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Article about how to meet men in your 40s:
The Dirty Dozen: 12 Men You’ll Meet Dating in Your 40s. When I started dating again after my divorce, it was more fun for my married friends than it was for me. “Ooohh, can I swipe on your Tinder?” they’d ask at the playground, at book club, at church, over coffee, and out for drinks.
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I’d hand over my phone and let them pass it around, eager to tell me which profiles showed promise and which may as well have been waving red flags. “What about this one? This one is cute!” (Some of my friends have an extremely generous definition of “cute.”) “What does GGG mean?” (Look it up yourself, I’m too exhausted to explain.) “What is a ‘unicorn’?” (This is when I’d take my phone back and put it away.) All of my divorced comrades have similar stories, our coupled-up pals love to live vicariously through us as we venture back out into the romantic wilderness, searching for someone to eat dinner with, have orgasms with, maybe even build a life with. But whether we’re looking for some no-strings sex or hoping for a fairy-tale ending—by which I mean, falling in love with someone who is also in love with you, who is available for and capable of a partnership that fosters mutual growth and enriches both of your lives—most of us have found dating in our 40s to be a zero-sum game. In the 12 years since I gave up on my marriage, I’ve swiped my way through Bumble, OkCupid, Hinge, Tinder, Her, Feeld, and Raya. I haven’t relied solely on the apps, either: I’ve met people at parties, been set up by friends, and gone home with strangers from bars. I’ve dated men ranging in age from 25 to 60 (and a few women, too). I’ve gone out with men of different religions and no religion, men with PhDs and men who didn’t graduate high school. White, Black, Indian, Asian, Latino—I have given them all the old college try. And while I’ve struck out time and time again, I’ve been in the game long enough to give a fairly comprehensive overview of some of the players. If you’re also out there trying to date in your 40s (or beyond, I suppose—I’m only 48, I can’t speak to the probable horrors of the next decades), you’ll recognize some of the men below.* But if you, like so many of my married friends, are simply curious who’s out there, maybe feeling a little bored or restless, maybe tired of pouring money into couples therapy, or just sick of listening to your partner snort himself awake 37 times a night because he refuses to get treated for sleep apnea, read this before you weigh anchor. I’m not saying don’t get divorced (I’m very pro-divorce), I’m just saying, know the waters you’re sailing into. * Note that these men may, and often do, overlap into more than one category. The Ethical Non-Monogamist. ENM guy is first, because he’s everywhere. (If you’re going to date on the apps, you’ve got to learn the acronyms.) These are the guys in open marriages, the polyamorists, and the cheaters who used to go on Ashley Madison. Now they can just say they’re ethically non-monogamous, because we’re all supposed to be cool with that these days. I tried to date one once, in the spirit of open-mindedness, but in the course of our initial messaging, we discovered that we had kids of similar ages in the same school district, and I had a friend who worked in his office (though he didn’t know her). “I think our worlds are a little too closely intertwined and it’s best if we don’t meet up,” he said before he unmatched me, making me wonder just how “ethical” that non-monogamy agreement with his wife was. The last time someone slid into my DMs explaining that he’s in an open marriage and asking if I’d like to get dinner sometime, I told him I couldn’t do it because I want someone to love me the most and want to have sex with only me, forever. And here I am, loving myself the most and having sex with only myself, maybe forever. It’s not so bad! The Almost-Divorced Guy. Let me save you some time and just tell you: This man is not almost divorced. This man is an optimist, perhaps, or maybe he’s just in deep, deep denial. On the first date, he’ll tell you that he and his ex are using a mediator (he always calls her “my ex,” as if she doesn’t have an actual name) and it’s all very amicable, almost done, papers practically signed. A few years from now, he’ll be a shell of the man he once was, taken to the cleaners by the divorce lawyer his “ex” found on the Park Slope Parents message boards—the one all the moms said was the shark to call if you truly want to destroy your spouse. But hey, at least he’ll finally be divorced! The Miniature. I once went on a blind date with a man who showed up early and was already seated at the bar when I arrived. He didn’t get up, and I didn’t think anything of it until we’d each had a couple of drinks, made out a little bit, and decided to continue the date at a nearby karaoke spot. Imagine my surprise when he hopped off his barstool and was nearly a full head shorter than me. Baited and switched! He was cute, so I forgave him. Three dates later he told me I was too old for him. (For the record, he was older than me.) Another time, I was chatting online with a very handsome actor who my daughter said was “giving short king vibes.” I don’t know how she knew, but she was right. When we met for drinks, my first thought was, I want to put him in my pocket. He told me he went on lots of first dates, but rarely got a second one. ( Oh, baby. Sweet baby .) I said yes to a second date because I felt bad for him, then a third and fourth because I genuinely liked him. Then he dumped me and I was righteously indignant about it for months (until I met the next clown in this endless parade). The moral of the story? They’re small, but they bite. Watch out! The World’s Best Dad. Listen, I have kids. I get it. They’re the center of my world—or at least, they were before they grew up and left me reeling in my empty nest. That’s the thing about kids: they go off and live their own lives, and if you haven’t been living your own in the meantime, you’re going to be lost. That’s what I want to say to the men who put their children in their profile pictures on the apps or who call themselves a “proud girl dad” in their bios. When I was a child of divorced parents, in the 80s, adults did as they pleased and kids were expected to tag along and deal with it.
