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Seeking Love
By Sarah Mahoney, November-December 2003
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"You've got a lot more at risk than when you're in your 20s, when everything is about hormones," says Taft. "Now you've got kids. And I wasn't quite sure I was ready to give up my independence."
Her live-in partner, Gordon Ayres, now 72, was also skittish about his return to dating. "I had married when I was very young, so when I separated at 54, I didn't have much sexual experience. I thought I was over the hill and that I'd never attract women," he says. Fortunately, he was wrong; women found him plenty attractive. He joined a Boston dating service that allowed clients to view videotapes of potential dates, and he played the field extensively, but he remained cautious. "If anything seemed like it was getting serious," he says, "I fled." Luckily, when he met Carolyn, "the whole sex thing had played itself out. It was fun, and always intriguing, but it wasn't as important as when I first separated," he says.
Feeling uneasy about intimacy is a big reason singles stay on the dating sidelines. Some—even baby boomers, famous for their sexual permissiveness—find getting naked in front of someone new a difficult transition. "I don't even like looking at me naked anymore," jokes Phil, a 53-year-old recently divorced man who wishes to remain anonymous.
"It's as tricky to date in your 50s as it is when you first start dating as a kid," says Dawne Touchings, 50, of Montclair, New Jersey, founder of The Right Stuff, a dating service that connects grads from prestigious colleges. "People age very differently—some look so much younger than others…. There's just a lot to deal with."
On top of everything else, there is the increasingly confusing realm of balancing a potential date's sexual attractiveness against compatibility: "I liked the way 30-year-old women looked when I was 22, and I still do," Phil admits. "But I don't want to have a relationship with a much younger woman. I want a woman who is my equal, experience-wise."
Given these dilemmas, some are more comfortable in a group that lets them sidestep sex entirely. For example, Andrew Watson, 71, a retired city employee, helped start the singles group at Houston's Windsor Village United Methodist Church, one of the biggest African American churches in the country, and says his church's position that sex should wait until marriage made him feel comfortable. "That takes a lot of pressure off people," says the twice-divorced Watson, who met his current wife at a church event. "It helps that there are guidelines about how singles are supposed to conduct themselves."
There are some dating obstacles only women face: They live longer—which is a medical blessing but a dating curse. While the differences are relatively minor for those ages 55 through 64, when there are 92 men for every 100 women, they get more dramatic as men die and women thrive. In the 65 through 74 age group, there are 82 men for every 100 women. And after 75, the ratio drops to 53 men for every 100 women. These odds, experts say, make it easy for women to become discouraged and for men to be a little more standoffish.
"It's so hard to get men to come to our events," laments a woman who runs a travel-oriented singles group for older African Americans. "They know women outnumber them, and they expect women to just come find them."
Men, naturally, are aware of this demographic power shift as they age. But not all of them flaunt their power. The numbers mean little, says the recently widowed Stanley Stiansen of Topsham, Maine. "If you can't find one person you can talk to and feel compatible with, what's the point?"
The man shortage is magnified by the tendency of men to date younger women. "Men are more likely today to be delighted to date a woman who is significantly younger," says matrimonial consultant Zelda Fischer, who runs a matchmaking service called Gentlepeople, Ltd., in Boston. Many men are staying in better shape as they age, she says, so "they're likely to say things to me like, 'I would date a woman my age, but I doubt she could keep up.' " (Of course, plenty of buff 50-plus women feel the same way.)
Romance always carries a high risk of heartbreak and disappointment, but new strategies for meeting people seem to make that risk even higher for boomers. In online dating, for example, almost all services allow you to stay completely anonymous, but it's still easy to imagine chain-saw-wielding, identity-thieving wackos on the other side of the computer line. Experts insist these fears are overblown: Using common sense, like making contact with a cellular phone and meeting in a public place, is enough to make dating strangers as safe as dating anyone else. (In truth, the accountant your aunt wants to set you up with could be a nut job, too, right?)
"Believe me, I've met some real lunatics," says Ilene Carr, a widow from Connecticut. "And I've been on a few dinner dates that felt as if they lasted six days! But there are plenty of good people out there, too. You won't like all of them, and they won't all like you. You just have to treat it as an adventure." Carr's perseverance paid off; she eventually met a wonderful widower through a personal ad.
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