Older Dating: Getting Men OUt of their Caves
HOW TO GET OLDER MEN OUT OF THEIR CAVES AND BACK ON THE ROMANCE SCENE
Relationship expert and counsellor, Barbara Bloomfield, has spent the last year researching for her book, The Relate Guide to Finding Love. Here, she looks at the challenges and offers tips to older daters in their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond.
Older folk don’t want to be thought of as older folk. They see themselves as the liberated generation – free, unburdened and ready for adventure. It may be a marketing agency’s dream but many mature daters know that 60 is the new 40, 70 is the new 50 and, for all I know, 80 the new 60! Whatever your years, age is no barrier to finding new love and companionship.
Grey power is growing: by the year 2030 there are predicted to be more than 1.3 million people over 90 in the UK population.
There are plenty of ways to increase your circle of friends and meet the kind of people you like:
Search through your address book and phone people you haven’t spoken to in years. Most people like to get a phone call but it’s easy to get out of the habit of being sociable.
Ask your relatives and friends to think of single people who might like to meet you. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and they will admire your chutzpah for asking!
Think about what you love doing, be it gardening, days out or reading books, and join a group or local course so you can do that activity with like-minded people. The University of the Third Age (www.u3a.org.uk) helps people over 55 to gain new skills. This is a great place to start and costs just a few pounds a year to join because members share their skills with each other rather than paying for tutors. If you are able to access the Internet, the U3A runs ‘virtual’ or online groups which are useful for those who live in isolated places or find it harder to get out and about.
Your local librarian, Age Concern or local authority might be able to suggest other groups that would be stimulating and where you’d meet like-minded people, such as Workers’ Educational Authority networks. Local councils often provide free or very low-cost courses, groups and facilities.
If you live in sheltered housing or have a community of friends nearby, there’s nothing to stop you making a group booking at a theatre or a coach booking for a day trip and getting a discount.
Outdated ideas about courtship can be the older person’s worst enemy when it comes to new love. Remember that women can ask men out these days; it doesn’t have to be the other way round! Try being daring: when you see someone you like, invite them round for coffee along with a small group of friends; this should stop the atmosphere from feeling forced or overwhelming. If you can plan to sit next to them, you can find out more about them in a relaxed environment.
The Internet has shrunk the world and brought it into our living rooms. Older romance-seekers may be surprised by the variety of online agencies, chat rooms and organisations designed to bring older people together. A significant proportion of ‘silver surfers’ has personal Internet access or can access a computer via community rooms or libraries. If you don’t use the Internet but would like to learn, contact your local library for details of free courses.
If you use a search engine and enter words like ‘older’, ‘mature’, ‘dating’ and ‘UK’, up will pop a large number of sites especially for love-seekers over 55. Some companies that run dating services for all age groups will have particular services dedicated to mature clients. Other Internet dating sites also run a personal introduction agency where you travel to an office for an interview with a ‘matchmaker’ who takes into account your interests and preferences and promises to find you a certain number of dates over a six-month or twelve-month period.
Among the opportunities for placing or answering personal ads, Saga magazine stands out with its lively romance-seekers column, while The Lady is a more traditional magazine which contains ads for companions.
Where are the Mature Men?
The biggest challenge for women over 55 is to attract men back into romance. Older men may feel they don’t have the skills to find another partner, or worry that it might be upsetting to the memory of their late partner. Mature women tend to have better social skills and be more flexible in their requirements of a new friendship.
Often it’s a long time since either party faced the challenges associated with courtship. Dating experts say that men in mature age groups may not know how to have a friendship without sex so can appear rather insensitive if the woman doesn’t immediately want to get into a sexual relationship. This can result in women having a rather low opinion of men or in men looking for a ‘younger model’.
Agencies that match mature daters report that men frequently want to recapture their youth by getting attached to a much younger partner. These age-imbalanced relationships are sometimes driven by a search for financial and emotional security by the woman. However, as we often see at Relate, large age differences that seem unimportant in the first excitement of meeting a new partner can cause great tensions later on because each partner is at a different life stage; for example, one partner is retired while the other is still at the height of their career.
DAPHNE (70) told me: After two years of grieving for my husband’s death, I put a lot of energy into meeting new people, via friends, a dating agency with a social club attached to it and now I’m on the Internet. To be honest, there aren’t enough available men and I feel I am competing with younger women. I’ve been on three dates and all of them were pleasant. I was surprised when the gentlemen didn’t call back even when they said they would – it seemed impolite, somehow. I also met a man who seemed to want a housekeeper right away wanted to know when I could move in. That put me off – I have no intention of living with someone again, especially not as a housekeeper! But it’s early days so fingers crossed.
It might be a hangover from earlier decades when it was regarded as rude to ask a person’s age, but mature daters seem to be cagey about how old they are. It’s an issue that comes up, time and again, among romance-seekers over 50. You’ll notice in the personal ads that men seem to want to date women younger than themselves, while women tend to either have no preference regarding age or seek someone around their own age. This difference in expectations contributes to the apparent shortage of men in the over-50s age group. It is socially sanctioned for men to date younger women – the extreme example of this is the ‘trophy wife’ – but it’s getting more common for older women to date considerably younger men.
The main complaint among mature daters is of those who lie about their age. You can fib about your age on an e-mail or in an advert but it’s not a good start to a relationship if someone looks you in the eye and claims to be a lot younger than they are. They may look younger and they may act younger, but the lack of honesty may cause doubts to form in the date’s mind.
John, 54, was taken with Mandy’s profile and they seemed to have the same love of travelling in Greece. In fact, they got on really well when they met in person. John found Mandy to be charming and youthfully attractive. However, she confessed over dinner that she was not 49 but, in fact, was going to be 61 next birthday. Despite their obvious compatibility, John felt he would never consider settling down with a woman older than himself. He didn’t know why, but he felt strongly about it, and thought if she was willing to lie about this, what else might she be dishonest about? They never did get to see the Greek islands together.
Sex in Later Life
Making love with a new partner can be wonderful and just the thing to keep both people feeling young and alive. Lovemaking doesn’t have to be about swinging from the chandeliers (though don’t let anyone stop you!); it can be about tenderness and companionship as well as passion. In the end, it’s about what feels right for you as an individual and as a couple.
Don’t let a lack of confidence about your body put you off. Take a light-hearted approach – remove the spectacles and turn the lights down low – and just go with the flow. But if you feel you don’t want to have sex, it’s not obligatory. Lots of mature relationships are platonic, built on companionship and shared interests. Don’t forget that older men may worry about their ability to hold an erection or their attractiveness just as much as women may worry about the loss of a good figure.
Pros and Cons of Mature Dating
Here are some advantages of a new relationship later in life:
The chance to find love and companionship again.
A chance to restart a loving, sexual relationship.
Sociability. ‘I feel happier and less lonely with a partner.’
He knows you already. ‘Reconnecting with someone I first knew when I was 18 makes me feel young again.’
Shared memories. ‘He remembers my mother and father. We love reminiscing about the old neighbourhood where we lived.’
Male companion. ‘It’s lovely to feel protected by a man who can look after travel arrangements and lend you an arm.’
Best of both worlds. ‘We each have our own flat and don’t want to live together.’
Help with living. ‘I do the DIY and she does the cooking. It suits us both.’
Financial support. ‘Pooling our resources means we’re much better off.’
Family benefits. ‘We’ve both expanded our network by getting to know the other’s children and grandchildren.’
Health. ‘We can look after the other if one of us feels unwell.’
And here are a few disadvantages:
Compromise. ‘It’s hard to compromise after all these years of being independent.’
Loyalty. ‘Would it be disloyal to the memory of my wife if I married again?’
Fear. ‘I couldn’t go through the pain of losing another partner.’ ‘I’m concerned about what will happen if one of us gets ill.’
Confidence. ‘At my age, I don’t think anyone will want me.’
Stuck in patterns. ‘He’s very rigid about everything. We can’t go out on Thursdays because he has to organise the garage.’
Loss of freedom. ‘I’ve got used to pleasing myself about where I go and how I behave.’
Finances. ‘My children are concerned about my lady friend inheriting my property, which is going to cause bad feeling.’
Families. ‘We spend a lot of time with her family and I don’t particularly like them.’
Sex. ‘I’m worried that he’ll look for a younger model and won’t fancy me.’
Sex, again. ‘At my age, I don’t want to have sex!’
Libido. ‘She wants to make love regularly but I’m not up to it.’
Chores. ‘He expects me to do all the cooking now.’
Spend some time writing about what you want from a new relationship, adding some pros and cons from your own experience, before deciding on your strategy for getting to know some interesting new people. If you need help, contact me at <www.inspireparents.com/finding-love> for email or personal support to find someone special.
Barbara Bloomfield has been a Relate (marriage guidance) counsellor and supervisor since 1994. She wrote The Dating Game for London Weekend Television and The Enemy Within for RKP, a best-seller. Barbara teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University and runs workshops on therapeutic writing.
