Suzanne Braun Levine
Huff/Post 50
My friend Anne just turned 60, and she looks great. She has a great job, the capstone to a great career. She has two kids she adores and two ex-husbands she doesn’t. She is full of energy and curiosity and has tons of friends. But no “boyfriend” (to resurrect a term from the past) to do things with, to have sex with (or not), to laugh with, but not necessarily to get serious with (though that would be nice).
She nags her friends to find someone for her, but so far she has not been fixed up once. I used to wrack my brain looking for someone suitable (I happen to think a younger, less powerful guy would be ideal) but now I am wracking my brain for ways to persuade her to try an online dating service. For one thing, it would expand the universe of contacts beyond the six degrees of separation we live in. For another, the Anne we are looking to match up with someone suitable is limited by history — who she has been, not who she can still become.
Having written a book about the subject (How We Love Now: Women Talk About Intimacy After Fifty). I hear story after story about serendipity, rekindled romance, and true love — all found on the Internet. Not to mention the queen of domesticity Martha Stewart and novelist Joyce Maynard, two recent success stories. I know of a 25-year-old rebel who found a woman as tattooed as he was, a 35-year-old who posted the statement “I don’t want to mess around; I am looking to get married” and met the love of her life (a millionaire, no less) and I know numerous women Anne’s age who have met “unlikely” matches who have turned out to be terrific dates.
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