Rejected! Online Dating for Seniors

After spending two and a half days reading profiles at on-line dating sites for old people I decided I don’t want a man in my life which I suspected all along. At my age who needs the stress of being judged and maybe rejected like a cow at a county fair whose owner was hoping for a blue ribbon. It’s hard enough to make new women friends at the senior hall and the woman/man thing is so much more complicated. With most of the profile guys on dating sites they want traveling companions (which I’m not interested in doing) and too many are just looking for opportunities to prove that “their plumbing works." Oh, my! That’s old man code for what young guys would come right out and say: "Only hot babes looking for hot sex need apply!" Hot babes are few and far between in the geriatric set and profile guys don't seem to know about the hot babes over at Advanced Style where the blog owner has a catch-and-release sort of program. He photographs all the hot older ladies he meets and he doesn't find those women all over the place. He searches and searches the streets every day.

If I were to write and post a profile for on-line dating I’d say, "I’m not interested in seeing your underwear or your birthday suit" and not a damn guy would send me a ‘flirt’---that’s the lingo they use for making your first contact with someone you’re interested in conversing with. See how smart I’ve gotten in such a short time of studying on-line dating? If I were to write an honest profile---and there shouldn’t be any other kind---I’d have to confess to not liking motorcycles or cooking my skin at the beach, cooking food in the kitchen or doing all the laundry while the Sports-All-Day-Long Network plays in the background. I’d have to confess that I’m not interested in having a guy relocate his life into my house or me relocating my life into his dwelling place. In other words, I’m not marriage material. If profile guys are being honest, marriage is a high priority…except with the pen-pal seeking prisoner I wrote about in previous posts. My husband and I worked too hard to get the security and creature comforts I enjoy now just to hand them over to a profile guy after a month or two of conversing like my friend in Florida has been known to do with the guys she meets on-line. Even if a profile guy turned out to be a nice dude, and not a con-artist, x-con or axe murderer, merging bank accounts and household bills is not going to happen so why lead on a marriage-minded guy when all I want is to talk to someone, once in a great while, who doesn't wear a bra?

And let me add as a Weight Watcher drop out, I’m turned off by the hypocrisy of guys who are carrying spare tires around their waistlines and look like they’ve got walnuts stuffed in their cheeks who specify how much their dream woman should weigh. What are they going to do, take a bathroom scales to their first in-person date and make sure his internet match didn’t indulge in one too many fudge flavored ice cream bars? Check your mirrors, profile guys with skinny-chick fetishes, many of you couldn't pass your own the body mass Litmus Test.

In all seriousness, though, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about romance and love and what it takes to fall in love over seventy as opposed to when I was young. It’s more complicated as we age, isn’t it. There are children, grandchildren, x-spouses, dead spouses, cats and dogs involved not to mention deeply entrenched opinions and likes and dislikes. When we're young and in love we tend to grow in the same direction like morning glory vines greeting the sun. If you were happy together for many years like Don and I were you get to the point where you can’t tell where each other stops and starts.  Something tells me that can’t happen with seniors who may fall into companionship-works-for-me but that’s not love according to the Gospel of Jean.

Since I started researching on-line dating every song I hear on the radio reminds me of something about my husband---a come-recuse-me look from across a room or that twinkle in Don’s eyes when he was intrigued by something I said, or those smoldering looks that spoke volumes. Earlier this week at a museum party I attended an old guy looked at me like he was intrigued by something I said and all I could think about was, I wonder if he has all his own teeth. In my mind I just can’t pair the Gerital set and romance up in the same sentence. Yet I know it happens. After my dad gave up his driver’s license I chauffeured him and his girlfriend around on weekly dates. Sometimes he looked at her like she was the Fountain of Youth and he’d just walked through the Sahara Desert. Daughters don’t like to think of their fathers as needing to get a room, but looking back---Geez, I have to go watch a video of someone beating a puppy to clear that visual of my dad out of my head!

Speaking of videos, have you seen the one by Donnalou Stevens? She’s a woman who is trying to break into the business of writing and preforming funny, light-hearted songs and her Older Ladies video at The Kickerstarter Project has gone viral. “Well I ain’t 16, not a beauty queen,” she sings, “my eyes are baggin’ and my skin is saggin’, and if that’s the reason that you don’t love me then maybe that’s not love.” Check it out. It’s hilarious. After that, you can check out the next video below if you’re interested in seeing what I’d consider to be a sexy older guy who could probably, maybe someday in another galaxy far, far away charm his way past my widow’s weeds. (Look it up, it’s a proper term.) This guy may be chronologically too young for me---I can’t judge age anymore---but his artistry with a camera alone is a super turn-on and people who knew Don will be able to see the strong resemble between video guy and my husband at his gray-haired best. Who needs on-line dating when I have YouTube to keep me entertained? ©

 

Operation Online Dating Profiles: Part II

 

First, again with the disclaimer: I'm not looking for romance. But Judy from the Upward and Onward blog and I have a new hobby worth writing about a second time---checking out profiles at a dating site for seniors. I know what you’re thinking. We both live in Michigan, both viewing the same pool of guys and sooner or later we’re going to have a cat fight over a guy who intrigues us both enough to actually sign up and send that poor unsuspecting fellow a ‘flirt.’ That's not going to happen and I'll tell you why. She’s a feline person, I’m a dog person. She smokes, I don’t. She’s a church goer, I’m allergic to churches. These areas of incompatibility are deal breakers on my side of the state. Therefore, guys who smoke and love going on church mission trips and/or have cats won’t get a second look from me which means Judy’s pool of candidates is much larger than mine. Although when I told her about the guy with the 15 cats, she didn’t seem all that interested. I wonder why. But I found out that even dog loving guys can be prejudice against me bringing sweet Levi the schnauzer into a relationship. Profile guy Exhibit A has two dogs of his own and thinks traveling with anymore pets than that would be too much trouble. So, he has a ‘no pets’ clause in his profile. The jerk.

I strongly suspect I’m also not compatible with a guy who is looking for a woman into AFHV. I don’t even know what that means and I’m afraid to do a Google search for fear I’ll land on an X-rated site that will send me pop-up ads for the next two years. Decoding the dating profiles is getting easier though. “Very loving” equals “I’m horny.” “Love long walks on the beach” means “I will do romantic things until I get you in the sack.” “Seeking a woman who likes to hug, kiss and hold hands as much as I do” equates to “I’m very horny. Did I mention horny?” Some guys have sweet ways of saying they are horny, like: “Falling in love is like riding a bike. You never forget how. I have a bicycle built for two with a vacant seat.” Ladies, can we all do a collective sigh right now? That's a great line, internet profile guy. Much better than a guy who, in his profile photo, is holding a sign that reads, “Wish this was still America!” No decoding necessary here. He is saying: “I’m a Tea Party guy who hates Obama. Stay away, liberal ladies!” He doesn’t have to ask me twice. I back-buttoned off his profile at warp speed. Maybe I should have bookmarked him for Judy? NASCAR guys and those looking for spontaneity can count me out, too. My neck gets too tired when it has to spin around and around, following the action on the track and being spontaneous left my DNA during those seventeen years I was a caregiver to my dad, then to my husband. Now, I reside in the land of lists and schedules and I’m happy with that. And speaking of decoding, I’m beginning to wonder if “willing to move” isn’t code for “I live in a run-down shack and would like to upgrade to your place.” Aren’t I the skeptical one!

Profile guys can be just as picky as we women, though. One guy doesn’t want a ‘flirt’ from any woman who doesn’t post a photo. Oops! I think did that once quite by accident. Another guy---Mr. Kind he calls himself---doesn’t want a woman over 150 pounds. A guy with one leg, who claims he's never had a serious relationship in his entire life, doesn’t want a woman who will try to change him. Okay. Back button to you, too, Mr. Happy-To-Me who probably loses women because he won't give up midnight runs to the liquor store even though he's already too drunk to find his prosthetic leg in his hoarder's house. I am not making this up. This guy exists and I doubt he could be trained to put the toilet seat back down, another deal breaker for me. Correction/confession: I did make up the part about the hoarder's house. He was a "rolling stone" so probably he doesn't own much of anything, what with his traveling all over the world with the job that he lost with the leg. My widow friend who is into fixer-uppers would love this guy.

Finding a travel partner is a big requirement for a lot of profile guys as is finding a women who like motorcycles and boats. (I don’t even like to get into cars with women in my age bracket unless I know they’ve had their eyes checked recently and I can see that their cars don't look like they've been used to play bumper cars at an amusement park. Getting on a motorcycle with an old guy when I don’t have access to his DMV records isn’t going to happen.) One sweet guy was looking for a woman to take fishing and “she doesn’t have to bait the hooks or handle the fish” so long as she "pretends she is having fun on the water." How cute is that? If he didn’t have a cat, I would have bookmarked the guy for someday, maybe. (I don't hate cats, but they've been known to make me break out in hives and have trouble breathing.) I nearly bookmarked another guy who was just looking for a pen pal but a fellow blogger in the comment section over at Judy’s blog pointed out that pen pal guy is probably in prison. Oh gosh, I am so naive! That thought never crossed my mind.

Judy and I lost our husbands in the same month of the same year and I have to wonder why we are both, now, drawn to spending time looking at old-duffers' on-line dating profiles. We both tell ourselves it’s just something amusing to do with our time but is there something deeper going on in our subconscious minds? Are we opening up to the possibility of finding love again? She says she compares everyone to her beloved Fred. For me, I don’t so much compare profile guys to my husband---he was truly unique---I compare their likes and wants to my likes and wants and it seems like an impossible task to find compatibility. I was twenty-seven when I met Don after a lot of years of looking for Mr. Right. If I started looking for Mr. Right: The Second Edition, I’d probably find him in time for one or the other of us to help our family pick out a casket, so why even bother with the process? And then I look at my older brother. Widowed a few years before me, he is now in the best relationship of his life. Behold the wonders of senior dating! ©