PUSHING SEVENTY AND LOOKING FOR LOVE

I am not yet 70 (68), but am close enough to being 70 that I want to start practicing at owning my new decade. Love is the one “thing” I have yet to figure out in life, despite having had two marriages and a passel of boyfriends.  Maybe at this point in life, I can learn to bypass my preconceived notions that I am no longer pretty, smart, or funny enough to warrant a good relationship. Apologies to all those wonderful men that I tried and failed with,” it really was me and not you”.  

My “Taking Dating Seriously” to do list has homework expectations. In the name of research I enter “finding love over age 70” into the google machine. According to one unreplicated study in a British tabloid (the Daily Mail), people in the age 65-74 bracket have a one in 304 chance of finding love, whereas the 18-24 year olds have a one in 1024 chance.  These strange numbers fly in the face of conventional wisdom. They challenge my melancholic side which is inclined to stay in a delicious space of longing for my Prince. After all, dashed hopes resulting from real world encounters are so much worse than the dashed hopes of a princess who has finally decided never to leave the tower again. And anyway, don’t I accomplish more and weigh less when I am single?

My single woman status is still a little new, having recently endured a break up. Happily, my social network now  includes other single women with whom I have endless conversations about men. These bring me back to high school days of being the friend that broken hearted girls turned to for shoring up self-esteem. These conversations are familiar and gratifying, and even better experienced with a martini or two. In fact, this is actually a pretty happy place to hang out. Girlfriends rarely break up with you-unless you do something particularly egregious.  

I have grown closer to my sister who has endured at least 5 serious heartbreaks over the last 20 years, and has come out swinging each and every time. She is happy in love now, thus is poised to give sisterly gems of wisdom. In other words she doesn’t know what she is talking about, but I lean on her all the same.

Toying with the knowledge that maybe finding love will not be quite as hard as I thought, I ask one of my new single friends to read my Tarot cards (can this be considered an act of desperation? I think not!). One snowy night I infused her deck of cards with my psychic energy (in other words I touched the cards). My friend’s cards strongly ordained that the universe is on my side in finding love. All I have to do is get over my broken heart and then I am good to go. Oddly, and not really to the point, I woke up the next day being unable to remember the feelings of hurt and sadness I have been nourishing since my last break-up. This tiny tidbit of personal growth makes no sense as I am the kind of person keeps trying to revisit old relationships until they are ground down into tiny bits of nothingness. Right now the only sadness or loneliness I feel is missing the drama of feeling sad.  

Truth be told, the day after I became single, I signed up for an online dating service.  I really didn’t expect to meet anyone, but liked the idea that I could, maybe, get some male attention. All the magazines, and of course the Daily Mail,  say that online dating is the number one venue for meeting people, of any age (number two is striking up conversations at the gym, number 3 is to play golf).  It would be an interesting experiment to see what would happen if I actually believed any of this. Thus far, the dearth of eligible men online, i.e.: those with most of their teeth who are not wearing sunglasses and a hat, has done little to buoy optimism. Not only that, but now, a few months into the experience, I have changed my profile picture at least 5 times and my age twice (yes you can do that; you just need to know how). Half the time I keep my profile hidden, and despite being a writer, cannot write a profile to save my life. I have, however, created about 8 fake profiles to see if any of my ex’s, and especially the most recent one, have joined, and also to check out the competition. And who said that online dating is not fun?

All of this is, of course, occurring against the COVD backdrop, but as far as I have been able to tell, people still want love.  Maybe COVID is causing people to be a little more circumspect, I really don’t know. For point of reference, one of my 60 plus year old girlfriends has had two dates with “cute guys” already this weekend, and it’s now early Saturday evening.  Tonight my pal is taking me out, which I think is a genius move on my part, she has always been expert at garnering attention.  

Ultimately, for me the question is whether I will get back in the game, as the Tarot Cards, Vogue, and the Daily Mail seem to want me to do? I could always give up reading magazines, especially the ones that want me to play golf and talk to strangers. Or, can I decide to give up preconceived notions of scarcity and follow all that dating advice that I have ingested? Can I learn to give up ideas of needing to be perfect in order to be loved? Love is possible, there are great people out there, and you are never too old. At least this is what I tell all my girlfriends.

MORE TO COME.