And That's Why You're Single |
| Posted: 05 Mar 2014 07:27 AM PST xoJane posted an article last week from a woman in her late fifties who said that her dating options dried up once she started revealing her age.
Now, we’ve heard the ol’, “I look much younger than I actually am” thing here plenty of times. To the author’s credit, she does look fabulous. But since I live in Manhattan and see women in their 50′s looking that good all the time, I wouldn’t place her below 50 years old, which still ain’t bad considering she’s 58. Now that we’ve established how great she looks (which, let’s be honest, is always one of the goals of an article like this), let’s talk about the more pressing issue. I’m not sure that the men she discusses in her examples were ending the relationships just because of her age. I happen to believe they also broke things off because they felt intentionally mislead. I don’t know how anybody dates someone for 6 months and their age never comes up. The only instances where I know of that happening is when one of them is hiding their age or has lied about it. I brought this up in the comments and suggested that she was intentionally keeping her age a secret and going for men who weren’t age-appropriate (read: considerably younger). Of course, that didn’t go over well. As much as it might sting some men and women to hear this, there comes a point where you need to gracefully accept that people of a certain age aren’t all that interested in us. They might date us casually, but the chances that they will settle down with us long term are pretty slim. And when that does it happen, it’s an exception to the rule and not the rule. What irked me about the response to this article is that it became about ageism towards women – which totally exists – when I think the real issue was that the author was going for men that weren’t age appropriate. I think if the author of this piece pursued men in their mid-sixties, she’d clean up. But if she, at 58, is going for men under 60, that somewhat explains why she’s having difficulty. She thinks she looks younger than she is and therefore her age shouldn’t be an issue. Y’all know how I feel about that. Take it away, Karen Walker.
Except it is an issue. And it works both ways. When people say they don’t go for potential matches too much older than them because they’re too “vibrant” and “active”, what they’re really saying is, “Eww. Those people are old. I’m not that old.” Except, like, we are. We are that old. That’s not a bad thing. I have male and female profile clients who refuse to adjust their preferred age range to more than 5 years older than their age, but they’ll go ten years younger. Worse are the men and women who talk about all the emails they get from people in their twenties or otherwise noticeably younger than them as though it’s indicative of something or justifies their need to date younger. That means nothing. Seriously. Every woman over 35 who uses OKCupid gets inundated with messages from younger guys. Don’t kid yourselves. And you 40+ guys? Those twentysomethings that message you? Yeah, most of them are just looking for an experience. Get over yourselves. Obviously, women “of a certain age” get the raw deal in all of this. There’s a prestige to aging for men. Somehow their value rises. Not so for women. Hosts of entertainment shows still ask female actresses how they manage to look so young. They never ask men that. If they leave the house without make-up, the same actresses are photographed and captions are placed underneath expressing horror for them that they dared leave the house without putting on concealer. You don’t see Star magazine devoting sections to male celebrities walking their dogs whilst looking as though they just rolled out of bed. Women are expected to look pulled together all of the time, and if we don’t, we’re “letting ourselves go.” I’ve often said that men over 35 are more in demand than their female counter-parts. That’s true to a point. Women in my age range (40-50) might not be sought out by men the same age as us, but we are heavily pursued by men a bit older. At 45, I’ve accepted that my target age range is now 48-55. I might be able to date someone long term who is under 45 if they’ve already been married or don’t want kids. But those guys are few and far between. I would never go to a speeddating or singles event where the age range is 30′s and 40′s. There’s really no point. Most of the men attending aren’t looking for me. Men in their 50′s, however, are looking for me. And I like men who like me back. Hence, I tend to focus my efforts on them. I got the sense that the author of the piece I linked to above has her own issues with dating people of a certain age. But, of course, nobody brought that up. Well, I did, but you know how that tends to go. When guys refuse to date age-appropriate women, they’re pigs. When women do it, they’re empowered. As I said, I have no doubt she’d be a hit with men in their sixties. But if she’s regularly going after men younger than her or just a couple of years older and being rejected, I’m not sure if that’s actually a product of ageism as much as it is a result of going for people outside of your audience. Is it ageism to prefer to date people younger than yourself? I consider ageism to be when someone refuses to even consider dating someone who isn’t X years younger than them. Those are two different things. Maybe I’m over-simplifying this?
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