I remember exactly when I decided to take online dating seriously. My husband Dick had been dead for three years and I was turning 65. During a brief bathroom ceremony on my birthday, I removed my wedding ring and placed a temporary tattoo over my heart that read Choose Love Now.
Five years later, when I turned 70 last month, I decided to break up with Match.com forever, the online dating site I had stuck with the longest. I didn’t let my bad first marriage last 5 years and I wasn’t going to continue any longer doing something on purpose that made me this consistently miserable.
Let’s be clear. I tried a LOT of dating sites: Stitch, Our Time, OK Cupid, Match, eHarmony, EliteSingles, Bumble and an obscure one specifically for booklovers. I liked hundreds of men, spoke with 89 of them on the phone and went on dates with several dozen. In all that time, there were only two whose mind, body and soul I wanted to explore in depth. And after months of dating, each of them bowed out. Both fizzled relationships happened last year, which partly explains why I’m throwing in the towel now. My decision is also related to this age milestone: unlike many people on dating sites, I never lied about my age and the closer I got to 70, the closer the men pursuing me got to 90.
Other than enough juicy anecdotes for a stand-up comedy set, what did I actually obtain in five years of diligent vulnerability and dashed hopes?
For a brief while, when my niece was exactly half my age (I was 66), we talked about writing a book together about two different generations’ experience with online dating. So I was trying to collect some of the more bizarre and amusing experiences that reflected my demographic. Like the guy who wrote, “My wife of 35 years recently died and I know you are the next love of my life because you are nothing like her.” Or the man who was sure we’d be a great couple although “Sadly, I’m between teeth. And I don’t drive at night.” One guy who pursued me said his side gig was fighting the reptilian overlords who run our planet and he had 10 invisible wings, but I don’t suppose this obsession was age-related. Also, “wow, my furniture would look great in here” isn’t a welcome second-date response at any age.
Meanwhile, my niece is engaged to a fabulous guy she’s known since high school. The book project was dropped.
Was I too picky? I was only interested in men who were passionate about life, accomplished in some way, deeply engaged with friends and family, witty, honest and emotionally available. And monogamous. Bonus points if they were interested in meditation or travel.
I’m not about to dump on all men, or all men in my age group who frequent online dating sites. Once I figured out how to spot fake profiles, many of the men with whom I engaged seemed self-aware and genuinely interested in a juicy, committed relationship. They were able to communicate their wishes and needs in appropriate ways, except for that guy who broke up with me in a text after 4 months of dating. (You are a coward with mommy issues, Dude.) Almost all of these aging men were battle-scarred and wary: they were out the other side of bad marriages or they had lost someone they loved dearly, often after a lengthy, exhausting period of caregiving. Neither their bodies nor their careers were at their peak. (And neither are mine.) Many were lovely, caring people and some really tried. We just didn’t fit.
But I really did think it would be different or I wouldn’t have kept trying. I had hoped for more sex, more playfulness, more depth, more simple tenderness. Constantly curating and performing my personality and life to tempt a stranger’s notice became a grind.
I don’t know my Myers-Briggs personality type, but I’m someone who is known for shining. I expect myself to exceed expectations. Even though I’ve been a freelance writer since 1994, the constant rejection flattened me. It was easier in the first few years to stay cheerful. But in recent months, I would spiral down into a loop of longing and self-loathing some nights, scrolling desperately past sad bathroom selfies and grinning men with bodies of fish pressed to their chests, feeling increasingly hopeless. I’m sorry. I don’t do hopeless. I’m not pulling the lever on this machine ever again. I’m free.
For sure, I don’t regard the 5 years spent as a total waste. I learned a lot, including that I’d rather dwell alone than shackled to someone who doesn’t make life sweeter. It’s not like I have no good memories: If I hadn’t dated so many outdoorsmen, I would probably never have bought myself good hiking boots (for some reason, knowing the names of birds and trees is a turn-on for me). I’m grateful for the guy with the chain saw who spent half a day cutting up dead tree branches in my son’s backyard. I give thanks for the man who introduced me to the music of Bela Fleck. The one whose second-date ploy was to wrap up two of his favorite books in brown paper as gifts won my heart immediately (he wanted all of me, until an old flame returned.) I’ll cherish some of the unexpected moments, like the arborist who brought a fresh apple to a coffee date he had just plucked off a tree, and cut it up with his pocket knife for our DIY snack. I’ll never forget the French horn player with skinny hips for whom I was Just.Too.Much, for the way he took my face in his hands before that first and only kiss. And out of the 89 I conversed with, one man became a friend and I’m grateful for him.
In the end, I think online dating platforms are dehumanizing by nature. It’s more a shopping experience than a safe gathering space. Dating sites are just another display of online merchandise we can acquire, and sad to say, a good number of senior citizens present as past their sell-by dates. I am guilty myself of the swipe-fast-there’s-plenty-more mentality, thinking “This guy isn’t answering back the way I would like or as fast as I want. But there are hundreds more guys back on the site. Let’s try them.” (I’m stunned that Amazon hasn’t gotten into the dating business by now: “Consummation delivered overnight with Prime.”)
I started online dating with a small personal ritual and it was another ritual that helped me sever this unhappy obsession. I had made a plan to wake up the day I turned 70 at a Kundalini yoga immersion in Rishikesh, India. Early in the 10-day retreat, we participated in a Vedic fire ceremony, a purification ritual with a priest. He chanted a mantra 27 times and each time he did, we were to toss an offering of dry herbs and roots into the fire, each time naming to ourselves a thing or habit we wanted to expel from our lives. So, 27 times, I vowed to jettison online dating from my life. As soon as I returned home, I cut ties to Match.com.
Now, I’m not averse to romance and maybe it will come again from unexpected directions. I met my late husband in the most unlikely way imaginable: we were introduced in 1988 by a man I’d met through a personals ad in New York magazine – and rejected. It was a comically horrible first date in which this handsome guy basically did a marriage interview and told me that, according to his list of requirements, my hair was too short and my apartment too distant. And yet, he thought enough of me that months later, after he met his soulmate, he wanted to introduce me to a truly fabulous friend of his. After our first meeting, Dick and I were a couple until his death.
When I nuked my Match.com account, within hours I was receiving messages from OurTime, a site for singles over 50, offering me men they were sure were just perfect for me. I laughed hysterically because, believe it or not, the very first guy they offered to me was the very first guy I met in person when I started my online dating “journey” 5 years ago. I sometimes run into him in the supermarket, and I’m not any more attracted to him now than when we briefly dated.
It’s no fluke, my friends, that I was hearing from another dating site immediately after breaking up with Match. I discovered that the parent company of Match, Match Group is basically a dating monopoly that owns almost all the major dating apps including Match, OK Cupid, Hinge, Tinder, OurTime and more.
I am done with the dating industrial complex! Love does change everything, but romantic love is not the only kind. An Indian astrologer in Jaipur told me that I’ll find a deep love in the next three years, but that’s probably because I’m about to adopt a cat. Right now, I just want to lean into my elderhood and not worry if that makes me less desirable. I want to live my life, not perform it. It will feel so liberating and luscious when I no longer associate my charming local coffee shop with awkward first dates.
Copyright Meg Cox. Reprint only with permission. Art by Meg Cox.
April 17, 2023