Autumn Years Spring 2023

IN MY WORDS

Venturing into the World of Senior Dating

By Nan Bauer-Maglin

Some Gray Love contributors see the dating process as a learning experience. For some others it is painful, disappointing and exhausting; for yet others it is humorous, an adventure or a gift; and for still others it is a lesson about one’s self. Most com plained about the slog of the online search. Stephanie Brown had thirty-nine first dates, all of whom turned out ultimately to be “Mr. Wrong,” or “Mr. Even Wronger,” but she asserts that none of these relationships involved regret. “I got something from ev eryone.” Some contributors decided to stop searching online. Alice Freed, after years of scrolling, declared that “I am happier than I realized at the end of each day with no one else’s socks to trip over in my bedroom.” Dating after 60 is certainly hard for women; the ratio of available older men to available older women explains why, in large part, roughly half of women over six ty-five are without partners. For men, that number is only 21 percent. The women in Gray Love are particularly concerned about how to present themselves: gray hair, wrin kled skin and mastectomies, for example, become issues at this age. Whereas several contributors wrote about sexual hesitancy and embarrassment, at least one woman wrote about the joys of elder sex. Men too encounter difficulties like ED, slack abdo mens and balding. Because of their scarcity, older men are in greater demand; they have greater numbers of potential partners to peruse and a wider age range from which to choose. William Wiesner said it was like being in a candy store with too many choices.

While older daters deal with issues that most relationships face at any age, certain issues are unique to elder relationships. In addition to one’s aging body, appearance and sexuality, these include having had pre vious partners and a complicated and deep personal history; family and friends’ reac tions to an older person dating; alternative models to marriage (such as sharing space or living apart); having more than one intimate relationship at the same time; and the pres sure of time including the specter of illness and death. What advice does Gray Love offer to the elder lovelorn? For those who have connect ed, Dustin Smith sums it up well: Embrace the moment fully. “We did not shrink in the face of all the obvious and often comic absurdities of late love: the ghosts of former loves; the incremental loss of hearing and even memory; the incessant entropy of hu man flesh and bone—any one of the realities that might have served as a persuasive ex cuse not to act, a convincing argument that it was too late for love.” Persevere. Or for those who are still looking for a connection: Embrace the adventure. And for those who have decided against the search: Embrace your decision.

little over a year after my husband of thirty-six years died of pancreatic cancer, I ventured onto OkCupid

and Match.com. I was approaching 76 and like most seniors, I knew little about mod ern dating practices. No longer the bar, the workplace, the friend of a friend; now meet ing online is displacing all other ways to connect. Senior singles in America make up one of the fastest growing demographics in online dating. So, I figured I would try. While I navigated the online marketplace, I was anx ious to hear from other older people about their dating adventures. Thus, the germ of Gray Love: Stories about Dating and New Relationships After 60 was born. Ironically, I found my co-editor on Match.com. Forty-five people contributed to the vol ume: thirteen men and thirty-two women. Contributors’ ages range from fifty-nine to ninety-four. While most used Match, others searched on a variety of sites includ ing Silver Singles, Our Time and Zoosk, as well as more specialized sites like Black Singles, Christian Mingles and JDate. Sixty seven-year-old Vincent Valenti praised the algorithm that brought him the partner of his recent dreams. Two of the women who were successful in finding partners used a human matchmaker; several other matches had known each other in an earlier period of their life. According to a Pew Research Center survey, only five percent of those over sixty-five said they were currently in a committed relationship with or married to someone they met on a dating site or app.

Nan Bauer-Maglin, 81, is Professor Emerita at the City University of New York. She has published eight collec tions (six with coeditors) on topics

such as stepfamilies, retirement, feminism, death, dying and choice, older parenting and widow hood. Her latest book is Gray Love: Stories about Dating and New Relationship After 60.

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AUTUMN YEARS I SPRING 2023