a role in influencing older people’s relationships developed on the internet, and the longevity of such romances. And the findings of the study completely turn over the commonly held views that older people are asexual and are not technology savvy.
“That old stereotype that you get to a certain age and you don’t want to do it any more is not true,” she said. The findings suggested that online relationships between older people become sexually intimate faster and are of shorter duration.
A large number of older women said that the cyber romances suited their lifestyles because they “never wanted to live with anyone again”.
“The biggest reason they gave was because they had no wish to become someone’s nursemaid and housekeeper. They had already been there, done that,” ABC Online quoted Malta as saying. Most of the Internet romantics believed cyber-flirting was fun, but a precursor to a sexual relationship.
There were a few people who indulged in cybersex, and one older woman said that she would only have cybersex with someone she was not going to meet and all her cybersex encounters were with men much younger. Malta said: “She seemed to treat them like casual sexual encounters.” But instead of having to go out to a club she could experience it all “from the comfort of her own home”.
“Surprisingly the younger group was less sexually overt than the older participants,” she said. Such a phenomenon, according to Malta, is because younger people use internet dating in the pursuit for a possible life partner, and thus are more self-conscious about how they present online.
“The older group are not interested in that and can be more relaxed and go with the flow,” she said. Malta said that her study holds possible implications for social policy. “A lot of the participants had health issues and found sex and intimacy was one of the best things for them and gave them increased vitality. If older people are sexually active and it is good for their health then how do we design nursing homes to cater for that, because if you don’t you are doing them a disservice,” she said.
Ya got to love it—read all the way to the end…
Chinese man, 81, marries Internet date
Internet dating isn’t just for the young—ask an 81-year-old Beijing man who has married a woman he says he met and courted online.
The Beijing News said Wu Jieqin, a retired art professor, married Jiang Xiaohui, 58, Monday, culminating a relationship that began with an online personal ad.
“The Internet does not just belong to the young,” Wu said. “There’s no rule saying the elderly can’t find love on the Internet.”
He said he met Jiang after a series of other virtual dates, adding, “I was smitten when I first saw her photo.” The Chinese news agency Xinhua said the couple chatted online before Wu traveled to Sichuan Province to meet Jiang in person, and that he eventually proposed to her on bended knee.
There was one hitch—Jiang had to overcome strong opposition to the union from her parents, aged 85 and 86, Xinhua said.
Who says you don’t meet good people online? You can even see Marilyn Michaels on YouTube doing her impressions. This lovely love story was featured in the NYTimes “Vows” section—and they met on JDate!
October 26, 2008
Vows
Marilyn Michaels and Steven Portnoff
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
FOR Marilyn Michaels — comedian, impressionist, actress and latter-day vaudevillian — the prospect of marrying again at 65 seemed like the set-up for a Catskills gag about old age.
“God help us!” she exclaimed. “Get me under the huppah in time!”
Ms. Michaels, a Broadway baby whose parents performed on the Yiddish stage and at the Metropolitan Opera, hails from the borscht belt school of rat-a-tat punch lines and dead-on impressions, skills that have brought her acclaim on stage and screen. She radiates more energy than actors half her age.
And yet, in early 2005, the twice divorced Ms. Michaels found herself lonely and tired of “New York hippie-dippy guys,” she said. She opened a profile on JDate, where Steven Portnoff’s black hair and twinkly eyes stopped her cold.
“He called himself a straight arrow — I wanted that,” she said. Imagining herself with this divorced lawyer, she mused, “Just think of all the people you can sue!”
The opening line went to Ms. Michaels, who teased him about his age. “You can’t be 60,” she wrote. “You look like 40. What’s your secret?”
“Pick your parents carefully” was Mr. Portnoff’s retort.
Mr. Portnoff of Freehold, N.J., now 63 and retired, said he was not impressed by celebrity. But he told Ms. Michaels that he was already familiar with her work.
He relayed a memory of his father, whom he lost to Alzheimer’s. “In 1991, I took him to a Broadway show,” he wrote. “After the show, all he would say was, ‘That woman was so funny.’ The show was ‘Catskills on Broadway.’ You were the woman. Thank you for the memory.”
Their first date was in the theater district. It was quickly apparent that Mr. Portnoff, with his Mickey Spillane cadence, could keep pace with the comedian’s one-liners.
In the middle of lunch, she kissed him. “I was very forward,” Ms. Michaels said. “I said, ‘Let me get this out of the way.’ ”
Unfazed, Mr. Portnoff asked: “Can I swallow my scallop first?”
Next came a trip to the Cloisters in northern Manhattan, where Ms. Michaels was horrified to see her suburban suitor surveying the flora for gardening ideas. “How could I survive in the wilds of Freehold?” she recalled thinking. “I’m a Woody Allen New Yorker. I don’t drive. My whole family is driving impaired.”
At first, Ms. Michaels kept him at a distance. She was nervous about leaving the city — and also about losing her heart. “I got married very fast,” she said of her earlier unions. “It’s not difficult to get married. It’s the staying married.” She sighed. “I was afraid.”
For his part, Mr. Portnoff was smitten. “Every date I laughed so hard my ribs hurt,” he said. “Sometimes as we are speaking, she will morph into one of her impressions.”
For months, they dated infrequently. Then Ms. Michaels decided she had had enough. “It was around Valentine’s Day,” Ms. Michaels recalled, her voice cracking. “I said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening, I’m getting in too deep, I’m scared, I’m scared.’ ” She added, “Even though I knew I wanted him, I had to see if it was real.”
A Dear John letter arrived in Mr. Portnoff’s in box. It was a case this lawyer was not willing to lose: “I tried calling her. She didn’t answer the phone. I e-mailed her. She didn’t respond.”
He moved to cross-examination in an e-mail message: “I have all these great qualities and you don’t want to see me anymore? Am I in a Kafka novel?”
It was certainly a trial of a sort. “I wanted to see how I would feel, how I would miss him,” Ms. Michaels said.
It was Mr. Portnoff’s persistence that lured her back. “He kept pursuing,” Ms. Michaels said. “I heard that need in his voice. He was patient. And nothing got in the way of that.”
She said that after two marriages and a life in show business: “It always has been important for me to have a quiet place, a place where I feel secure and confident. And Steve is very much a grounded person. He doesn’t build castles in the air.”
After a wary reunion, “We seemed to come together closer and faster,” Mr. Portnoff said. But they compromised on their living arrangements: New York on weekdays; Freehold on weekends.
They were married by Rabbi Joseph Potasnik on Oct. 5 before a sweeping view of the Hudson in the bride’s Upper West Side apartment. Ms. Michaels, wore a wrap dress and a white flower behind one ear. Her eyes were wet and her voice shook as she and Mr. Portnoff held hands by a piano.
“She is a handful,” said Dr. Judy Kuriansky, the sex therapist and Ms. Michaels’s best friend for decades. “She is high maintenance. She needs a solid guy. I told her, ‘Do not let this guy go, whatever you do.’ ”
A congratulatory phone call came in from the comic Rich Little, with whom Ms. Michaels once traded impressions on television.
Then the bride crooned tunes from “Funny Girl,” a starring role for her in the 1960s.
Few shows go on without a hitch. Ms. Michaels was momentarily in a tizzy when the rabbi did not arrive on time. The bride was not amused: “I wasn’t planning to have to take that much Valium at my own wedding.”
If you are single and out of college or even into retirement, Internet dating is the place to be:
From an article in the Indytimes:
Dating outside the lines
If you think Gen-X and Gen-Y singles are the only ones familiar with online dating, read on. An AARP analysis of the most recent U.S. Census data found that of the 76.7 million baby boomers, 18.5 percent were divorced or separated, 10.6 percent had never been married, and 2.8 percent were widowed—for a total of 24.5 million single boomers. And according to a recent story in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, those older, wiser and available singles aren’t sitting around waiting for “Mr. Right” or “Ms. Right” to fall from the sky. They are embracing speed-dating services sponsored by Cupid.com, and other online dating sites such as Match.com and eHarmony. Sociologist Virginia Rutter says, “The baggage is actually part of what makes the person you’re with a human being.”
Love it. The older, the better. My Mom got married at 81, the groom was 86.
Clinton Township leads the way with speed dating for seniors
BY CHRISTY ARBOSCELLO
Singles searching for love and companionship sit at tables for two decorated with flickering candles and powder-pink tablecloths. They wear nervous smiles and name tags on pressed blouses and blazers. They’re told the rules: When the bell rings, the ladies move to the next man. They have four minutes to chat and, if a connection is made, get the digits or dance to a live band later in another room.
They’re equipped with ice-breaker questions: What do you like to do on a date? What type of food do you enjoy?
Do you have any grandchildren?
This is not the usual speed-dating soirée. These aren’t 20- or 30-somethings looking to start lives together. They’re seniors whose lives have been rich with experience, careers, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. The approximately 20 people at the Clinton Township Senior Adult Life Center’s third monthly event are as young as 55 and old as 90. Many are widows and widowers. Some are divorced.
“I’m Jane. I’m looking for Tarzan,” Jane Brown of Macomb Township says playfully.
“Oh yeah?” responds Art Bosco of Warren.
“How old are you? Can I ask?” said Brown, who’s wearing glasses and pearl earrings.
79.
She’s 71.
“I’m a widower,” he tells her.
She’s widowed too.
“How did you make it? I’m having a hard time,” he shares.
She says she swims three times a week, stays busy with friends and now she’s looking for someone who can keep up with her on the dance floor.
“To be honest, I think the women are having an easier time. Women are more ...”
“Self-sufficient," he finishes her sentence.
She tells him of a group for people who have lost spouses that she attends. He’s intrigued.
“We all have to do something like that otherwise, we go nowhere,” Bosco says.
The center’s program coordinator, Donna Tinker, said of senior speed dating, “I was the first in the area to start it,” eyeing a stop-watch before ringing the bell.
She tried convincing her bosses it would be a smash after seeing a video of an event in Florida. It took almost a year for them to agree, and it helps a good cause. The $10 individual fee benefits center activities and projects like a recent expansion.
The new take on dating is following a national trend of older adults increasingly flocking to unconventional outlets, including the Internet, to find love. They’re often ignoring social norms they adhered to the first time around.
They’re also living together more and more. Cohabitation without marriage among older people rose 50% from 2000 to 2006, with 1.8 million elderly individuals living together full time, McClatchy Newspapers reported in July. The report, which comes from census data, also found part-time cohabiters—who travel together, share summer homes and spend weekends together—have kept pace with that trend.
Perhaps taking note of the lifestyle changes, other senior event planners in metro Detroit are interested in mimicking Tinker’s matchmaking.
“I think it’s great. I’d like to try to do it at my center,” said Kathy Jo Voight, special events programmer at the Romeo-Washington-Bruce Senior Activity Center, who checked out the August Clinton Township affair.
Speed dating will kick off for the first time at Troy Community Center at the end of the month.
“They were doing that in Clinton Township and one of the seniors put a suggestion in the suggestion box that we do that here,” said Carla Vaughan, senior program director. “We said, ‘OK, let’s give it a try.’ “
Women registered right away for the Troy program; that’s also been the case in Clinton Township. It takes a little more work for organizers to sign up the men.
Those following Tinker’s lead can note her learning curve during the premiere event in May. The biggest problem: Like a bad date, it seemed to never end.
“Some ditched us,” she said, adding that many men used the old bathroom excuse to duck out after hours of not-so-speedy dating.
But on a recent night, the room was abuzz with serious topics from gay rights to abortion to lighthearted ones like playing cards and karaoke. For some, the bell rings too soon. For others, it seems to take longer.
Frank J., a 60-year-old Shelby Township resident who declined to give his last name, taps his pen repeatedly when talking to Erika Koehler of Clinton Township. She twists the strap of her rhinestone purse.
“Are you going to the dance afterward?” he asks.
“I’m not sure yet,” she says shyly in a thick accent.
Between short, silent pauses, he asks where she’s from.
Germany, she replies.
“How long have you been here?”
“Long enough,” she says with a faint smile.
They’re signaled, with everyone else, to move on.
While some guests worried what their children would think of them moving on after losing spouses, Sandra Muklewicz said she’s glad her mom, Jane Brown, is speed dating.
“I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s difficult for people of any age to really find a person to share their common interests and I think it’s even more difficult for seniors,” said Muklewicz, 47, of Chesterfield Township, whose father died 20 years ago.
She felt comforted that the speed dating took place in a senior center as opposed to a dimly lit restaurant or bar.
“It seemed like a safe environment,” she said.
Clinton Township resident Janet Sieber said she leapt into the speed dating pool to reel in a man who likes festivals and other events.
“I’ve been dating couch potatoes,” she said.
Sieber may not have found Mr. Right right away, but she was happy to be there, she said.
“Absolutely, I’ve been meeting nice people.”
Scanning the crowd, Tinker was also delighted.
“I’m seeing smiles on everyone’s face, so I’m pleased.”
Here’s a little piece about turning 100—seems that centenarians are on the computers, too, and using technology to stay in touch with family and friends. Have you seen any 100 year olds on dating sites? Just a matter of time. My mother’s new husband (they’ve been married a little over three years now) turns 90 on September 11. Here they are on their wedding day. Mom and George did not meet online, but they both did know a good thing when they saw it. And I have to admit that I gave advice.
100-Year-Olds Using Latest Technology to Stay Connected to Family, Friends, Current Events, According to Third Annual Poll
MINNEAPOLIS, Jul 29, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE)—The third annual Evercare 100@100 Survey(TM) released today finds that the keys to longevity are staying connected to family, friends and current events. The poll of 100 centenarians shifts conventional stereotypes on aging by revealing that some of the oldest Americans are using the latest technologies to keep up and stay close - talking on cell phones, sending emails, “Googling” lost acquaintances, surfing Wikipedia and even online dating.
-- Love 2.0: As many Centenarians as Baby Boomers (3 percent) say they have dated someone they met on an online dating site.
You wouldn’t believe how many men AND women tell me they are “Young looking and acting” for their age, and use that to justify lying about how old they are on their dating profile. Nobody every tells me they look old for their age (much as I liked to hear that when I was 13). You are as old as you are—and so what? Age is a fact, and your date is bound to find out, one way or another. Do you really want to be found out as a liar on the very first date? We usually think of men going unrealistically younger in partner choice. Now women are on the bandwagon. See below.
Older woman, younger man: A match made in cyberspace
By Abigail Trafford
What do older women want?
Younger men.
Online dating services say women of a certain age want the white-haired gent, as long as he’s not too old. Women ages 50 and older almost always tell eHarmony.com that they want a younger man - 10, 15 years younger, sometimes more. And on Match.com, a 50-year-old woman is typically seeking a man who is 48.
“This is going to surprise you,” says Craig Wax, senior vice president and general manager of Match.com North America. “It’s the woman who is going for the younger guy.”
Women have come a long way. Going for the younger guy is perhaps yet another triumph for the women’s movement, which has broken down barriers between the sexes and pushed for equal opportunity in all spheres of life. The change is buttressed by the new biology of aging. Women, according to calculations based on mortality risk, are five years “younger” than men the same age. The 65-year-old woman is the biological equivalent of a 60-year-old man. So it’s sensible, not just fanciful, for a woman to look for a younger guy.
But there’s a problem: The men don’t get it. They are stuck in the old biology of aging. They, too, are looking for younger partners. On eHarmony.com, men 50 and older are seeking women who are six to 26 years younger. On Match.com, the average 56-year-old man is looking for a 54-year-old woman. Seems reasonable, but by the time he reaches 70, he wants a 58-year-old woman.
Gender equality in the search for younger partners is creating a mating gap in gray love. A 70-year-old woman is looking for a 66-year-old man. The 65-year-old man is looking for the 54-year-old woman. And a 56-year-old woman is looking for a man who is 46! How does anybody hook up in later life with these wide differences in what men and women want?
Fortunately, age is not the most important issue in a relationship. At eHarmony, members are matched according to psychological profile and personality characteristics. What are your values? Are you an extrovert? Are you open to new experiences, or do you prefer to stick with what you know?
“The process of developing a successful relationship is the same whether someone is in the 20s or 80s. People do better if they are matched with those who are similar to them on important dimensions,” says psychologist Galen Buckwalter, chief scientist at eHarmony.com. “Age, in and of itself, is not a factor in compatibility.”
When two people find common ground in their values, interests and personality traits, “there is less need to negotiate differences. A lot less emotional wear and tear,” Buckwalter says. There’s “an implicit level of understanding.”
There is also a difference in what people say they want and what they end up finding. On eHarmony, members are encouraged to report when they are dating seriously or are getting married. Of those who share their success stories, nearly one in four involves a partner age 50 or older.
For women with such success stories, the typical age gap between them and their new partner is plus or minus four years, whether they’re in their 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s. For men, the gap inches upward from plus or minus four years at age 40 to plus or minus six years at age 60. That’s a narrower range than what members list as their initial preference.
“Everyone would like to find someone smarter, better-looking, wealthier ... and sure, younger. Why wouldn’t you start there?” says Wax of Match.com. But once you see who is out there, “you’re willing to make a number of different trade-offs. In the end, it doesn’t matter what a person’s age is. It matters how well they connect.”
Newlyweds Ruth Johnson-Mullis, 85, and Leonard Mullis, nearly 87, of Littleton, Colo., met on Match.com. Both had been widowed. Each said they weren’t interested in marriage but wanted “someone to have dinner with,” Johnson-Mullis says. She had a hard time at first with online dating: She e-mailed eight or 10 men and never got a reply. They were all looking for women in their 60s and 70s, she says. “Who wants an 84-year-old woman?”
“I did,” Mullis says. He had to drive up into the mountains to meet her. There were no restaurants, so she made him lunch. “From that point on, I was a dead duck,” he says. After a three-month courtship, they married. “At my age, I don’t believe in long engagements. No use fooling around.”
They have much in common. Both grew up in Florida. They lived through World War II. Both are in good health and go to exercise class twice a week. “We were raised in the same manner. We were raised in the same era. We have so much to talk about,” Johnson-Mullis says. And both had long first marriages.
Experience is an asset in late-life mating. As Johnson-Mullis says, “If a man stays with a woman for 59 years, he’s not going to run away from me if I’m not perfect.”
Sex And the Single Girl
By Katie Baker | NEWSWEEK
In her new memoir, “Epilogue,” author Anne Roiphe chronicles her sudden widowhood and attempts, at age 72, to date again in the Internet era. She spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Katie Baker.
Have e-mail and the Web made things easier than when you dated as a young woman?
This is a great addition to my life. Most of the people I know don’t know anybody who is single and available. If I go to a party, there aren’t single men there. Let’s start with that. So I would never meet anybody.
Your book is a contrast to Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking,” where she’s almost stuck in amber after her husband’s death.
What interested me was the place [Didion] wasn’t able to write about, which is the healing process, the real afterwards. Shock wears off, numbness wears off, and there you are. And life goes on.
You began dating again after your daughters placed a singles ad for you in The New York Review of Books. How’d they react to your decision to write about these experiences?
I think it must be very hard for children to see their parents in a state of grief they can’t overcome. So I felt it was important, for me and for my family, that they saw I was strong and living and doing well.
You write frankly about the sexuality of older women. Do you think we’ll see a change in our society’s attitude toward it?
I think the way to deal with this is twofold: I’m not a 24-year-old girl. I’m a 72-year-old woman. And I accept that. But I don’t accept that that means I can’t have all kinds of girlish, womanish feelings. Why not? I am a grandmother and I love being a grandmother. But if I believed that because I’m a grandmother, I should stay home and knit socks for my grandchildren … I’d last another six months in this world.
The single senior seniors are doing what comes naturally. Or at least what comes more naturally these days than it used to: They are looking for love, and they are doing it online.
As seniors live longer they find ‘love expectancy’ also grows
By Frank Greve | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Murray Katz, 82, a retired senior federal patent-appeals examiner, has made a transition that lies ahead for millions of Americans.
“When I was growing up, I didn’t see women who were in their 60s and 70s as women,” he said recently. “Now, it’s amazing. The men I know are all looking at 80-year-old women. They’re our friends. We listen to them. We dance with them. We have sex with them when we can. It’s beyond comprehension.”
For many it’s unimaginable. But one of the things new under the sun since Katz was a boy is an 18-year increase in U.S. life expectancy, much of it spent in healthy retired life.
Those who are living through it spend their time in the traditional American way: pursuing happiness. And so it is that seniors today aren’t just dating more, they’re the fastest-growing users of Internet dating services and the fastest growing group of cohabiters.
To be sure, older men remain in short supply and millions of widows decide that meeting one man’s needs was enough. A few million more are ailing beyond caring. Still, there more couples than ever like Eleanor Robinson and John Kunec.
She’s 85, a Scrabble player, poet and table tennis champ whose social hub is the bustling Holiday Park Senior Center in Wheaton, Md., just north of Washington. He’s 83, fit and friendly, a retired government accountant. Both are widowed.
As surely as she carries his harmonica in her tote bag and they finish each other’s sentences and watch ballgames together, they’re a couple.
“I never had a relationship such as I have now,” confided Robinson, a Roman Catholic school girl from West Philadelphia who married at 19 and was widowed 54 years later.
“It’s like I’m a kid,” she said. “When I’m with him, I’m caring for him, and when I’m not with him, I’m thinking about him.”
Her beau — still a term in their set — had less to say. But Kunec’s a fine harmonica player, and the first tune out of his mouth during the intermission at a recent senior center dance was a stately rendition of the old Ray Charles hit “I Can’t Stop Loving You.”
Nonetheless, the couple maintain separate houses and marriage isn’t in the picture. “The complications wouldn’t be worth it,” Robinson explained. “I’ve limited income that I’ve decided to share with my grandchildren and I wouldn’t want to interfere with his family.”
Multiply this by a million or two, drop the ages by a decade or more and you have a more accurate picture of what many seniors are up to these days, or would like to be.
Longer healthy life expectancy is part of the explanation. There are also more men around, thanks largely to better drugs and treatments for diseases that more often afflict men, such as heart disease and cancers of the prostate, colon and rectum.
Seniors are also richer, their constant-dollar incomes more than triple what they were in 1960. Sex is hardly out of the question, thanks to Viagra and its cousins, which about 14 percent of senior men use, according to an AARP study.
Finding partners is easier, too, the Internet being a superior resource to barstools or the friends of friends. According to Mark Brooks, a consultant and newsletter writer who tracks the Internet-dating industry, the number of seniors joining online dating services has risen at double-digit rates annually since 2003, the most of any age group.
But attitude changes are probably the biggest factor in the expanding social lives of seniors.
A generation ago, romance among the elderly was widely derided, said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist who’s studied dating among older adults.
“Falling in love at an elderly age was seen as somewhere between unwise and dementia,” she said. In the parlance of the day, only “dirty old men” pursued sex. Cohabitation was not just low-class, as the term “shacking up” implied, it was morally “living in sin.”
Today, the elderly find remarriage fraught with headaches: It threatens some pensions. It alarms children worried about inheritances. It comes with love-testing anxiety about liability for a new spouse’s future health costs. So remarriage rates among seniors are flat.
Instead, Schwartz said, “People who wouldn’t have let their daughters into the house if they were cohabiting are now doing the same thing.”
According to Susan Brown, a demographer at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, cohabiting among older people increased 50 percent from 2000 to 2006, based on census figures.
The total — 1.8 million — counts only couples who live together full time and were willing to admit it to census interviewers. Part-time cohabiting — traveling together, sharing a summer house, spending weekends together — is up at least as sharply, according to seniors and people who work with them.
Does anyone in their age group disapprove?
“Maybe in the red states,” sniffed Eve Jacobs, 87, of Friendship Heights, Md., a labor demographer who still publishes in the field.
Opposition is more likely from children whose widowed parents are newly in love, said Joanne Wilder, a Pittsburgh lawyer and the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.
“Many of them take a pretty dim view of this behavior,” she said, and their parents know it. “Matrimonial lawyers see a lot of people looking for ways to break things to the kids,” Wilder continued. “They’ll say, `My daughter will kill me!’ or ‘They really like her, but I don’t think they’d like it if we got married.’ “
Consequently, prenuptial agreements are much discussed at poolside in adult communities. “They make it safe for his kids to like you,” said Linda Stevens, 70, of Arlington, Va.
The children’s acceptance is key to older romances that flourish, said Steve Shields, the chief executive officer of Meadowlark Hills, a resident-governed adult living center in Manhattan, Kan.
“The need for approval and support from their children is really large,” he said. “No matter how deeply they love in late life, the importance of the love of their kids never diminishes.”
Shields is a big fan of late-life romance. “People 65 or 75 who are dating look younger and act younger,” he said. “There’s as much adolescent energy around them as there is around teens, but there’s lots more life savvy. It’s neat to watch.”
The rules of dating among seniors can be as dumb and cruel as those in junior high school, however. That’s because they’re the same ones that people followed when they first dated. For example:
* The older they get, the more senior men favor younger women, according to researchers. The new wrinkle is that senior women choose younger men, too, when they can afford them. Going younger has a downside, said Schwartz, the senior relationship expert. “A lot of men and women who’ve done well are afraid they’ll be loved for their money. But then they go out and marry someone 12 years younger and all but assure it.”
* Good men are hard to find. Unmarried women aged 65 to 74 outnumber men of that age by more than two to one, according to the census. And the disparity grows with age. Pickings can be especially slim in rural communities, said Liz Levaro, a doctoral candidate at Oregon State University in Corvalis who’s writing about new romance among the elderly. Her finding: “If a guy’s got his own teeth and can drive and dance, he’s a hottie.”
* The dynamics of sex remain fraught. When the AARP asked divorced 60-plus men what they liked best about being single, 22 percent answered more sex. Just 1 percent of divorced women that age agreed. Brooks, the Internet dating expert, said seniors’ personal ads often were deceptive about sex and commitment: “Women lie about wanting casual relationships. Men lie about wanting long-term ones.”
That senior relationships work out as well as they do is a tribute to people who know a lot about loving. Having leisure and a little money helps, said Robinson, Kunec’s partner. So does living without obligations, she said, free to be herself entirely.
To explain the last, she told a story:
Her late husband, whom she described as a good, smart man, was the family’s only wage-earner, though they worked hard together to advance his career.
Although frugal, he loved to travel, she said, and once conceived a trip to Ireland that involved swapping houses with a family there.
She located an interested Irish family and they were set to go until a change in regulations on traveling pets made it impossible for Bridey Anne Murphy, the Robinsons’ Kerry blue terrier, to accompany them.
They couldn’t go without the dog, her husband declared. When his wife said she had her heart set on it, he countered: “But where will you get the money?”
She had some money due from census canvassing, she recalled. She borrowed the rest from the bank and went.
The two months on her own in Ireland were magical, she said, not least because, after a lifetime of being someone’s child or wife or mother, she was free to be herself.
“Now I feel like I’m in Ireland every day,” she said.
I like this article that just came out in the Boston Globe. It features just the folks I write for and coach, those singles over 35 or 40 who want to find the love of their lives. Too bad the author didn’t find me, because as you all know, I found my love on Match.com, am a Romance Coach, and am from Maine—so is Stacey Chase! Oh well, maybe next time. But anyway, back to the article. I LOVED how the author treated the gay male couple exactly as she would have a heterosexual couple, right down to the question of getting married. I do think that the women’s expectations of the guys at the dating event were too high. Go easy, ladies. Thye may not see you as that much of a catch, either.
Older, Wiser, and Available The middle-aged dating scene, filled with singles weighing one another’s emotional baggage, isn’t for the weak of heart.
By Stacey Chase
July 27, 2008
IT’S A MONDAY NIGHT AND Gretchen Grufman, a home remodeler with freckles and strawberry-blond hair, has just met eight men in a series of six-minute “predates” - the romantic round robin better known as speed dating - at a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sports bar. There was the soft-spoken, baldheaded Briton; the goateed general contractor who loves ballroom dancing; the 48-year-old grandfather of seven in a suit; and the Harley-riding IT manager who divorced a second time three months ago. * Single since 1992, Grufman is herself twice divorced with two grown sons. “I’ve been engaged a few times, but I haven’t worked up the courage to get married again,” says the 55-year-old who recently moved to Amesbury from Wells, Maine. Still, middle-aged dating is not for the faint of heart. Baby boomers like her, born between 1946 and 1964, are more likely than previous generations were to find themselves - graying and with badly bruised egos - on the youth-obsessed dating scene. The high incidence of divorce, declining marriage rates, and longer life spans have contributed to the single-boomer phenomenon. An AARP analysis of 2007 US Census Bureau data found that of the 76.7 million baby boomers, 18.5 percent were divorced or separated, 10.6 percent had never married, and 2.8 percent were widowed, making nearly a third of the generation (24.5 million) single.
“Fifty, 60 years ago, dating among this age group would be unheard of,” says 46-year-old Mary Elizabeth Hughes, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University and coauthor of a 2004 study The Lives and Times of the Baby Boomers. “Most people would already be married, and if they weren’t married they probably weren’t dating.”
For those looking for love with like-minded and like-aged people today, it’s a brave new world often complicated by love-gone-wrong histories with ex-spouses or lovers, and by children and grandchildren, dependent elderly parents, careers, health problems, and emotional baggage that won’t fit into the overhead compartment. Framingham State College sociology professor Virginia Rutter says all that can be good: “The baggage is actually part of what makes the person you’re with a human being, and you have this opportunity to connect with them in the middle of the plot of their story.”
Many older daters, like those at the speed-dating event sponsored by Cupid.com/PreDating, are embracing Cupid and other online dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com. Though helped along by modern technology, much of the conversation Monday night was painfully predictable: weather and work. One man mentioned the diarrhea outbreak at his mother’s assisted-living facility. Another told Grufman afterward that he’d frequented a strip club in her old town.
Sally LaRochelle, a 49-year-old two-time divorcee and administrative assistant in Dover, New Hampshire, sporting ultra short white hair and dark-rimmed glasses, was turned off by the potential suitors. “On a scale of one to 10 . . . they’re probably like twos,” she says. “They seemed a little desperate, and some of them just seemed to be too old.”
The newly re-divorced IT manager, Charlie Petrikas, 56, from South Berwick, Maine, confesses: “I still think I do need to heal a bit, but I don’t want to sit around.”
Susan Fox owns Personals Work in the South End, a matchmaking service that provides its largely female boomer clientele with tools such as ghostwriting personal ads and flirting and style tips for finding a mate. Says Fox: “I’ve even told women who’ve come in that they need to color their hair.” She helps singles to first figure out who they are and what they’re seeking - physical characteristics, occupation, religion, interests, smoking habits - and then create a list of “non-negotiables” for Mr. or Ms. Right, often disregarding a client’s “wish list.” (One client rattled off 142 deal breakers and, needless to say, was not a success story.)
Her advice? Forget love at first sight. Take a second look - and a third, and a fourth.
“We’re not all pulled together with the same level of hormonal urgency that we were when we were 27 or 33,” says the 50-something Fox. “People really need to be able to say, `OK. I like this person well enough to see him or her again and see if something develops here.’”
Bostonian Beverly Summer is a slender brunette in her mid-40s, never married, childless, Ivy League-educated, and runs her own financial-services company. “If I were a guy,” she quips, “I would be the most eligible bachelor in Boston.”
Having tried everything from charity events to pub crawls, Summer turned to Personals Work two years ago in her hard-charging hunt for a husband. Since then, she has viewed dozens of profiles and dated two men from Match.com, going out for several months with each of them, but she still hasn’t met The One. “There’s no science to it,” she says. “It’s a just a matter of time, kissing frogs.”
THEY SPARKED THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION, but for many boomers - those in the first wave are turning 62, while late boomers are hitting 44 this year - reentering the dating game, sometimes after decades, or continuing to search despite long odds, is both unnerving and liberating in ways that hooking up in their younger days was not. “The romance of your 20s - whether you actually decide to have children or not - is the script about how, especially in the heterosexual ideal, we get together, and we make a family, and we have our little dream world,” says the 44-year-old Rutter, who became a widow at age 35. “That is no longer on the table when you’re in your 40s, 50s, and 60s.”
By shedding stereotypical gender roles, Rutter says, midlifers have a lot more freedom to be themselves, and romance becomes less of a fantasy than a practicality that involves negotiating complexities such as child-custody arrangements, retirement planning, and medical directives. “That isn’t less romantic,” she says, “but the romance is different.”
Michael Walsh, a 50-year-old landscape designer in Braintree, and his partner, David Richman, 52, of Aventura, Florida, had a whirlwind courtship after viewing each other’s profiles on Match.com on October 2, 2006. That Monday night, they exchanged e-mails. Tuesday morning, they talked by phone. On Friday, Walsh was picking up Richman, a commercial property manager, at Logan Airport. By Sunday, they were in love.
The blissful pair, who currently maintain separate homes in their respective states (and another in Seattle), are together roughly 70 percent of the time. They have yet to decide whether they’ll marry, or to work out the logistics - primarily their careers and assets - in order to live in the same city. “My home is where David is,” Walsh says, “and his home is where I am.”
“It’s such a relief [not to be looking anymore] because that was my life - I was always looking for a partner,” continues Walsh, who eats only organic food and advertised himself on Match as Upbeat Buddhist Jock Seeks Attachment. “Other people stop looking; they give up.”
Boomers still on a quest for a mature, meaningful relationship say they have learned from their mistakes and heartaches and - though the peer dating pool is significantly smaller - seem to even cherish the peculiar bittersweetness of middle-aged love: that the biological urge to reproduce is typically over, that expectations of love are more realistic, that women tend to have a greater level of equality, that partners understand neither person will be molded to fit the other’s desires.
“With the mush comes the gloom,” Richman says. “I want to be able to be naked in front of somebody . . . and be completely comfortable. And naked in even more than the physical sense, emotionally be naked.”
Annie McCormick, a 51-year-old graphic artist in Burlington, Vermont, has had her heart repeatedly ripped out in a series of long-term, monogamous relationships since her 1984 divorce. “I tend to choose men who have addiction problems,” she says. “One cheated. One was violent. One was an alcoholic who drank. And, then, the last one was a pothead.”
McCormick blames herself, not the men. “I’m not honest from the start, as far as: `This is me. These are my needs,’ “ she says, “I’m a people pleaser.” Five years ago, after she and her last, live-in boyfriend split, McCormick says she “kind of went into hiding” but is timorously ready to seek love again. “I do get lonely lately, a little bit.”
Boomers, who took the first birth-control pills and campaigned for women’s rights, are leading active sex lives, surveys show, but those out of practice and on the prowl can be as nervous as fumbling teenagers when it comes to physical intimacy. “Generally, for people who are widowed or gone through a really painful divorce, there’s a fear,” says Fox, the matchmaker and a trained psychologist. Others are free-lovebirds who want “to get back out there and have sex to kind of get them in the swing of things again.”
“I’ve worked with women clients who regularly have sex on the first date!” she adds. “And older boomers!”
In 2004, a sexuality study by AARP revealed that slightly more than a third of the midlife and older respondents - and half of those with regular sexual partners - reported having sexual intercourse once a week or more. In addition, 53 percent said they engage in sexual touching or caressing, while 69 percent reported they kiss or hug their partner on a regular basis.
Leonard Steinhorn, a communications professor at American University and author of The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy, predicts boomers will continue to transform American society even as they age. “Boomers are going to also reinvent the idea of what it means to be elderly,” says the 52-year-old former political speechwriter. “They’re going to look at being elderly as being vital, as vigorous, as still irreverent. Boomers are going to grow old but stay young.”
They may, or may not, decide one is the loneliest number. Cathy Chamberlain, a 59-year-old human resources manager in South Burlington, Vermont, has had boyfriends but never gotten married or had children and says she’s committed to her singlehood. “The loss I feel is more the sense of family,” she says. “I have it with a variety of girlfriends - you create your own family - and I just don’t know what that’s going to look like 10, 15 years from now.”
Meanwhile, Grufman, the speed dater from Amesbury, continues her pursuit of a mate. On her Cupid.com score card, she selected the option “Let’s Talk!” over “No Thanks” for five of the eight men she’d recently met; three men indicated they would like to hear from her again. (She believes some of them didn’t pick her because they thought she was an actress or model hired as a ringer.)
“My uncles, and my dad, and my grandfathers all treated their wives like they were on pedestals,” Grufman says. “I don’t really expect to be on a pedestal, but I sure expect to be treated pretty good.”
Looking wistful in a dark corner of the bar, she adds: “I’m not an unhappy person, but I definitely don’t want to grow old alone.”
This article below is a bit misnamed, because it’s about singles who have never been married before meeting up and marrying when they are over 45, not about singles over 45 finding love. We know that the over-45’s have been finding love, but it is interesting to see that older never-marrieds are saying the vows. I have viewed never marrieds over 45 or 50 with some suspicion, particularly if the proposed partner has been coupled or married before. Long time singles have not had the chance to learn what is only possible to learn when you are grappling with a real partner in real time and space. I suppose if neither partner has been married or attached before, then they are on fairly similar footing (little relationship experience). The positives are that career concerns, money, and the question of children are pretty much decided by then. What do you think?
More singles finding love after age 45
By SHARON JAYSON
USA TODAY
When she was still single in her 40s, Debra Siegel made a list of qualities for her yet-elusive perfect husband: honest, family-oriented, a hard worker and physically fit.
But the years passed and the list went unfulfilled.
“When I hit 50, the bells went off,” she says. “I didn’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.”
That’s when she took what she calls “drastic action.” Her future husband, Dan Furlin, was of a similar mind.
“I didn’t think marriage was in the picture for me,” he says. “Once you hit 50, you don’t want to go through the rest of life without your soul mate. I was a little bit more aggressive.”
Both went the online dating route and met within months. The Dunedin, Fla., couple are both fitness-conscious and vegetarian. They were also both natives of New York state, and each had lived in Los Angeles. They moved to Florida — Furlin to Clearwater and Siegel to Orlando — before meeting online. They married in 2003.
Siegel-Furlin, 56, and Furlin, 58, are among a small but growing group of older adults marrying for the first time after age 45. Years ago, these older singles would have been known as the “spinster” neighbor or the confirmed “bachelor” friend.
But now, longer life spans mean 50 is the new 30 — there’s plenty of life ahead.
That, coupled with the baby boomer “never-wanna-be-old” attitude and a greater number of aging singles in the population, makes it more likely that those who want to marry actually will.
A USA TODAY analysis of Census records of Americans ages 45-55 shows that the percentage of those who said they had never been married in 2006 had doubled since 1990, and the percentage of those who were currently married had dropped by 9 percent.
It’s fairly difficult to get a real handle on this segment of the singles population because no federal entity tracks first marriages at specific ages. The closest count is the median age at first marriage, which in 2006 (the latest year for which data are available) was at its highest point: men at 27.5 and women at 25.5, according to the U.S. Census.
A tally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is available just for a 20-year period, 1970 to 1990, shows that in 1990, only 0.4 percent of women and 0.6 percent of men married for the first time at ages 45 to 49.
According to the most recent data from the federal Survey of Income and Program Participation, which includes marriage, 13 percent of those who wed in 2003 were 45 and older.
Internet dating has largely made it possible for many of these later-life first marriages. It’s only in recent years that some sites have started monitoring that demographic.
Among them is Yahoo Personals, based in Santa Clara, Calif., which reports a 33 percent increase from January 2006 to November 2007 among users ages 45 and over who say they have never been married.
Since 2005, Match.com reports an increase of almost 10 percent of new members 45 and older and who have never been married; these now make up almost 14 percent of its members.
New patterns, new people
“As people get older, they tend to find themselves in fairly established patterns, so the ability to meet new people goes down over time. They’ve got to do something new if they want to meet different people,” says Craig Wax of Dallas, senior vice president and general manager for Match.com for North America.
Brian Lebowitz, 57, and Lise Goldman, 53, were married earlier this month. They met online almost two years ago and found out at the time that they lived within blocks of each other. Lebowitz, an attorney, lives in Washington, D.C. Goldman, who works in economic development, now lives in suburban Chevy Chase, Md.
Lebowitz says his job and his hobby as a book collector took up most of his free time. But when he turned 55, he decided to give online dating a shot.
“I’d pretty much given up, but then thought I would give it a try and see what it was like,” he says. “Some people — myself included — would be more comfortable starting off communication by e-mail rather than going up to somebody at a party. It’s a less threatening way to go about it.”
Goldman says she always wanted to be married. She had been engaged twice — once in her mid-20s and again more than a decade ago — but she says it just wasn’t right until she met Lebowitz, whom she says is intelligent and kindhearted.
“There are wonderful people still out there who are hiding away in their work,” she says. “He’s an international lawyer, so he needs to work evenings a lot. That’s been one of the blessings that kept him away from the dating scene.”
Dating Web sites have been reinventing themselves since online dating took off in the mid-1990s. They’ve refined their methods, largely emphasizing a more scientific approach, which often includes compatibility and personality testing.
Others have focused on niche marketing, including Spark Networks, whose online dating sites include JDate for Jewish singles, as well as CatholicMingle.com, InterracialSingles.net, BlackSingles.com, LatinSinglesConnection.com and PrimeSingles.net. That site, as well as lavalifePRIME and BOOMj.com, is among those offering social networking for these older singles.
Guys, women of all ages find it creepy when you state that you are looking for a female partner 10 or more years younger than you are. It’s not uncommon to see profiles where men are looking for a woman half their age or less. While women who are age mates of the guys in question find the desires for young and nubile flesh offensive, so do the young women in question. The most common explanation is that the guys have money to offer in exchange for youth and beauty: that in itself is creepy. Not a far step from what made Eliot Spitzer lose his job.
Fellas, get real: Take a look at your license and figure out how old you are, and then go out and take a good look at women in the range of 5 years on either side of your own age. That is your target market, women most likely to appreciate you, along with your wrinkles and gray hair. They’ll also understand why you don’t want to go to night clubs, have to take Viagra, and don’t want to support them while they finish their education.
Read below an excerpt from a piece by Moniqa Paullet, a young 20-something, about approaches from older men:
Age is more than just a number in relationships
By: Moniqa Paullet
Everyone has heard the adage “Age is just a number.” Young women use it to prove they aren’t immature idiots and older men to show they are not creepy or lecherous. There is some truth to it in that every individual is at a different place in life and cannot necessarily be lumped into the stereotypes of a particular age group. I’ve met some more mature people my age once or twice.
But on the same note, every individual is different and should be judged individually without the bias the lines on a face may instill.
Does that mean I’m so open-minded as to be flattered by middle-aged men checking out my online profiles on networking sites? No.
Simply put, a 21-year-old woman is definitely in a different place in her life than an older person and is going to need different things from a relationship than he needs or is looking for.
I plan to graduate in May and go on to graduate school, better myself through education and hopefully learn more about myself and what I want in life along the way. Though smart and often mistaken for someone in her mid to late-20s because of my demeanor, I am not looking for a mature, committed relationship because I do not even know what I really want from a relationship yet. I do know I don’t want to help someone have a good time and feel young again.
I’m sorry to judge like that. And I’m also sorry if you are different and you are on a much younger emotional level than your years belie because I’m pretty sure I don’t want to help you grow up either.
Some will forever argue age is nothing more than a number, but it’s still a pretty good indicator of where a person is or ought to be in his or her life and needs in the dating world.
I try to be open-minded, but I still think people ought to at least act their age.
If you are over 40 and don’t think that that online dating “works,” take a look at the piece below, the “Vows" section of the Sunday New York Times, March 23. Diane Cole and Philip Barnett found each other on JDate in 2002. Now 55 and 61 respectively, they had each been married and widowed. If you can still access the Times article, take a look at the little video that accompanies the write-up. It’s sweet, but you’ll get to see that these are two ordinary people with an extraordinary story.
You’ll also get a perspective on the experience of a 50ish widower on a dating site: These guys are pretty popular. Just like pretty women under 35, single men, particularly those who are widowed or divorced, are desirable commodities. Older men who have been married tend to like being so, and will go about getting themselves married again in pretty short order. As Philip says in the video, there are many more widows than widowers, so even though ideally, men and women should have some time between a divorce or death and a remarriage, these folks are good risks, since they are experienced at being coupled and want to do it again.
Vows
Diane Cole and Philip Barnett
By SANDEE BRAWARSKY
WHEN an armed band of American Muslim militants invaded several buildings in Washington on March 9, 1977, Diane Cole, then 24, became one of more than 100 hostages. The gunmen threatened to decapitate captives before she and the others were released 39 hours later.
As Ms. Cole sat in fear, pondering her fate, Philip Barnett was in Spring Valley, N.Y., and unable to sleep; his wife’s uncle was also one of the hostages. He recently recalled how he had wondered about the others being held, and how he had prayed for all of them. Dr. Barnett, now 61, would eventually come to know Ms. Cole, 55, but only after they both found themselves widowed and alone after long marriages.
Even before those frightening hours in Washington, Ms. Cole, who became an author and a contributing editor for U.S. News & World Report, had been tempered by heartbreak. Her first husband, Peter Baida, nearly died of cancer while they were dating as students at Harvard. As Mr. Baida fought for his life, her mother died of cancer. From that crucible came her 1992 memoir, “After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges.”
That book ended on a note of optimism. Yet for a living memoirist, there are always new chapters. When Mr. Baida died in 1999, he left her with a 10-year-old son, Edward, and a message: grief should not trump joy.
“All the things she has endured could have crushed someone with less fortitude and spirit,” her cousin Judy Rousuck said. It was two years before she was ready to “move away from the cold terrain of grief,” Ms. Cole said. “I wanted warming up. I wanted romance.”
She turned to the Web, but men she encountered were filled with bitterness about past relationships. “I needed someone who spoke in tones less bitter and more sweet,” she said.
When she saw Dr. Barnett’s online profile in April 2002, she sent him an e-mail message. In his response, he offered understanding, noting that his own son and daughter were grown when his wife, Sarah, died, whereas Ms. Cole was left to fend for a young child. He also explained he was busily fielding e-mail from other women. “I never had such attention,” he wrote. “I married the only girl I ever dated, and the only one who really spoke to me.”
Nevertheless, they began an e-mail exchange that uncovered that both had longstanding interests in baseball, classical music and Jewish philosophy. But when she offered her phone number, he replied, “I feel more comfortable writing rather than speaking.”
In that same exchange he again mentioned the long list of women, but then dangled encouragement. “Few of these women are as interesting as you are,” he wrote.
In May they agreed to meet for dinner on the Upper East Side. For her, it was “comfort at first sight,” she said. Before parting she gave him a copy of her memoir, which Dr. Barnett, a professor and science reference librarian at City College in Manhattan, stayed up into that night reading.
They started seeing each other regularly, sometimes with Edward. Ms. Cole was touched by Dr. Barnett’s “sweetness, honesty, modesty and sense of humor, not to mention his intellectual curiosity,” she recalled. Comfort and healing grew to love, leading the three of them to take trips to Iceland and Norway.
“Diane has a big heart; we’re so compatible,” Dr. Barnett said. “She teaches me Shakespeare. I teach her science. I didn’t think I’d ever be happy again, and I am.”
Last summer they decided to marry. Explaining the timing, Ms. Cole said: “As a mother, my priority was to see my son settled into college life. And then we decided it was time for us to move into the next phase of our lives, too.”
Rabbi Julie Schonfeld led the couple’s ceremony at Bayard’s in Manhattan’s financial district, a party space in a 19th-century mansion that is filled with nautical accents. Ms. Cole, in an off-white cream satin Escada gown with gold sequin straps, stood with Dr. Barnett under the wedding canopy, bringing together past and present for their future.
The parents of her late husband sat up front as Ms. Cole, who wears their son’s wedding band on her right hand, held out a forefinger, on which Dr. Barnett placed the band once worn by her late mother. (The Baidas refer to Dr. Barnett as “their new son-in-law.”) The bride then gave Dr. Barnett a wedding band, one from his first marriage.
“Although many people already thought of us as an old married couple, we wanted to affirm in public our love for each other and this unexpected happiness in our lives,” the bride said before the March 9 ceremony, which happened to fall 31 years after the siege in Washington. “Now I can reframe the anniversary from one of terror to one of joy.”
More and more 50’s and older are turning to the Internet when it comes to looking for love. See the article below about PerfectMatch. Mark Brooks of OnlinePersonalsWatch Match, eHarmony and Lavalife have also experienced double digit growth in the 50+ segment. I have underlined parts of the article that I think are most interesting.
Dating Site Seeks Same Audience as Grandparents.com
By Brian Steinberg
Published: February 08, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com)—Think about online dating, and what likely comes to mind are 20-somethings trolling web pages in the hopes of finding a love connection. But increasingly, those trollers are more like 50-somethings, single baby boomers looking for dates.
That’s why during Valentine’s Day week, online-dating service Perfectmatch.com will be woven into “Another Chance for Romance,” a dating show aimed at boomers on Retirement Living TV, a niche channel that appears on DirecTV and Comcast. Perfectmatch CEO Duane Dahl said the site has seen a 60% spike in the 50-plus audience from 2005 to 2006, and estimated growth of 140% in the 50-plus audience for 2006 to 2007.
That doesn’t surprise John Erickson, Retirement Living’s founder, who believes older consumers are more dynamic than marketers care to admit. “If you approach these people with ‘Murder, She Wrote’ reruns and ‘Matlock’ or ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and think that’s going to satisfy them for the next 25 years, you’re missing the biggest opportunity in the market,” he said.
Importance of individualization
Consumers over 50 do represent a big opportunity, but more often than not, advertisers treat them all exactly the same. Studies have found that marketers over-generalize, misrepresent and sometimes ignore the generation, lumping them together and, in the process, alienating them. “The longer that marketers keep treating [boomers] as a huge mass as opposed to individuals, the longer it’s going to take them to enter the market,” said Jody Quinn, exec VP-general manager of the Boomer Insights Generation Group at Edelman, which did the latest study.
Market-research firm Yankelovich has identified at least six different flavors of boomer, ranging from “due diligents,” who think ahead and plan for the worst, to “re-activists,” who want to support social causes and do all they can to fix them before age makes it difficult. There are other challenges to navigate as well: A “mature” consumer in his or her 70s should not be approached in the same way as a recent retiree. “There are some really big differences,” said Gerald Carrafiello, president of Carrafiello Diehl & Associates, an Irvington, N.Y., agency that has studied marketing to older consumers.
Going at older consumers by mining a particular niche interest seems to be a way for some emerging media to lure advertisers. Mr. Erickson, a retirement-community magnate, launched Retirement Living TV in September of 2006. Filled with programs such as “The Prudent Advisor” and “Healthline,” the network has attracted the likes of Pfizer and Prudential, who seek consumers 55 years or older that are active in retirement. The channel can appeal to a broader audience, said Gig Barton, VP-advertising sales and sponsorships, but the focus is concentrated on people looking forward to retirement or those who have recently retired and are looking to stay active.
Savvy grandparents
Grandparents.com, a website aimed at baby boomers with grandchildren, has attracted ads from Johnson & Johnson and Hasbro, said Jerry Shereshewsky, CEO, Grandparents.com. The toymaker is not your typical elder marketer, but is based on the principle that grandparents tend to buy lots of toys for the kids. The site has about 35,000 registered users and about 150,000 unique visitors per month, he said.
AARP also targets different segments of its membership with its eponymous magazine. In 2001, the group decided to publish two different magazines, “My Generation” and “MM: Modern Maturity” aimed at the 55 age group and the other for 56-65 and 66 plus, said Hugh Delehanty, editor in chief of AARP Publications. Two years later, the group found that more readers were familiar with the organization’s name, AARP, and the magazines was rechristened just that, though different versions are published for different age segments—50-59, 60-69, and 70 plus—with about 25% of each version’s content varied according to target.
In years past, older consumers were looked upon as doddering, addled or even useless. Clearly, that view is changing, as seen in recent Ameriprise commercials that feature actor Dennis Hopper casting aside the traditional idea of retirement. But not all retirees or elders are the same, and marketers will have to focus as closely on them in the near future as they do on their younger counterparts. “Young marketers perceive someone to be ‘over the hill’ at 57; the 50-plus consumer perceives someone to be ‘over the hill’ at 75. So the people doing the marketing don’t truly understand the demographic they’re targeting,” said Jennifer Kaltia, a marketing consultant who has studied older consumers.
This article is an eye-opener for the men out there. When we think of risk on the Internet, we tend to think of women, but according to this piece, men are more likely to be targeted than women, and if you are over 55, you are six times more likely to be approached by scammers than young folks. Of course, older folks would likely be perceived as having more money, and also, they may be more naive about computers and the Net than those who have grown up with them. I’ve noticed that men are far less concerned about safety than women and often give out their identity and phone numbers in the first email. Men, guys get scammed too. You need to be as careful as women have been taught to be.
Web dating scams target older men
Candace Grigsby
Older men most at risk of web dating attacks Men over the age of 55 are the group most vulnerable to money-based scams when internet dating, according to a survey by GetSafeOnline.org.
The internet advice website claims that 25 per cent of men aged 55 and over have been targeted by cyber-criminals, compared to 12 per cent of women. Both groups are six times more likely to be targeted by scammers than 25-34 year olds.
The survey says that, in total, almost a fifth of internet daters have been approached for money while online. Internet fraudsters repeatedly mention their financial difficulties, exploiting the sympathy of online daters in an attempt to extract money.
Victims open themselves up to attacks by revealing personal information when using dating sites, including details about their job and where they live. Sixty-two per cent of people use their real name in their dating profiles, further increasing the risk of identity fraud.
GetSafeOnline.org has teamed up with relationship expert Tracey Cox to raise awareness of staying safe when dating online.
“When you’re looking at a computer screen, it’s much easier to feel relaxed about the person you’re exchanging messages with, which can be a positive way of getting to know someone before you have the pressure of a ‘real’ date. But, just as in the real world, there are people on these sites who you’re better off avoiding,” says Cox.
“Remembering this, along with the advice we are giving to online daters, can help make sure your online dating experience is a positive one,” she added.
Tips on staying safe when dating online
• Choose a well-run, reputable online dating service which will provide some additional safety. For example, look for a site that will protect your anonymity until you choose to reveal personal information
• Online dating is about having fun, but do be careful about how you portray yourself in your profile. For example, using sexual connotations in your online name or email address might get you noticed, but it also signals that you may be less cautious than other members and might attract the wrong people
• Don’t post personal information. Wait until you feel comfortable with an individual before telling them things like your phone number or place of work or address.
• Never give out your bank account details or any other financial information
• Don’t let anyone pressure you into giving away more information than you want to
• Beware of solicitation – watch out for anyone offering financial advice or asking for charitable contributions
• Even if you’re arranging to meet someone, do not give out any unnecessary personal details such as your home address
• If you feel unsure or threatened by someone’s behaviour, stop contact with them immediately
This is an absolutely WONDERFUL story about and online hookup that worked, despite all indications to the contrary. Note that this was the author’s first date, it got off to an abysmal start, yet somehow, it worked. It’s a good testimony for hanging in beyond first impressions.
My cyber valentine Click this link to see a picture of Ann Schmidt-Fogarty and her now-husband
The computer and chemistry created an online love match
By Ann Schmidt-Fogarty/Reporter Correspondent
It was my first date in 10 years and he was 30 minutes late. “Not good,” I muttered to myself as I tried to look dignified, worldly and at home in the middle of a bustling Indian restaurant while feeling as conspicuous as a neon sign screaming, “Blind date reject!”
Sympathetic glances from my waiter told me he saw all the bright, flashing lights.
While waiting, I cursed myself for going on an Internet date with a man I had never seen. He e-mailed me and said he was 67. He added that he was intrigued that I was 17 years younger. And my tardy date didn’t give me a clue as to what he looked like, describing himself as “average.’
However, I also noted that he had lived and worked all over the world, and that intrigued me. His James Bond-like voice over the phone piqued my interest as well.
But, of course, now reality was setting in and every older, pot-bellied and badly balding man who bumbled into the restaurant increased my intense regret.
What was I doing? Didn’t I have a happy life without a man? What if the guy walks with a shuffle, taped-together glasses and needs a bib during dinner? Don’t serial killers disguise themselves as “average”?
Five more minutes and I’m outta here.
I had flashbacks to exactly why I decided to try this kind of dating in the first place. I was a busy public relations executive in Sacramento who never had time to do much more than TV and take-out after work. And I was reasonably happy with that. But, during a weekend stay with my younger sister, I heard a bit of hard truth. She had strong, uncharitable words about my lifestyle.
“You’re getting weird,” she told me gravely.
“I think you need to make your personal life ‘bigger.’ So I want you to do me a favor,” she continued. “Try to go out on a few dates and have a little fun. And, if you try the Internet thing, I will too.”
Seeing it more as a sisterly project than a real effort to find companionship, I got online and gave it a whirl.
According to the most recent online dating statistics, consumers have spent well over $300 million annually on paid personals and Internet dating sites. And countless commercials by services such as eHarmony and Match.com make it more and more socially acceptable to give it a try.
And I fit the Internet profile. Older Americans are among the fastest-growing segment of the online dating scene. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, millions from 50- to 65-plus are seeking permanent valentines through personals sites.
A long questionnaire asked me everything from my feelings about the outdoors (I like cities) to the level of my devotion to housekeeping (or my lack thereof). Food, attitudes about gender and even thoughts about world events were part of the survey, as well as attitudes about money, the arts and my temperament. About 45 minutes after I completed the survey, the information was tabulated and the “matches” popped up. Thus, I became a potential Internet dater.
And my “match” finally arrived after being caught in traffic. He didn’t look a thing like an older James Bond. Not at first, anyway.
In walked an advertisement for ironing boards and crafty barbers. Wrinkled, tussled and, yet, charmingly apologetic, Wilson Fogarty sat across from me, cocked his head, smiled, took my hands in his and uttered words that I repeat back to him to this day.
“You bite your nails,” he said dreamily. Looking at his over-laundered red polo shirt and unfashionable ice blue shorts, I answered, cleverly, “So?”
The date went downhill from there. Ordering every Indian delicacy known to man, Wilson happily tucked into a meal fit for three kings and all their concubines. With the table groaning from the weight of the food, and his habit of eating “Indian-style” (with his hands), I tried to ignore the incredulous glances from our neighbors and I silently practiced my early excuses to leave the restaurant: a sick bird, a phony bleeding ulcer or maybe a suicidal neighbor who needed checking on.
I am not really able to tell you precisely what transpired in the weeks, months and years following that date. I can only say it didn’t have much to do with computers and statistics. Or maybe it did. People often comment about our chemistry, and who am I to say that we don’t have the 29 points of compatibility that our online service advertises?
It’s that intangible thing that most of us want - a certain alchemy that, if we’re lucky, we get to experience once or twice in our lifetimes.
We proposed to each other and got married in 2006 at Fairfield City Hall. He catered our reception. Curiously, no Indian food was involved.
And, as corny as it sounds, in certain lighting, I’ve been noticing that Wilson bears a remarkable resemblance to James Bond.
• Ann Schmidt-Fogarty is a public relations consultant in Vacaville. Ann’s sister, Mary, also found love on the Internet at almost exactly the same time.
If you are a bald but hairy guy with a few years under your belt, it may pay for you to head to Britain if you are looking for a lady. According to the survey done by Parship (a British online dating site), British women in general and older British women in particular find balding men with body hair (even on their backs) sexy. Though the London women seem to prefer guys who defuzz. Yankee ladies, what’s your opinion?
Hairy Hunks Find More Favour with British Women
Older women lead the way in preferring men with body hair
Press Dispensary - February 12, 2008 - UK women are leading the trend in Europe for the return of the real man, according to a new survey by online matchmaking firm PARSHIP (http://parship.co.uk). In comparison to women in other European countries, British women are more intensely attracted to a man with body hair and as she gets older her desire for a hairy hunk increases.
One in three (34%) British women say they’d go for a man in the classic virile mould of Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan or Tom Jones, outnumbering the one in four women who’d prefer the smoother option offered by current heartthrobs like Daniel Craig, Johnny Wilkinson and Colin Farrell – a look that has been described as ‘waxed within an inch of their life’. This is in stark contrast to women in other countries of Western Europe, where 31% prefer hairless heroes and just 22% opt for hirsute. David Hasselhoff might be a star in Germany, but a mere 11% of the country’s women would like the thought of smearing sun cream on his hairy chest.
For British women over 30, a hairy man is the acme of masculinity and a smooth body just won’t do. As women get older their desire for body hair in the opposite sex increases. Six in ten (62%) of women over 45 say they find a man with body hair very attractive, compared to just 24% of women under 25. It also happens that a hairy man’s appeal increases the further north you go in the UK – maybe it’s something to do with insulation from cold winds.
Of the 6,500 women polled by PARSHIP, it also found that a lack of hair on a man’s head was not an obstacle to UK women. Just 11% said they wouldn’t date a follicly challenged man, compared to 17% of French and 16% of Italian women.
Dr Victoria Lukats, psychiatrist and dating expert for PARSHIP.co.uk, comments: “The interesting finding from this survey was that women in the UK, compared to other countries in Europe, are more embracing of men with either body hair (including hair on the back) and of male-pattern baldness. It’s also notable that women are more accepting of male body hair as they yet older – this is just as well since it’s well known that testosterone (in combination with genetic factors) leads to both male-pattern baldness and increasing body hair with increasing age. It looks like follicly-challenged men don’t have to be self-concious after all – the vast majority of women simply don’t see it as an issue.”
The hairy hotspots – where females prefer hairy hunks are as follows:
Scotland – 47%
North – 38%
South – 35%
London – 25%
Midlands and Wales – 33%
The bald spots - women who wouldn’t date a bald man are:
South – 2%
Scotland – 4%
Midlands and Wales – 12%
North – 15%
London – 27%
A couple of months ago, Drew and I started to get the New York Times delivered to our doorstep on Sunday morning, not an easy feat in Tallahassee in a brand new neighborhood that even Mapquest has trouble finding. It felt like such a luxury—not only our paltry Tallahassee Democrat for slow Sunday mornings, but also the New York Times, and we didn’t even have to go to Starbucks to get it. I make a perfectly acceptable skinny latte right in my own kitchen.
I particularly enjoy the NYT Magazine, and that’s what I started with this morning, leafing through it, though not reading (except for The Ethicist, who sometimes I agree with and sometimes I don’t). I’d go back to read later...but, the last page “Lives” got me: How could it not? The title was “Cybercourting.” That’s my bidness, as they say in the South. Here is Laurie Kasparian’s description of her online dating experience and the payoff for hanging in there:
Cybercourting
NYT 2/10.2008
By LAURIE KASPARIAN
“O.K.,” I told my best friend, “there’s this guy online I think I have to go out with.” It wasn’t said with the enthusiasm of one who finds love at first sight over the Internet. It was with a sigh, more than a modicum of dread and the appropriate amount of resignation that I admitted this to her, my happily married friend who found it all too easy to urge me to “get out there” and date.
I was 55, 15 years divorced, and this Internet campaign took all the pluck I could possibly muster. But all the other avenues had dried up — blind dates, volunteer groups, classes, professional contacts (bars were never an option). The site I used would send me matches, and all I had to do was read about them and “start communication” or “close” them out. Mostly I closed — square-dancers, Fess Parker fans, TV-fishing-show hosts and fathers of three preteens. But once in a great while someone came along who had no zapworthy traits.
I was a year into the search when this particular guy came along: Steve. It wasn’t that he sounded like the love of my life; it was that I could find no valid reason to reject him. My friend kept me very honest about this. She was in favor of kissing every single frog, and I dutifully ran my matches past her for a second screening. Steve, she enthusiastically agreed, had potential, and I knew what I had to do — “start communication.”
Our initial online interchanges went well. Steve asked what I thought the three most important qualities of a lasting marriage were, and I waxed eloquent on two of them, then gave up trying to impress him and just blurted out the third, “a killer sex life.” He told me his sons were both voted “best hair” in high school. “I am so proud,” he quipped. “They have worked so hard.” Questions and answers flew across the ether. But our schedules prevented us from meeting, so instead we moved up to the phone. Nightly calls lengthened to three hours and more as we hungered for and found common experiences and intimacy and trust. This was heady. But we still hadn’t met. We had the online photos, and we quizzed each other on our looks, but I wasn’t sure I would be attracted to him in person.
On the day we finally had our first date, I was having a major case of the vapors. My anxiety would settle for a moment, and then the thought of our meeting would set it off again. He seemed just as nervous. We each had mentioned that we had sensitive stomachs, so when he said, “You know we won’t go out to eat,” it didn’t sound as if he was cheap or weird.
Our rendezvous was at a bookstore in Newport Beach. I was to find my favorite book, and he was to find me. Was this cheesy or romantic? More troublesome was what book to pick. I did not want to be pretentious, superficial or predictable. I finally went with my true choice, “The Sound and the Fury.” I love its tale of the disintegration of a family in the South, and I especially love one line in the appendix, in which Faulkner gives all manner of family history. When it comes to the black family servants, he merely says of them all, “They endured.” It always touched me.
I nervously stood, book in hand, awaiting Steve’s arrival. I finally sat down in the aisle, leaned against the books, read lazily. I would see his sneakers approaching first, I thought. Finally they did. I looked up, saw what I felt was an old friend, jumped up and gave him a little hug. “Are you nervous?” he asked. “Not anymore,” I replied. “Me, either,” he said. “Let’s see what you picked.” I showed him the book. He took it in his hand. “Good choice,” he said. “Isn’t this the book that ends with something like ‘they endured’?”
We took the ferry across Newport Harbor, walked along the strand, talking and stealing glances. He didn’t look much like the picture. He was clearly older, decidedly heavier. Different glasses. We finally did decide to eat, and shared pictures of our kids as we did. It was clear he loved his children heart and soul. I liked that. Still, he seemed rather shy and stiff. Our phone calls had become very intimate, yet he steered clear of any intimacy now. I could tell he liked me, even though he did not smile much. I felt uncertain.
On the way back across the ferry, we were silent for the first time that night. He hadn’t touched me at all. Sitting side by side, I impulsively leaned against him, shoulder to shoulder, and stayed there. It was comfortable, and I felt him relax. “How many people do you have to call tonight to tell about our date?” he casually asked. I counted up in my head: “Nine.” “Great,” he said, “the Supreme Court.” As we parted, he turned to me and said, “Thanks for the lean.” I smiled and realized bargains are made in an instant. For my part, I could see I had to start rearranging the old furniture in my head to make room for this strangely familiar stranger. Three years later, we endure.
Laurie Kasparian is a high-school English teacher in Irvine, Calif.
If you wonder what folks over 50 do for fun, here’s a great article about a new study published recently by the “New England Journal of Medicine.” Looks like those folks (and I’m in that age group) are having sex.
Best, Kathryn
Survey: Seniors Have Sex Into 70s, 80s
August 22, 2007 - 11:06pm
BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer
(AP) - An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky _ willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush. That may be too much information for some folks, but it comes from the most comprehensive sex survey ever done among 57- to 85-year-olds in the United States.
Sex and interest in it do fall off when people are in their 70s, but more than a quarter of those up to age 85 reported having sex in the previous year. And the drop-off has a lot to do with health or lack of a partner, especially for women, the survey found.
The federally funded study, done by respected scientists and published in Thursday’s e, overturns some stereotypical notions that physical pleasure is just a young person’s game.
“Most people assume that people stop doing it after some vague age,” said sex researcher Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago.
However, more than half of those aged 57 to 75 said they gave or received oral sex, as did about a third of 75- to 85-year-olds.
“Bravo that the New England Journal of Medicine is publishing something like that. It’s about time,” said Ruth Westheimer, better known as sexpert Dr. Ruth, who has long counseled seniors on sex.
The survey involved two-hour face-to-face interviews with 3,005 men and women around the country. Researchers also took blood, saliva and other samples that will tell about hormone levels, sex-related infections and other health issues in future reports. They even tested how well seniors could see, taste, hear and smell _ things that affect being able to have and enjoy sex.
Some results:
_Sex with a partner in the previous year was reported by 73 percent of people ages 57 to 64; 53 percent of those ages 64 to 75, and 26 percent of people 75 to 85. Of those who were active, most said they did it two to three times a month or more.
_Women at all ages were less likely to be sexually active than men. But they also lacked partners; far more were widowed.
_People whose health was excellent or very good were nearly twice as likely to be sexually active as those in poor or fair health.
_Half of people having sex reported at least one related problem. Most common in men was erection trouble (37 percent); in women, low desire (43 percent), vaginal dryness (39 percent) and inability to have an orgasm (34 percent).
_One out of seven men used Viagra or other substances to improve sex.
_Only 22 percent of women and 38 percent of men had discussed sex with a doctor since age 50.
The survey had a remarkable 75 percent response rate. Only 2 percent to 7 percent did not answer questions about sexual activities or problems, although a higher percentage declined to reveal how often they masturbate.
Why do this research? Sex is an important indicator of health, said Georgeanne Patmios of the National Institute on Aging, the study’s main funder.
Sexual problems can be a warning sign of diabetes, infections, cancer or other health woes. Untreated sex issues can lead to depression and social withdrawal, and people may even stop taking needed medications because of sexual side effects, the researchers wrote.
Some of them did a landmark study of sexual habits in younger people a decade ago, but little is known about X-rated behaviors beyond Generation X.
“This subject has been taboo for so long that many older people haven’t even talked to their spouses about their sexual problems, let alone a physician,” said the lead author, Dr. Stacy Tesser Lindau, a University of Chicago gynecologist.
Many doctors are embarrassed to bring it up, and some may not know how to treat sexual dysfunction, said Dr. Alison Moore, a geriatrics specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who had no role in the study.
“Even among geriatricians, there can be an age bias that this is not as big a deal as some of the other things they come into us for,” like heart problems or dementia, Moore said. “It gets lost in the shuffle.”
The National Opinion Research Center, a university-affiliated private research firm, did the surveys in people’s homes. Laumann, its chairman, has received research support from Pfizer Inc., the maker of Viagra.
Hundreds of questions were asked face to face; others, like the number of lifetime sex partners and frequency of masturbation, were asked in a questionnaire, and 84 percent of those were completed.
Most participants were married. But by the time they were 75 to 85, only 37 percent of women had spouses compared to 71 percent of men. Roughly 10 percent of those in the survey were black and more than 6 percent were Hispanic.
The proportion of each gender reporting giving and receiving oral sex “matched up perfectly,” Lindau said. “This gives us pretty good reassurance that men and women are telling the same story.”
Older people were generally sexually conservative. A small minority had more than one partner, and very few said they paid for sex.
Researchers also used state-of-the-art technology and products donated by several companies to test people’s senses. Taste strips were used to see if people could distinguish between various tastes (sour, salty). Special devices were used to test the ability to smell certain scents, including a suspected pheromone _ a smell thought to evoke sexual responses.
Scents and tastes “get under the skin to influence biology,” and scientists wanted to know whether these senses diminish as people age, Lindau explained.
Niels Teunis, an anthropologist and researcher at the Institute of Sexuality, Social Inequality, and Health at San Francisco State University, said the survey bolsters the “use it or lose it” factor seen in previous studies.
“If you are doing it, you keep doing it. If you slack off in marriage like when you’re in your 40s, it’s hard to pick it up when you are older,” he said.
Jack Menager, 83, and his wife, Elizabeth, 84, agree. The suburban Los Angeles couple say they have had a good sex life for nearly 60 years.
“It gives a person relief on any burdens or problems. It makes us forget everything _ escape,” he said, admitting that as physical endurance wanes “you have to work at it harder.”
The couple takes twice daily walks, drinks wine in moderation and talks a lot, said his wife.
“I think it’s important,” she said of sex. “It just makes you feel close.”
More men than women felt that way. Only 13 percent of men but 35 percent of women said sex was “not at all important.”
Menopause has a big effect on women, and the drop-off of estrogen makes many of them less interested in sex, Dr. John Bancroft of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University wrote in an accompanying editorial.
But menopause also means women no longer have to worry about getting pregnant, and many have more time and feel freer after children are gone, notes Westheimer, the sex adviser.
At age 79, she said, “I don’t ever answer personal questions” about sex. But she added, “I certainly have a zest for life.”
I first heard of Pepper Schwartz years and years ago (well, it was published in 1985) when I read her book with Philip Blumstein “American Couples.” It was a heavy tome filled with eye-popping charts and graphs of their work with couples, gay and straight. I loved it and it heavily influenced my thinking about couples and how they relate.
Schwartz writes prolifically (just go to Amazon and type in her name), but she is most relevant to my work with helping singles find love in her incarnation as the expert behind the matching system at PerfectMatch.com. She just came out with a new book Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years which sounds right up my alley, right? I thought so too, and ordered and read it.
Eeeesh. I wish I could say I liked it, but I didn’t. Sprinkled in amongst her own pretty exhibitionistic stories about having lots of great sex with lots of great guys in lots of great places was some sound advice about online dating, but nothing extraordinary, frankly. That advice is just about all contained in the article below that appeared in the Seattle Times where she lives. I’ll underline it in the article so that you can see what I really did like about what she wrote. But frankly, you can skip the book, unless you want to torture yourself by reading some over-the-top sex pieces that strain credulity, or if they are true, are out of reach of 99.99% of women over 60. I found it pretty embarrassing, actually. I’d prefer the more academic Pepper Schwartz.
Relationship expert finds herself dating again
By Pepper Schwartz
Special to The Seattle Times
Pepper Schwartz
Schwartz is a sociology professor at the University of Washington and author of 15 books, including her latest, “Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years” (Collins, 2007; $24.95), a personal account of re-entering the dating world after divorce. Schwartz, a Ph.D., is also the relationship expert for Perfectmatch.com, where she co-developed the Duet personality profile matching system.
There is nothing quite as disconcerting as having to follow your own advice. After 30 years of answering people’s questions about their emotional, sexual and romantic lives, I found myself in the somewhat ironic situation of having to pose, and answer, some of these same questions for myself.
At first, like most people who have just gotten a divorce, I wanted to stay home, do some soul searching, figure out what went wrong and what part I had in it.
But soon there is that familiar itch: the desire for intimacy, connection, sex and, in my case, adventure. Love would be nice, too, but honestly, when you have just disconnected from a 23-year marriage, sex and companionship seem a lot less complicated than love and commitment do, and therefore a lot more imaginable.
As a relationship expert, finding that connection should have been a piece of cake, right?
Wrong. As every doctor knows, it’s different when you’re the patient. I had many of the qualms of re-entry that everyone does. So I had to embark on a fix-up campaign to get myself date-ready — and think about what I actually wanted and who I was looking for.
One thing I knew: I was starting over again at 55.
I started out by creating a new philosophy about sex and love. I decided that the only way I would figure out who and what I wanted was by meeting a wide range of men — cowboys, poets, fishermen, chefs, CEOs, or whoever else crossed my path. The “how” of it was pretty easy — I knew the online dating scene as the relationship expert for Perfectmatch.com — now I just had to go explore dating online myself.
That the dating expert would be looking for a date was a little embarrassing, so I didn’t put my picture on the site. Instead, I looked at men’s profiles, and if they were intriguing, I’d invite them to look at a description of me. If they liked that, I promised to send a picture.
Thus started a chain of “coffee dates” that online daters know only too well. These short encounters exist for a reason; a quick in, then out if the guy’s not OK. I learned this the hard way when a guy who said he had always admired me wanted to take me out to a really nice dinner. I relented when he suggested Canlis, one of my favorite places in Seattle.
Once we got there, however, I might as well have gone alone. He talked so fast and so much that all I could do was sit there and time him, thinking maybe I was witnessing some kind of world’s record for self-absorption. At 45 minutes, he looked up, a little dazed with his own chatter and said, “Am I talking too much?” I said, “Yes, actually you are.”
He looked abashed and then, I kid you not, talked on for another 20 minutes. I had time to listen, chew my food very carefully, and learn not to allow more than a half-hour for a first meeting.
There were other colorful characters, some so unusual that I learned to think of dating as anthropological fieldwork. I decided each person would have something to teach me, no matter how dreadful a match we might be for each other.
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My favorite oddity was a man who was handsome, smart, nice and accomplished. He seemed like a perfectly fine bet for a relationship. There was only one problem: he could not pass a beast without making that animal’s noises. We decided to go hiking in the Methow Valley and stay over at Sun Mountain Lodge. But the ride there killed the possibility of anything more physical than climbing up a few hills. If we saw a horse, he neighed, a dog, he produced a bark, a cat — well, you know. I was afraid to order a steak.
Of course not all of these dates produced a humorous or strange story. Some produced all kinds of satisfaction: intellectual, emotional and sexual.
Dating, though difficult and disappointing when love didn’t last, was clearly possible and often fabulous, no matter that my 20s and 30s were distant memories. I have come to believe that love is possible at any age, that romance and passion are no less intense at middle or old age than they were when we were barely out of our teens, and that all of this can be ours if we put ourselves out there, learn how to handle loss or rejection, and have the resilience to pick ourselves up and start the process all over again.
This is the very cycle that many women and men just can’t bear to face, but I have to say, the happy moments justify having to deal with the sad ones. Love is life-giving, passion helps sustain our youthfulness, and relationships help us to grow and develop heart and character. All of that is just too good to miss.
I met the man I am dating now online. Honestly I don’t remember why I picked him out except that he was attractive, wrote well and sounded like a sincere, bright, athletic, nice person. I contacted him and said I was interested. He replied that he thought he knew who I was, and he was a little put off about meeting another ambitious, busy, Type-A woman. He had gone that route before and wasn’t sure it was a good fit.
I wrote him back that yes, he had guessed who I was and what I was like. But I thought we should meet anyway. I mentioned the scene in “Notting Hill” where Julia Roberts has to convince Hugh Grant that her world isn’t all she is. She says something like, “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy… .”
He replied, “OK, you got me with that one.” We met for coffee. He was even more handsome in person than in his picture, and a genuinely nice and witty man. This was last autumn, and we have been dating ever since.
The Internet is your friend
The Internet is one of the most efficient and safe ways to find romance. I still hear women and men voicing fears of who’s on there, but believe me, it’s a godsend to older people who aren’t meeting loads of eligible partners.
You get a lot more information about someone you’ve met in cyberspace than you do in other kinds of one-time contact. There are bad dates everywhere, but the Internet has no more than other parts of the dating world do — and probably less.
Writing a profile
Put out your best stuff. Don’t lie, but you can omit your flaws. Everyone has them and they don’t need to be in your first sentence. Leave out anything but a brief mention of children — you are looking for a partner, not a father or mother. If they are partner material, then you can see if they will fit into your family or vice versa.
Use a good picture, but make sure it’s yours and wasn’t taken for your high school graduation. Avoid anyone who has a blurry picture, sunglasses or won’t show you a picture on request.
Talking on the phone
Don’t wait too long before making this relationship aural. If you like each other online, then relatively quickly transfer it to the phone. (Use a non-traceable number just in case you do meet Mr./Ms. Wrong and don’t want them to know your phone number.)
If you let the e-mail relationship go on too long, you may be caught in a fantasy perception of this person that gets you way too attached before you have a better sense of who she or he really is. Hearing their voice and talking is the first test of finding out who they really are.
Meeting someone
Likewise, once you’ve talked, arrange to meet fairly soon. I’ve known people who were just about saying “I love you” because of the intimacy and beauty of what they wrote to each other — until they met in person and one of them realized there was no chemistry.
Use the half-hour meeting rule (you can always extend it). If it’s really a great match, there will be a second date.
Remember to listen and ask questions — both of you are being interviewed — each of you should know more about the other than when you started. Do not complain even if your day was a horror and your kids robbed a bank.
Don’t dump on your ex even though you are sorely tempted. Everyone will always be thinking, “… and what would he/she be saying about me?” Try to see if there is any reason you two should know each other that is not readily apparent — i.e., explore hobbies, values, lifestyle, talents, passions.
Don’t give up
I don’t care if the first 15 dates are duds. There is someone out there for you.
If you are over 50 and wondering about Match.com or eHarmony, here are reviews of both sites, aimed at older singles…
Online Dating Site Review: Match.com
From Sharon OBrien,
Your Guide to Senior Living.
With more than 15 million members, Match.com is one of the largest general interest dating sites on the Internet and one of the most successful at bringing people together. The staff at Match.com calculates that every year more than 200,000 people find the person they were seeking by using Match.com. And Match.com reports that people 50 and older represent its fastest growing user segment. For the whole review, click here.
Online Dating Site Review: eHarmony
From Sharon OBrien,
Your Guide to Senior Living.
Marriage is the goal at eHarmony
eHarmony claims to take the guesswork out of matchmaking by using a scientific approach to help people find not only good matches and potential mates, but soul mates—and it seems to be working. To read the complete review, click here.
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