Posts Tagged ‘seniors dating’
“My head knows moving on is best, but….”
“My love for my husband was so great that I am having a very difficult time considering another man,” Jean, age 74, wrote to me. “My head knows moving on is best, but my heart puts up a very good fight. Yes, it gets very lonely at times and then, at other times, I appreciate the solitude. I do believe that at this age, finding someone with whom you are compatible from a distance is best. His and her homes with visitations rights, perks, and genuinely being there for one another sounds like a plan to me! Easy to say and difficult to find!”
Jean’s email came at exactly the moment that I was trying to make sense of similar feelings. I had a “date” with a man with whom I had shared an intensely sensual relationship 27 years ago, when I was 40 and he (get ready) was 23. We had enjoyed each other immensely, then both of us had gone on to other relationships, and he had moved many states away.
Suddenly we discovered that we would be in the same city last Saturday. With anticipation and fantasies abounding, we made arrangements to meet.
How lovely, I daydreamed. Here’s a smart, gentle, witty man from my past, who gloried in giving me pleasure, and we were always able to talk candidly. Surely the 27 years apart could be wiped out for an evening of sensual nostalgia, couldn’t it? I needed to rise from grief and rediscover my sensuality with a live person rather than with sex toys. This sweet man could be the one to take my hand and lead me there.
We met, we hugged, we talked excitedly about where our lives and loves had taken us in the past decades. But then… when the time came to kiss and discover… I couldn’t. I felt myself sinking into sadness. His kiss wasn’t Robert’s. His body type wasn’t Robert’s. I pulled away.
“I really hoped I would respond sexually to you,” I told him, “but I’m not.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, cradling my head against his chest.
“I even packed condoms and lubricant, and chose my underwear with care,” I added. He laughed with me at that last revelation. “But it’s just not happening. I still miss Robert so much.”
“Tell me about him,” he said, maybe the sweetest comment he could have made.
I am grateful to my friend for his understanding, although I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe when I read “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be” on his Facebook page early the next day. I decided to laugh and post the comment, “Here’s to nostalgia.”
So when Jean wrote to me just after my friend and I parted, I had to agree with her sentiment, “My head knows moving on is best, but my heart puts up a very good fight.”
Finding Love in Later Life
When Carol Denker interviewed me for her magnificent Autumn Romance, she started with this prelimary questionnaire. I came across it today and wanted to share it with you, as Valentine’s Day approaches:
CD: What advice would you give to individuals over 50 who are looking for love?
JP: Participate in social activities that you love, and you’ll meet people with similar passions. In my case, I loved line dancing — in fact, I taught line dancing. That was how I met Robert Rice, the love of my life, a man who happened to be looking for a new place to dance in December 2000.
CD: What have you learned about love from this relationship?
JP: I had no idea how deeply I could love and how precious later-life love could be. We seemed very different at first, and both of us were fiercely independent and – we thought! – unwilling to change at this stage of life to suit another person’s needs or expectations. Becka, 70: Internet dating winks, flirts, and peeves
Becka, 70, the most active member of my senior online dating posse, has been trying to puzzle out the internet dating maze. Here’s her third report:
Trying to decode the mystique of the internet dating scene is a little like being lost in the middle of a Dan Brown book. “What does it all mean?” you ask yourself – many times.
My first piece was titled “Wading Into the Senior Internet Dating Pool.” I erred. The experience is more like being thrown fully clothed into the deep end of your neighbor’s pool which has not been cleaned for months!
I’ve discovered that these dating sites pad their numbers by keeping people on the rolls who have not visited in months, in some cases, years. They are, in effect, ghosts and will not, of course, respond to your inquiries.
Despite the ghosts, I have received a slew of responses. Some men who liked my profile responded right away and a day later sent me petulant “pokes” as to why I had not answered. Hold yer horses, buster! I’ve yet to figure out both the etiquette and the technology of this thing. But one thing I do know, I’m deleting the guy, age 65 who is looking for a woman 40-60!
Some of the choices you have for communicating are “icebreakers,” “winks” and “flirts.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve never winked at a guy in my life unless he was under the age of 8. If you are 60 or older, chances are you will not be comfortable taking the aggressive role. Okay, go to your corners and come out flirting! Luckily for you, it’s all anonymous. That makes you braver than you thought you’d ever be with men you don’t know — and might not want to know.
Some peeves:
- Senior Match encouraged me to fill out a personality form only to disclose that I could use it if I paid. I didn’t like the subterfuge. But I’m finding out that if you don’t like subterfuge, don’t try internet dating.
- A number of guys had signed up with two different user names, so if you rejected them once, you get a second chance to reject them all over again.
- On all of the sites I found links that didn’t work, windows you had to check but they didn’t drop down for you, and pages that would not come up.
- On one site I could not choose my state and so I received a dozen interested queries, the closest being from a man 750 miles away.
But I soldiered on and learned some surprising things.
Thank you, Becka! Coming soon — what did Becka learn?
Would you like to join our senior online dating posse and report on your internet dating experiences for the education and entertainment of our readers? Email me.
Note from Joan: I apologize for posting about a particular dating site’s special free weekend offer recently. I don’t know if the site was overloaded or what, but one reader reported that after spending forever filling out the long questionnaire, the site gave an error message. She wasn’t about to start all over again, so she emailed customer service to find out if what she had done was saved so she could continue from there. She got a form email telling her to phone — but no one manned the phones on the weekend, and the free offer would be over by the time the phones opened. She gave up and receives frequent solicitation emails from them now. I deleted my post about the site’s free weekend, so don’t bother looking for it. I’m not naming the site now because I don’t know if this was one person’s freak experience or that’s what happened to many of you — let me know.
Widow’s personal story of “touch deprivation therapy”
Ellen Taft wrote me this moving email and gave me permission to publish it here:
I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done to help me get back out there again after losing my husband of 37 years in December of 2007. I’m 63 today, and it’s been a terrifying and exhilarating experience.
My husband died a year and a half ago. It had been over 40 years since I’d dated. Getting back out there has been a real trip! But I’ve done it, largely with the help from Joan’s book, Better than I Ever Expected, and her blog here with the wonderful information and links. The link to Judith Sills, and her book, Getting Naked Again, gave me the final push.
Sills suggested having a friend “mentor” your reentry into getting naked again. So that’s what I did. I asked a dear friend and fellow recent widower to help me in this tremendous step. We had been dating for a few months, very cautiously, as he is a more recent widower, and not ready for any new relationship, but this mentoring idea appealed to him.
We “negotiated” which means we clarified just what we were doing and why, so no one would be mislead. We shared our feelings about our bodies, what we needed the other to know, our limitations, and our fears.
I asked that we use condoms or get tested for STDs. It was an amazingly honest and open sharing, and I attribute the comfort level we experienced to our “negotiations.” Once we knew these intimate details about each other, the concern and caring that followed made the whole experience positive.
I had done a lot of reading, too, including Michael Castleman’s Great Sex, also mentioned in Joan’s blog, and all my reading paid off.
It was a wonderful, amazing three hours. Neither one of us could believe how smoothly it all went. We both enjoyed it so much and were so relaxed we have continued the relationship. We call it “Touch Deprivation Therapy,” and oh, how it helps!
Thank you, Ellen. I’m thrilled that you shared your experience with us and that my book recommendations helped you! (Read these and my other book reviews here.)