“If I say a woman is 58, men think she’s sitting in a rocking chair, knitting,” Feinstein says. “When you say 55, they associate it with an old lady. It’s just not true.” Similarly, women are likely to regard men in their age bracket as couch potatoes.
She’s also parlayed these dating adventures and misadventures into a script for an as-yet-unproduced play, “Single Again and Hating It
Michael Lasky, coauthor of “Online Dating for Dummies,” calculates that in terms of social experience, a generation is about seven years.
After that, a couple’s tastes in music, food, and entertainment, along with their points of reference, vary widely. “Once you start going beyond 10 years, you are adding one more complication to the challenge of mating,” he says.
When those in their mid-50s and beyond were dating the first time around, the biggest romantic question was whether to kiss on the first date
Beyond the question of age, many midlife daters must confront that dreaded word “baggage,” a reference to spouses and offspring from previous relationships. Speaking of “the children situation,” Alpert says, “I’ve met men with 6-year-olds and men with 39-year-olds, men who are single who still want kids, and twice-divorced men with two sets of kids. If they’ve still got young kids or teenagers, they want someone who’s OK with that lifestyle. I’ve paid my dues with teenagers.”
“They just don’t know where to turn, especially if their friends are still married,” says Kenny, who runs the over-50 matchmaking service. Read more