Online Dating For Singles Over 60

So here you are. Sixty something, on your own again, and whatever brought you to it, the worst has passed. You have decided something has to change. Nothing dramatic. You would just rather have somebody to go to the pictures with of a Thursday.

Now cast your mind back to the last first date you went on. Fair chance it was with the person you then spent thirty years married to. What age were you, nineteen? Twenty two? Whatever it was, the world it happened in is gone. The dancehall is apartments. The mixtape is in a museum. And the whole business has been quietly rewritten while you were rearing a family.

Let us go through what has actually changed, because it is less than you would fear.

You are older, and it is more help than hindrance

The obvious one first. You are not nineteen, and neither is anybody you will meet, which takes a great deal of nonsense out of it. Arriving at her door on a borrowed motorbike with no exhaust would not have the effect it had in 1979, and that is no loss, because what you have instead is better. You know who you are. You stopped performing twenty years ago. People notice, and at this age they much prefer it.

Everybody comes with a history

Yourself included. They have likely been married. There may be grown children, grandchildren, a business somebody will not sell, an elderly parent, a dog with strong views on callers. None of it is aimed at you.

When the ex rings in the middle of the dinner, that is his past, not your present. When hers lands to collect the grandchildren and looks put out to find you in the kitchen, that is not about you either. The only thing that has ever worked is saying it out loud early: here is what I am comfortable with, here is what I am not, and what about yourself. You are both far too old to be sulking over something neither of you has mentioned.

You have baggage, and so has the other one

Everybody has by now. The trap is not the baggage, it is the temptation to rebuild the last relationship out of new parts. Don't. This is a different person and, if you are honest, so are you. Let it be whatever it turns into. It might be better. It will certainly be less predictable.

Leave the case at the station. You can always send for it if you find you miss it.

What has not changed in the least

The main thing. Everybody wants somebody, and getting older does not excuse you from it. If anything you are better got up for it than you were: you know what you want, you know what you will not stand, and you have stopped losing years in the gap between the two.

One practical thing in your favour here. If you are 66 or over you have free travel on the trains and the buses, which means somebody two counties away is a good deal less far off than it looks on a map. And since 2025 anybody over 70 gets a companion pass, so a friend can travel with you for nothing. There is no earthly reason to set your search at ten miles out of habit.

So take a breath and sign up for an online dating account. Worst case, you get a few good conversations and something to be talking about at the weekend.

Author: Judy Porter.

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