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I love it when I see science catching up and studying what is actually going on in the dating world. Here’s proof of what I have been saying and seeing about the use of dating sites by older singles: Underlines are mine.
Online dating more popular
NEW YORK - ANY lingering stigma about finding true love online seems to be fading, particularly among older adults, researchers found.
In a study of 175 newlywed couples scientists at Iowa State University said those who met through online dating agencies, or social networking sites, tended to be older than other couples who met through traditional ways offline.
They were also less likely to be marrying for the first time and had shorter courtships before tying the knot - 18.5 months instead of 42 months.
‘In many cases, there are real structural forces that encourage the support and use of these technologies,’ said Alicia Cast, an associate professor of sociology at the university. ‘And one of them is just structural constraints on people’s time - such as people who have kids, or have full-time jobs, or work long or extensive hours,’ she added in a statement.
But the online spouses were as attractive, intelligent and had the same self-esteem levels of the offline couples.
Prof Cast and her graduate assistant Jamie McCartney studied data on the couples over a three-year period. Twenty five couples in the study had met online. ‘My understanding is that there are very few studies that have been able to simultaneously get access to a source of couples who met through more conventional means, along with those who choose to meet people online,’ said Prof Cast.—REUTERS
I’ve been pretty uncomfortable about all this business about older women dating younger men, a phenomenon that’s become called “Cougars.” While theoretically I am not opposed to age differences one way or the other, what I didn’t like was the predatory slant that “Cougar” implied. That aside, well why not? This article below makes some points that I had not thought of, and says that younger men are now starting to seek out older women for particular reasons. What occurred to me is for guys 35 and under, going older has a lot to be said for it. I call it the Magic 35—for men 35 and under, the competition from other men for the most attractive women is very stiff. Going older might be a very good route for these men. (I’ve underlined the parts that I liked best.)
Field Notes In Cougar Territory, Cubs Take the Lead
By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER
IN the swirl of attention around older women coupling with younger men, it seems the guys are increasingly the ones on the prowl.
Over the last year, Amber Soletti, a founder of OnSpeedDating.com, has been playing host monthly to “Cougar/Boy Toy” speed-dating events. And despite research to the contrary, it is the men, she and others say, who are clamoring for more.
“We’ve had to turn away men at every event,” she said. Ten men were on the waiting list at the most recent one.
Casey Mizzone, 31, a teacher from Hoboken, N.J., made the cut at the “Cougar/Boy Toy” night on Nov. 4 at the Watering Hole, a New York bar. He had been wait-listed the previous month. Older women, Mr. Mizzone said, “are not so nitpicky, so naggy; there’s not a lot of pressure.”
He was one of 16 men to get a chance to meet, for four minutes each, the 15 women at the OnSpeedDating.com event, which typically draws more cubs than cougars. The men were 23 to 31 years old; the women 35 to 56.
Ms. Soletti said the lure for the men is that older women are more sophisticated and, frankly, more sexually experienced.
The women “are in their sexual prime,” she said. “If they can please her, they feel like they rock in bed.”
James Insinga, 28, managing director of a Manhattan real estate firm, said he finds younger women “are about getting married immediately, having kids.” He said the older women he dates are easier to talk to and more enticing, including an “adorable” friend of his mother’s (but it “would be dicey” to tell Mom).
Barry A. Farber, a psychotherapist and the director of the clinical psychology program at Teachers College at Columbia University, said “dating an older woman may free the man from the pressures of the ‘baby hunger’ that a relationship with a younger woman might bring.” An older woman, he added, “may well take him more seriously than a woman his own age and will overlook the relatively small flaws.”
It is not, however, a new idea. In 1745, Ben Franklin in his “Old Mistresses Apologue” advised men that “in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones.”
“They are so grateful!” he added, rather indelicately.
And into the 21st century, men have started Web sites to chase and give advice about dating older women, such as Urbancougar.com, where “cub chronicles,” “cougar confessions,” cougars of the month and listings of “dens” are posted.
There are more men than women among the 200 that have signed up for the first International Cougar Cruise, a three-day sail from San Diego to Ensenada, Mexico, Dec. 4 to 7.
Rich Gosse, the organizer of the cruise and the chairman of the Society of Professional Singles, based in San Rafael, Calif., said that when he started running younger men/older women parties a year ago, the focus was on “cougars wanting the younger guy.” Now the men are “more excited about this phenomenon than the cougars.”
Not too long ago, Mr. Gosse said, a 20-something male wouldn’t admit to dating a woman over 40. “Now it is a badge of honor,” he said.
At a cougar speed-dating event at R. C. Dugans, a bar and lounge in East Meadow, N.Y., last month, 8 of the 10 men attending said they would date Patricia Polenz, a 48-year-old Northport, N.Y., divorcee with five children. Her first husband was 20 years her senior.
Ms. Polenz said the younger guys were “a little refreshing.”
“They are a little more eager to know me,” she said, “they are more willing to be accommodating than men my age.”
In fact, a recent study of 4,500 British singles conducted by Parship, a British online dating service, said 20 percent of men in their 20s and 22 percent of men in their 30s would date an older woman.
For the last six months, Andreas Anastasopoulos, 27, a graphic designer from Hamilton, N.J., has been dating Erin MacCord, 41, a divorced mother of three teenagers and a nonprofit development director from Burlington, N.J. Mr. Anastasopoulos said that women his age are into “immature partying and drinking, and being stupid and irresponsible” and he is “past that.”
He thinks her children are great. “I have younger sisters that are their age,” he said.
Brandon Solomon, 28 and a real estate project manager, sat next to Ali Addesa, a 44-year-old accountant, during the East Meadow speed-dating event, which was sponsored by WeekendDating.com. He said he would be willing to date 8 of the 11 women at the event, who were nearly old enough to be his mother, and wondered if they might consider him “a trophy.”
A booth away, Fred Guarino, 34, of Middle Village, Queens, and the owner of a heating and air-conditioning company, said, à la Ben Franklin, older women tend to be more appreciative, especially those “who have been married and divorced and have seen how bad things can get.”
“Young girls today, they take everything for granted,” he said.
If you get on I-10 and head east from Tallahassee, two plus hours away you’ll be in Jacksonville, Florida. You know how I love love stories, particularly those couples that met online. Here’s one from Jacksonville, and they married in New Orleans, which is on I-10 heading west.
I Do, I Do: Online profile to real-life love
To say that Charles Perniciaro, 52, had become cynical about dating is something of an understatement. “I think he was looking to settle down, but things weren’t coming together for him,” said John Millns, a close friend. “He was getting frustrated.”
In 2007, Charles decided to try online dating. But his cynicism only grew when several women he met on the Internet showed up for a “first date” looking nothing like their online photos. “Those pictures must have been taken decades ago,” said Charles, a dermatologist who was divorced for almost a decade.
In January 2008, Charles read the online profile of Gail Kahler, 47, and found himself intrigued. Gail wrote she “was looking for a guy who loved sports and could also discuss a good book.” Charles knew he fit the bill. The two corresponded for several weeks and eventually met for dinner at St. Johns Town Center where they giggled and chatted the night away.
Charles knew he wanted to see Gail again. Not only did she look exactly like her online photo, he knew they had really enjoyed each other. But Gail was just beginning to date after losing her husband to a long illness, and she told Charles she “planned to date 100 men before she dated anyone twice.” Still, Charles couldn’t let her go that easily. He called Gail the next night and invited her to a dermatology convention in San Antonio that weekend. “I told her there were no strings attached, she would have her own room, and she should come with an extra suitcase because she’d be able to fill it with free samples of creams and things,” he said.
Gail, a fourth-grade teacher at Fort Caroline Elementary, was inclined to say no. But she asked her grown daughter and a close friend what she should do. “And they both said ‘yes,’ “ Gail said. Then Gail checked to make sure Charles was really registered at the convention. He was. In fact, he was giving a seminar. She said yes. “Right from the beginning he swept me off my feet,” Gail said.
The two said “I do” May 30 in New Orleans, where Charles grew up. After the ceremony, the wedding party “second-lined” their way to the reception at Galatois Restaurant. A second line is a parade led by a police escort, then a jazz band (in this case it was a band from Chalmette High School, Charles’ alma mater) followed by the bride, groom and guests, all dancing, all holding parasols, all waving handkerchiefs.
Millns, who served as best man, summed it up this way: “I can’t think of a better ending for two nicer people,” he said.
Sometimes I get questions from women who are dating or thinking about dating a man who is a widower. Divorced men and particularly widowers are prime candidates for remarriage, as the stats in the following article make clear. While it is ideal for the newly single men to have some time to adjust to their loss and figure out how to live single, in truth, these men may move quite quickly into a new relationship. These guys tend to like being coupled and married, and will start looking around to get that way pretty quickly. Even though they might still be a bit risky, for many women, it makes good sense to look at the recently divorced or widowed men seriously. They can be good mate material and likely will not stay single long.
Death do us part; then on to Match.com
Vicki Kennedy makes for a striking widow. Now that she’s said she won’t fill her husband’s senate seat, she has stepped firmly into the national conscience as a public figure of grief. The First Lady holds her hand at presidential conferences and liberals everywhere speak her name at prayer circles. At 55, she might some day remarry. But the odds are against it.
If things were different and Vicki passed before Teddy, chances are he’d be married this time next year. In fact, men are four times more likely to remarry after losing a spouse; 61 percent of men start dating within the first two years, compared to just 19 percent of women. It’s ironic that the same men who hem and haw about being dragged into marriage — there’s a reason women set ultimatums — are the ones who rush to find a ball and chain so soon after losing their spouse.
I’ve toured the circuit of grief groups; the women there often titter about the widowers who come to troll for dates. “They can’t do a load of laundry,” the women say, throwing their hands up in exasperation. “They don’t know how to cook for themselves.” With older widowers especially, men who served as breadwinners while their wives tended the home front, the transition to forced bachelorhood can be rocky. They’re suddenly left wondering who will fold their socks or dust the TV stand.
But, really, it’s more than the housework. My feeling is that there’s a companionship that develops in marriages, a profound understanding that’s hard to duplicate. We learn the most intimate details about someone over the course of a marriage: how they sleep with their mouth open or litter the sink with hairs after they shave. It’s these same details that grate on us over time, that drive couples to alcohol, recreational drugs and — worse — marriage counseling. But what we gain in this exchange, this soul-level knowledge of another human being, is a partner who knows us just as intimately.
Abel Keogh, who lost his wife when he was 26 years old, echoes this feeling.
“In my case, I really missed being married,” he says. “You can share your problems, your joys. You take pleasure in their life and they take pleasure in yours.” Mr. Keogh has gone on to write a book on grieving for men, “Room for Two,” and runs the online Facebook group, “Dating a Widower.” He tells men who have lost a spouse and are considering dating again to take a step back and evaluate the situation. “Make sure it’s for the right reasons,” he says, “and not just because you’re lonely.”
Which is good advice for all of us. So often we rush into relationships wanting to be known and we are quick to dismiss our partners when they fail to comprehend us fully. Instead of dashing headlong into a break-up at the first sign of discord, we would be wise to stick with some relationships for the long haul. To know someone fully — and to be known by them — takes time. For most of us, that means a lifetime.
Internet dating statistics have carefully tracked the entry of older singles on dating sites. See my blog postings for the over 50 crowd. But what seems to be emerging is that Internet dating is THE place for older singles to find love, and that both older singles work the sites more energetically and also the sites work better for them. See the article below, underlines mine. While this piece came out of research in Australia about sexually transmitted disease, it points out that older women are just as successful as younger women online, while younger women still prefer meeting potential partners in the real world. As older singles know all to well, most venues for meeting other singles in real life are limited to younger folks. But online—if you are older, you are on equal footing.
Older women find partners online
JULIE ROBOTHAM
SEX is there for the taking for a lucky generation of middle-aged women. But they have to go online to find it.
Those aged 40 and older are just as likely as younger women to meet new sexual partners on the internet, according to the first survey of the intimate lives of those who use computer technology to seek a mate, with 45 per cent snaring at least one new lover in a year.
The finding is in contrast to their limited success in more traditional forms of dating, with young women still more likely to fall into bed with someone they first meet in person.
The internet ‘’seems to be a very useful place for them … It’s great that older women are out there meeting new partners,’’ said study leader Deborah Bateson, a senior medical coordinator at Family Planning NSW, which conducted the research to see whether 40-pluses were able to negotiate safe sex as effectively as their younger counterparts.
‘’Three-quarters [of sexually transmitted infections] are detected in people aged under 29, but there’s also an increase in women aged 40 and above … entering or re-entering the dating market, perhaps after the end of a long-term relationship,’’ Dr Bateson said.
In January, the online dating site RSVP, owned by the Herald’s publisher, Fairfax Media, sent an email to female participants, directing them to Dr Bateson’s survey site.
‘’Within four hours we had 432 completed surveys … We thought it was amazing,’’ said Dr Bateson, who will present the results to the 2009 Australasian Sexual Health Conference in Brisbane today.
About 1800 responses were analysed, two-thirds from women seeking long-term relationships.
Older women were more forthright in insisting on knowing a new partner’s sexual history, she found: 59 per cent of the over-40s would ask about previous partners, versus 43 per cent of the younger women, with a similar discrepancy in willingness to ask about intravenous drug use. ‘’The older women seemed to benefit from the maturity of years and asked those potentially tricky questions,’’ Dr Bateson said.
But older women were more likely to agree to sex without a condom - 37 per cent did so versus 28 per cent of younger women - perhaps because they were less reliant on them for contraception, or perhaps because, after asking questions about sexual history, they were reassured by the answers.
Dr Bateson said there was no data on how previous generations of middle-aged women had fared in the quest for love and sex. But she suspected the internet had made a genuine difference, as they were no longer dependent on venues aimed at young people.
Older women’s active love lives also suggested a need to develop safe-sex information targeted at the ‘’often neglected group’’.
I hadn’t really thought about the problems that the children of older adults dating online might cause. Of course! Adult children often have difficulty acknowledging the sexuality of a parents, and there is nothing like their parent dating to stir up those feelings. On the other hand, adult children can be quite supportive of the online adventures of their parents, particularly if the adult child has computer skills and online dating experience themselves. When my mother was widowed 10+ years ago, I encouraged her to try Internet dating, even took her online and showed her around. Mom’s reaction was “Who is going to be interested in a 75 year old woman?” Well, Mom proved herself wrong, because she found a guy—not online, but in her retirement community. They married when she was 81 and he was 86. And I am proud to say that I helped.
See this article below for more about older adults dating and their children’s responses.
OMG—my mom is online dating
By Lorna Collier
(LifeWire) —On her second time around, 51-year-old divorcee Susan Potter decided to try online dating to find her perfect match.
Todd Anderson pointed his widowed mother Eunice to eHarmony where he had found his own wife, Tracy.
Todd Anderson pointed his widowed mother Eunice to eHarmony where he had found his own wife, Tracy.
But she ran into an unexpected obstacle: her daughter, April, 31, who became furious with her mother for even trying after she launched her Internet search for men last spring.
“Every time I would go online, she’d have a hissy fit, and say I wasn’t safe, and yadda yadda,” says Potter, a nursing instructor from Buffalo Grove, Illinois.
“There’s creepy people out there,” says April, a medical coder from Lena, Illinois.
“Online, they are complete strangers, and they can lie to you about anything and everything.” Plus, she points out, her mother “hadn’t dated in years and years and years.”
Susan eventually quit online dating—after too many miscues with men who, indeed, were not who they portrayed themselves to be—and joined a singles club.
She thinks that she has now met “probably the love of my life.” But April was so upset with her mother’s online dating that she refused to meet the boyfriend for eight months.
Dating goes gray
As the baby boom generation ages and once-married boomers become single again, they increasingly are turning to the Web in search of dates.
The number of eHarmony.com users who identify themselves as 45 years or older and divorced has more than doubled in the past eight years, says Gian Gonzaga, senior researcher for the site, which has had 20 million members since it started in 2000. Registered users ages 45-64 jumped 9 percent from 2007-2008, Becky Teraoka, the site’s public relations manager said.
And given that many older boomers are parents with grown children, it’s perhaps unsurprising that conflicts occur.
“What people worry about most is the well-being of their parents. They’re concerned their parents are out of the loop of dating and going to pick someone who is going to treat them badly,” says Stacy Kaiser, a Southern California psychotherapist who works with the women on “DietTribe,” Lifetimes’ reality show about five female friends who try to lose weight and get fit. Kaiser is also a former consultant for the Jewish dating site JDate.com.
Kaiser says she often counsels parents and children on working through issues that arise when a parent begins dating online. One of her clients hacked into his mother’s e-mail account and, posing as her, sent rejections to potential suitors.
Another followed her mother to an outdoor Starbucks rendezvous and repeatedly drove past her mother and her date, yelling at her. The mother eventually had to shout back: “Let me live my life!”
“It’s like the children try to take on the role of the parent,” says Kaiser.
For some children, this new role can mean supporting and encouraging a parent who is dating online, rather than throwing up roadblocks. When Eunice Webb, a 73-year-old widow and retired teacher in New Prague, Minnesota, grew lonely and contemplated buying a dog for company, her son, Todd Anderson, suggested she get a man instead.
Anderson, a 40-year-old teacher in nearby Northfield, Minnesota, then persuaded his mother to try eHarmony, going so far as to help her set up her profile and read the e-mail responses she received.
“I didn’t know the difference between a Web page and an e-mail. I didn’t have the guts to put myself out there ... but he put me on,” Webb says.
A month later, Eunice met Lonnie Webb. They married in 2006.
Anderson had reason to believe in eHarmony, having used the service to find his wife, Tracy, whom he married in 2005. “When it came to my mother, I had absolutely no reservation. My mom’s a pretty cautious person,” he says.
Keep details to yourself
Still, says Kaiser, for many grown children, having a parent suddenly jump into the dating pool—and a virtual one at that—is a shock, especially if the parent begins dating numerous people, and perhaps having sex with new partners.
“When it comes to the sex thing, I tell parents, ‘Your adult child might not want to hear all the details,’” says Kaiser. “They may not even want to hear that you kissed.’ People are uncomfortable imagining their 60-year-old mother making out in the back of a car.”
Kaiser does recommend parents and children in this situation keep lines of communication open, but children need to realize that “their parents have a life; their parents are grown up.”
Meanwhile, parents need to recognize their child’s concerns. If a new boyfriend or girlfriend is now in the picture, says Kaiser, it’s important for the child to spend time with that person, “to develop their own relationship.” She recommends activities that both can enjoy, such as attending a sporting event together.
PerfectMatch.com founder and CEO Duane Dahl, 46, put his enterprise to the ultimate test when he helped his own mother, who is in her late 60s, enroll in his service.
“I think by spending time with our parents and helping them, we put them in a position where ultimately they can use the Internet to pursue friendship, companionship and even romance,” says Dahl. “This is a great opportunity for us to help our parents and educate them.”
But there is a limit. Dahl admits he didn’t advise his mother on what to post. “I didn’t want to be too involved.”
Instead, he reviewed some practical online tips with his mother and then directed her to his site’s services which provides advice and insight to all members on optimizing their photos and profile content.
And she must have taken his advice to take her time because he says, “her search for romance—and male companionship continues!”
I love good love stories, particularly those who met online. Here’s an older couple who met online...and then built the chapel!
Couple’s Nelson chapel flourishes after two years
By Chuck Rupnow
NELSON - A love affair between two people who met on an Internet dating site and their “chapel of dreams” continues.
Gary and Sue Papenfus of rural Nelson built the log-style Chapel of Guardian Angels on their property just more than two years ago, and have been reveling in how they and others have been blessed by it.
“It has been pretty special, how the whole thing has developed,” said Sue, 55, about the estimated 3,000 visitors and special events at the picturesque site. “Everyone who has visited has touched us. That’s what this is about.”
People from as far away as Alaska, California, New Mexico and Florida have visited.
“It’s fun to see where everyone is from,” said Sue, who requests long-distance visitors place a pin on either a Wisconsin or U.S. map indicating their home. “This has all been such a neat experience for us.”
There have been many additions and improvements to the 26-by-50-foot chapel since the Leader-Telegram published an article about it about two years ago.
“There are always more things we talk about doing, but it takes time,” said Sue, mentioning Gary has aspirations of adding a balcony in the chapel. “That’s going to be a couple of years.”
The chapel is filled with figurines and pictures of angels.
A lower-level banquet area has been completed. It has room for many tables and chairs and a separate, decorated area where a bride can prepare for a wedding.
So far there have been 16 weddings at the site, which now also has a birch arbor garden area with a small bridge over a goldfish pond.
People come to the chapel for celebrations and to remember loved ones.
Sue and Gary, 60, a longtime truck driver, each were widowed. They met via an Internet dating site in May 2006. Sue was living in DeKalb, Ill., at the time. They dedicated the structure, made of mostly 26-foot-long red and white pine beams, to lost loved ones.
The facility also has been used for a craft show and Christmas celebrations, as well as other get-togethers. Another craft show is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 3. Last year’s event drew 16 vendors and 300 people.
“It’s just a nice place to come, to reflect and enjoy,” Sue said. “It is very special for us, but we want it to be special for many others too.”
Drew and I usually watch “60 Minutes” on Sunday evenings, and while I could skip Andy Rooney at the end, we watch him too, because Drew likes the crusty old guy. He thinks they belong to the same club. A friend sent me the following piece by Rooney, and it is certainly worth reprinting here for the giggle. However, Andy is over 80, I am pretty sure, so that makes him twice the age of the women he is talking about. So that’s a little odd, don’t you think? Why isn’t he writing about women over 60 or 70?
60 Minutes Correspondent Andy Rooney (CBS)
As I grow in age, I value women over 40 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:
A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night and ask, ‘What are you thinking?’ She doesn’t care what you think. If a woman over 40 doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do, and it’s usually more interesting. Women over 40 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it. Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it’s like to be unappreciated. Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart. Older women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one . You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her. Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year old waitress. Ladies, I apologize.
For all those men who say, ‘Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?’, here’s an up date for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage Why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage!
I just love seeing articles like the one here about people over 50—heck, this article features an 80 year old woman who lines up a coffee date her first day!
This piece makes some great points: where else do older folks meet other singles? And the urge to couple does not go away with age.
Room for Maturity in Modern Dating Age
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 19, 2009
DIGITAL LOVE
A few weeks ago Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist who studies relationships at the University of Washington, spent the day giving a friend a crash course in online dating. Never mind that the friend in question is an 80-year-old woman—she wants “what every girl wants,” Schwartz says, “love, compatibility, someone to experience life with.”
And with a few clicks, Schwartz’s octogenarian pal joined the legions of seniors turning to their computers for a second (or third or fifth or 25th) shot at romance. By 2007, the over-50 set had become the fastest-growing group of subscribers for online dating companies, and double-digit growth has continued since, according to industry watchers.
“They’re seeing their sons and daughters use online dating and have success with it,” explains Joe Tracy, editor of Online Dating Magazine. “And we’ve been seeing online dating services really target the senior citizens and baby-boomer market.”
Schwartz, an adviser to online dating company Perfectmatch.com, cheers the trend. If a person in their 60s or 70s lost a spouse 20 years ago, “the chances of pairing again were small,” she says, because the avenues to meet new people were limited mostly to churches, senior centers and friends of friends.
Today single seniors can go online and “be opened up to literally thousands of options,” she says.
Susan Paisner has been. And the 59-year-old editor, who was widowed in 2007, has all the online dating adventures and misadventures to prove it. There are the surprising solicitations from much younger men, the dates who turn out to look nothing like their profile pictures, the guy who threw a tantrum in the middle of the street on New Year’s Eve.
“It’s become absolutely fascinating—it’s a never-ending supply of fabulous stories,” says Paisner of Rockville. Despite some strange experiences, she still considers it an “unbelievable opportunity.”
Paisner isn’t looking to get remarried—at least not right away—but she likes people and great conversation and having company as she finds fun in the city. Even when she travels abroad, she’ll sometimes go online beforehand to see if there’s someone interesting there who might join her at a museum or a restaurant.
It all seemed bizarre to her at first, but one question fueled her motivation: How else was she going to meet people?
Linda Wertlieb did have marriage in mind when she signed up for JDate.com, a site for Jewish singles, in 2005. She was 13 when she began dating her first husband, who struggled with ALS disease before dying when she was 61. Wertlieb wasn’t sure how to go about dating, but one of her three daughters and a few friends had had some success online, so she decided to try it.
“I just figured, ‘Well, I’ll see what this is all about,’ and had a friend help me write a profile,” recalls Wertlieb, now 67. “I was very honest—I wanted to meet someone to marry and spend the rest of my life with.”
The Potomac woman went on a few so-so dates and then, against her daughter’s advice, started communicating with a man whose profile didn’t have a picture. Turns out Alan Deresh wasn’t ashamed of his looks—he just didn’t like the idea of business associates seeing his picture on a dating site.
The two met in January 2006 and married that October. They discovered that they lived just five minutes apart and had friends in common who might never have thought to set them up.
“We both feel very blessed and lucky,” says Wertlieb, whose daughter married a man she met online the following year.
Nataki Clarke, directing of marketing for AARP’s Web site, says two of the most viewed items ever posted on the site were an article about how to get started in online dating, and a tool that helped members build online dating profiles. “Anything with dating, relationships, sex—that content does really well with this audience,” says Clarke, who helped build a new version of AARP’s site that acts like a Facebook for seniors, to facilitate more interaction among members. “They’re really hungry for this information.”
That’s because, Schwartz says, the desire for companionship doesn’t decrease with age: “Neither love, nor romance, nor adventure are the private property of the young.”
There are pitfalls, of course. Safety is always an issue with online dating, and so is disappointment. Just like their younger counterparts, seniors who log on to find love are also risking heartbreak. “The downside,” Schwartz says, “is when you meet someone you think is wonderful, but they don’t think you are. You’ve gotta be resilient.”
And about that 80-year-old friend of hers? She had a coffee date lined up by the end of her first day online.
My first job out of college was as an Activities Director in a nursing home. The place was pretty sex-phobic in 1972. I made a big stir by making sure that the activities room was stocked with Playboys. I am sure the library would be bigger now, and have some stuff for the ladies, too. Just ten years or so later, I was doing workshops on sexuality and aging, even being on a CBC morning talk show talking about sex for seniors. My mother’s remarriage at 81 to a man who is now 90 is not that unusual. Several new couples at their retirement facility have since married as well. While these folks grew up before computers and the Internet age, that doesn’t mean that old dogs can’t learn new tricks, because many of these older singles are now getting computer savvy and trying out dating sites. I love it!
As seniors live longer they find ‘love expectancy’ also grows
Frank Greve
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 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.
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