Pamela Madsen is in her fifties, stands five-foot three inches tall, and describes herself as “the slightly chubby woman next door.” She further describes herself as a Sex Goddess, and says she can teach any other woman to become one, too.
Last month, I wrote a piece on the differences between what men worried about when they were dating in their teens (“Will she laugh at my peach fuzz?”) compared to their concerns when dating Over 50 (“Will she laugh at my back hair?”). You can read the other 24 here.
When it comes to overall changes in the world of dating between then and now, the very best improvement has to be online dating. Truly, it’s an historic innovation that ranks up there with the cotton gin, penicillin, and those lights in the parking garages that show you which spaces are empty.
Online dating just makes everything so simple.
Plenty of things about middle-age really suck. Waistlines expand, hair thins, skin sags. And then there’s all that stuff with the nether regions.
If you’re middle-aged and recently became single, issues like those not only affect how you see yourself, they can also impact your search for a new partner. There’s an understandable anxiety about the future, a lack of confidence in yourself, and a very natural inclination to grab on to someone, anyone, so as to not be alone.
This leads to the fairly common situation of a newly divorced person jumping right into another relationship, quite often with someone just like his or her former spouse. Chances are good you could point to a friend or family member who “remarried their ex.”
Rather than fear the effects of time and race to get ahead of them, I’d argue that single Boomers should slow down, embrace their circumstance, and appreciate the great gift that time has given them. A gift that, if used correctly, makes their search for a new partner so much more likely to be fruitful, and result in an excellent match.
If you were a good boy or girl during your marriage and never cheated, going through a Divorce Over 50 means you’ll (hopefully, eventually) be having sex with someone new for the first time in a few decades. And, depending on how long and how acrimonious the break up of your marriage was, it may be the first time having sex with anyone in a year or more. Creating a situation not unlike losing your virginity all over again.
A lot has changed for us Over 50’s since we were teenagers. And some things have stayed very much the same.
In regard to dating, relationships, and sex, here’s a look at what men said, thought, and worried about back when they were teenagers, and what they say, think, and worry about now that they’re Over 50:
We recently highlighted a piece by Robin Korth about the difficulties she experiences in having sex as a postmenopausal woman in her sixties. Interestingly and admirably, she found the positive in her situation, discovering that it’s led to deeper, more honest relationships.
Erica Jagger (a pen name, and a good one…), who runs the A Sexy Woman of a Certain Age blog, wrote a piece concerning Korth’s article. Jagger was pleased to note she had not experienced any of the problems that Korth had — until she realized she hadn’t gone through menopause yet. Uh-oh.
We know there’s such thing as Gray Divorce (the mainstream term for Divorce Over 50) because we’re living it. And the media has caught on, paying it a bit of attention. But did you know there’s a whole book about it?
All of us Over 50’s are all too aware of the changes that occur to our bodies as we age. More pounds, less hair, crinkly eyes, creaky knees. And, oh yeah, those changes to our sex organs and their performance.
What in the world could a grandmother teach any of us about online dating? Well, if that grandma is London based journalist Monica Porter, quite a lot.
Ah, the fix-up. The time-tested, totally analog method of finding a date. It may have led to your first marriage, your parents’ marriage, their parents’ marriage, ad infinitum. But many Over 50’s say they’re not having any luck getting fixed-up these days. Is there a way to do it better?