KEEPING THE FAITH

Scroll to the bottom to comment on this post. Ask Laura anything about love after 50 by emailing laura@datingwhilegray.com.

Q:  I’ve lived alone since August 2018 after a 30-year marriage. I’ve been actively seeking a partner since Covid and have been off and on the dating sites. I live in a very conservative farming area of Pennsylvania, and the men I found interesting were in the Philadelphia and NYC areas. I sent dozens and dozens of likes with short messages. They ignored me.

I’m financially independent, own my own home without a mortgage, and am physically and politically active. I sing in two choirs. I operate an Airbnb. I go to classical as well as rock ‘n’ roll concerts by myself. I go out to eat by myself. I go to Europe by myself.  I have now been celibate for more than three years, and the thought of spending the rest of my life alone really upsets me. I am not ready to give up on men, but it has been extremely challenging to try to find a partner who can keep up with me and who is interested. I am out all the time always hoping that I’ll run into a lovely man who will look at me and say, ‘Wow, I want to get to know her.’ But so far, it hasn’t happened. I feel almost like I have a biological clock very much like a woman who by age 40 is panicking that she’ll never have children. At almost 72, I am panicking that I may never have another partner to love.

–Lynn

A: Thanks for sharing, Lynn. You didn’t specifically ask me a question, but I want to address your note. I think it reflects an anxiety, even despair, many of us are feeling because despite our best efforts, we’re striking out in the love department. If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone.

“I’m only 51, but I completely understand the panicking feeling,” writes AH, in Alaska.  “I have never been married, never cohabited with a man. I’ve spent the majority of the last 20 years as a single parent. Now my child is a grown-up. I strongly want to have a partner, actually a husband, to share and do life with. I’m happy with my independent and stable life, yet my desire is so strong and dating has been so hard. No matter how many pedicures, massages, fancy meals, exercise classes, solo trips, and meditations I’ve done, these sad and lonely feelings are here right inside me.”

AH wrote that one thing that eventually calms her is to take “three deep breaths and really feel what I’m feeling.  I cry and ask the divine being to help me through. I tell myself that the person who is looking for me is also feeling it, and he is looking forward to meeting me just around the corner.”

If you’re not already doing so, Lynn, I’d also suggest initiating conversations with strangers. They need not be potential love matches but as this study shows, they may help you feel less lonely. Plus, you never know who might know someone who knows someone. The protests you’re attending may be ripe with opportunities. Longtime listener and now activist John concurs.  “People of all ages turn out, there are lots of funny signs, and people are open and friendly. As an added bonus, you don’t have to try to figure out if someone is politically compatible,” he writes.

John’s been where you are, by the way. His story can serve as inspiration to all of us. Now 76, he’d been on and off the dating sites since 2013 with “no success finding someone I want to spend the rest of my life with,” he writes. Then, in late 2022, John connected with a widow and they met for coffee. John says they had a great conversation, followed with lunch a few days later.  She then left the country for a month to visit family. When she returned, they resumed going out “but I could tell she was cooling off,” John writes. “She then sent me a text saying she didn’t want to pursue [a relationship] any further. I didn’t object or ask her why.”

About three months later, John sent her a text to thank her for recommending the estate attorney he hired. “She responded by inviting me to her house to catch up over a glass of wine,” John says – and they began dating again. Almost three years later, by giving space and grace, “we are completely in love,” he says. “I couldn’t be happier.”