Fun with Online Dating at Age 63 and Beyond!

You have to be motivated or amused or a little of both to stick with online dating, especially at age 63 and beyond. I’m now 69 years old and over the last six years, I was on and off J-Date, Match.com, Yahoo Dating and OKCupid to find guys with whom I could do some real-time offline dating.

You probably want to know – was it fun? Was it horrid? Was the time I devoted to the online search and offline dating well spent? Did I find my perfect match? The brief answers are – yes it was fun. No it was not horrid. Yes my time was well spent. Yes I found someone. We have been enjoying each other’s company for seven months and our assessment is “so far so good.”

The fun of it was in the variety of guys I met and got to know a little bit. Some I dated once or twice; others I dated for a few months or more. Among them were a professional engineer/diver, a newspaper reporter, a registered nurse, a nuclear scientist from Fermi Lab, an attorney who did pro-bono work which included defending arrested Occupy Chicago protestors, a handy-man electrician who fixed a broken lamp for me, a 70 year old volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces, a business owner whose business made screws, nuts and bolts and a college professor who is not a romantic interest but has become a good friend.

It was not horrid, but it was scary. At the same time that I was going online to find guys I could meet for real offline dating, I was also trying to market a book of prayers I had written.  In both cases, I was putting myself and my soul “out there” to be evaluated and critiqued. In both cases, I experienced rejection, indifference and sometimes confirmation that they (the guys and the readers) thought I and/or my prayers were “ok.”  I must say, however, that I was amused at how difficult the online and offline dating rejections were. Always I felt personally affronted by a guy I never met who would reply to my online query “You are not my type” or “You seem interesting but I’m dating someone else I met online.” And it was surprisingly difficult for me to tell a guy whom I barely knew after one or two dates or one phone call “You seem like a nice guy (said to soften the blow) but I’m sorry this is not going to work for me.”  Except for one guy. On our first date, he said “My last girlfriend would come to my house and throw out the beer in my refrigerator to keep me from drinking to excess.”  I immediately got up to leave, shook hands with him and replied “I will never do that for you.”    I had been married to a non-recovered alcoholic. Enough said.

My time was well spent.  I found enough personal “enlightenment” to keep me going in spite of all the mis-matches and near-matches. I learned a lot about myself as I put myself out there with guys whose quirks and personalities butted up against my quirks (yes I do have many) and my not-always easy-going personality.  I learned even more through writing and rewriting and tweaking my online profiles on the several sites. It was like completing mini-social psychological evaluations. Was I flirty, intellectual, seductive, athletic, bookish, religious, spiritual? Was I friendly or reserved? Was I social or a hermit? Was I creative or not?  And how did I like to spend my time?  And what was I looking for – companionship, friendship, long-term relationship, marriage? Do I mention my several divorces or that I write prayers? Are these things that define me? Will any of this turn off a guy who might be a good match for me?

So now to your most important question:    Have I met my perfect match? My answer is a very tentative maybe.  For seven months, I’ve been seeing a guy I met on OKCupid.  We are of the same generation: I am 69; he is 70.  He is a nice guy, by that I mean: he is pleasant to be with and doesn’t have any in-your-face negative personality traits. He gets along well with me and with his kids and grand-kids and speaks well of his ex-wife. 

We are not identical in our personalities or interests, yet we seem compatible. Here are a few things I like very much about him: We both like to eat at home. He cooks for me; I cook for him.   When we occasionally go out to eat, he shares his food with me.  (The pro-bono attorney did not offer to share his large salad with me after I offered to share my medium sized pizza with him.) He has street smarts and a witty/sharp sense of humor. He reads books and has recommended several wonderful reads to me. After he has talked for a while, he says “I’ve said enough. Perhaps I talked too long. I tend to go on sometimes” and then he stops talking. After six years and many dates, possibilities and rejections by the other guys or by me, I know this guy is a person of substance and he seems to think the same of me.  At 69 and 70 respectively we know our time on this earth is shorter than it used to be and our mutual assessment is “so far so good.”

Written July 2013

As of November 2013, we are still enjoying each other’s company.