If you are 50 plus, you probably remember coming home from school, plopping down on the sofa and watching the The Dating Game. The TV game show that used to air in the afternoon between soap operas and local news back before Jerry Springer and Maury Povich were demonstrating the collapse of decent and polite civilization that the 50+ crowd was the last generation to grow up with. A little naughty at the time, the jokes and entire concept seems tame almost to the point of quaint today. And it is those changes in the real life dating game that make those consideringdating sites for people over 50 a little nervous. The rules really haven’t changed for finding love, but for those over 50 the playing board may look a little unfamiliar.
Getting back into dating for those over 50 often involves more than the discomfort of relearning how to engage in a social activity you may not have tried for over two decades; in many cases it means dating after the death of a spouse or dating after divorce. Except when those two circumstances mean a welcome sense of newfound freedom, wading into the strange world represented by the wealth of over 50 dating sites almost always begins with a sudden freezing sensation of fear of the unknown. According to Psychology Today, half a million people over theage of 65 remarry every year. What does that statistic mean? Nothing much.
Except that such a singularly impressive number means that dating on the other side of that infamous hill can not only be done, it can be done very well!
The scariest thing about exploring dating sites when you’re over 50 usually touches in some way upon the winds of change. A 60 year old today who begins to date again after a 40-year marriage hasn’t had to worry about innocent flirting with a stranger since the meaning of the word “web” pretty much was limited to spiders. Dating sites on the web and a dependence upon computers to help you find love may seem more terrifying than walking into a spider web, but if you think of it merely as going to where a lot of people congregate naturally—only without the beer, or music, or hobbies—then using the web for dating quickly becomes far less horrifying. At the same time, just because online dating sites for those over 50 exist is not really enough to compel you to follow through. Taking advantage of 21st century technology remains a choice and it is entirely up to you whether you make that choice or not; don’t let anyone bully you into signing up for an online dating site. It is also worthwhile to keep in mind that the person with whom the computer has matched you may very well be every bit as suspicious of the technique as you.
Whether your days of dating ended in 1958 or 1998, the world of dating for older Americans is certain new. But just because something is new doesn’t necessarily mean it is entirely different. How many commercials do you remember that proudly promised a Brand New Product that turned out to be pretty much the same thing you’d been using for years? Just because the world of dating in the 21st century for the 50 plus crowd involves computers and the internet is no reason to believe that it bears no resemblance to the world of dating off the grid that you can recall.
For many Americans, their initial entry onto the dating scene brings back memories as diverse as sharing a soda at the Woolworth, dancing at school with a mandatory six inches of space between your bodies, or dressing to the nines to go to a disco meat market. Once you embrace the far side of over 50, however, those things either become a distant nostalgic memory or should simply be jettisoned from your thoughts at all cost. You may think you look and dance just as good as you did when you were twenty, but hitting the nightclub circuit may quickly remind you of the intervening years and clicking offline when things turn sour is a lot less work than extricating yourself from a public spectacle.
The most important thing to remember when you get back into dating after 50 is to avoid the temptation to treat both the world and yourself as if you were 25. Although it is entirely possible to find someone on the many dating sites for those over 50 who would not mind at all jumping into a time machine with you to meet for a soda at the Dairy Queen, it is far more likely that your date will involve sharing a slot machine at the local casino. Times have changed since you last dated; so have you. But it is important to remember that when you get down to it, only the details have changed. People are still people and though you may well find the next great love of your life on one of the many over 50 dating sites rather than in one of the traditional sites for finding young love—like on a bar stool or beneath a mirrorball or even on a church picnic—the same rules apply.
Be careful. Feel free to flirt. Get to know each other before rushing into anything serious. And respect the other person’s privacy, which means being sensitive about those who came before you during those first 50 years.
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