On your first date as a senior citizen six years ago, you immediately found a match. As you re-enter the market, now well past your expiration date, you surely don’t expect that again. But you had no idea how daunting your new search would be.
Though everything that follows is non-fiction, all names have been changed to protect the author from retribution.
Like most dating sites, on SilverSingles you post a photo and profile info and answer some questions. Based on some inscrutable metrics, you’re assigned a composite number using five scales. If you believe the number is at all meaningful, you should pursue the plus-100 “matches” and avoid those rated in the 80s. You’re shown potential new matches daily — both within and beyond the geographic parameters you set. The info is easy to dismiss — the numbers aren’t based on anything meaningful to you, like how much chocolate you consume.
More than half the women on SS don’t have any photo at all! Are they looking for men who want to date them sight unseen? (I’m later told that many men on the site post profile selfies in a chair wearing undershirts. )
You soon learn to be wary of threesomes that include a dog or “dog” spelled backwards. You once drove 40 miles to meet a woman who then told you she slept with her dog! Avoid contacting any women who answer “my faith” or a deity as “something you couldn’t live without.” You can’t compete with J.C.
The first woman you meet is “Kaye,” who grew up in the same suburb as you. You meet her for selfish reasons — she is a hospice nurse; if you hooked up, you won’t have to die alone! But you are not attracted to her; she is pretty self-absorbed, plus she’s squabbling with siblings over treatment plans for her dying mother.
You next meet Betsy for lunch. She has an intriguing line of work — she’s an electrical inspector. You have to admire women bold enough to work in a male-dominated field. The encounter was fine, but without sparks. She spurned your requests for another and after a few weeks wrote to say she wasn’t interested. No big surprise. Maybe seeing you limping was more impactful than reading about it in your profile.
That’s a non-issue for the next woman you meet. Before driving to Monroe to meet Debbie, who lives near Toledo, you check out her very impressive website about the programs she’s developed and marketed to developmentally disabled kids. She’s at least your intellectual equal. You are able to talk openly and easily with her — but she also is immersed in a family squabble over a terminally ill mother! That’s sucking up all her energy — that, and her recovery from knee surgery.
Not quite so far downriver is another woman you might consider meeting. But you don’t have a good photo of Nancy; she needed her daughter to show her how to upload and send one. She was recovering slowly from surgery to implant a spinal stimulator, a device she said would enable her eventually to walk without a cane. She even bought one of your books — and assures you she wants to meet you when she’s up to it. Not sure it’s worth the effort.
Throughout the quest, you have to navigate around plenty of strange detours.
You get overtures from other dating sites you may once have been a member or potential member of, or maybe inquired about, like OurTime (another old folks’ home), eHarmony, Plenty of Fish, and Bumble, which all dangle special offers. You also get emails from every conceivable “hookup” site: SeductiveWives, EasyHousewives, Affairs4U, Craving MILFs, OnlineAttract, CasualDesire, EroticAttraction, Spicedates, PassionDesires, WivesNow, xHousewives, Arousingflirts, FoxyCrush, JuicyHotties, SeducingDates, MilfsCity, SinfulAffairs, CasualAttaction, CasualTemptation, FreeXdates… all different flavors of the same spam. You click on unsubscribe, but they never stop!
Also, out of the blue some woman from Houston tells you she’s a “very honest, caring, family oriented, Independent, loving, romantic woman with a nice sincere heart of taking care of my own man, respect him and giving him all the love he deserves because I want a man that I can't live without and same in return… Distance isn’t an issue when there is an honest communication.”
More than half the women on SilverSingles don’t have any photo at all! Are they looking for men who want to date them sight unseen?
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Then there are all the fake SS profiles. They use similar scripts: Their friend loves your profile but isn’t on SS, so they send you her email; if you then email the friend, they send a long story… and the original SS member who contacted you takes her profile off the site.
(SS belatedly emails you warning you the sender can’t be verified, so don’t give out your financial info. Duh!).
For example, Elizabeth from Lansing: “I’m sorry I’ve found someone special but my friend Ann is interested in you she came across your profile when I was trying to talk her through the online dating site via my account. … She would like to learn more about you and tell you more about herself and share pictures via email. Here’s her email address…”
A variation on this game: a woman named Tina on SS. You suss out the disguised code for her email she posts, and have a days-long frustrating exchange. She’s never married, no kids, and joined SS “to see if I can find someone who can love me for who I am … I don’t care about the age difference between us … age is nothing but numbers.”
Born and raised in Canada, but moved here to California to live with an uncle after her parents died in a car accident. Unasked, she sends three photos of her in an evening dress, and asks for pics of you.
You suggest she finds someone closer to her. She says distance doesn’t matter if you really love someone…
She wants you to download and use Telegram because she claims her phone can’t do FaceTime.
After hours of this, the next day she sends more pics then says she is out of “airtime,” asks if you can “top it off’ by sending “just a QR code” on an Amazon gift card. This all starts to seem like a losing game, and you’re just about ready to abandon the quest when an SS match hours away sends you good vibes and kind words.
Cheryl is impressed that you openly admit to being a feminist (like it should be a secret a guy keeps). After a few positive and promising exchanges on the site, she tells you she is thinking of breaking up with an immature man she is dating, then surprises you by messaging: “You have a vested interest in me ending this relationship with him. It makes you a not very objective adviser.” You realize the long-distance attraction is mutual.
She is a Ph.D. therapist, and states matter-of-factly that she “loves easily.” You feel open and safe writing to her about anything; you seem to buoy each other up.
After you tell her the story of the recent breakup that landed you on the site, she says: “I’m very sorry you are still hurt and are grieving the loss of your last love. … You seem like a really bright and caring man. I hope you find someone worthy of you.”
You become pen pals who write daily. The guy she is with lacks empathy, and she says with a confident self-regard, “I need and deserve so much more.”
You are by nature a skeptic, but you also know from a lifetime of surprises not to rule anything out. And after all, you already seem to have a safe space to be quite open with each other. The feeling deepens after you finally have the FaceTime date you first proposed.
There aren’t any red lights you can see on the road to Cheryl. But maybe it’s a good thing she lives so far away. Meeting her might ruin a good thing by awakening you from this daydream. Besides, you each assert you’re happy living alone.
Meanwhile, more mismatched matches are presented to you daily.
Greta says she is from the Netherlands, and her husband and daughter died in a car accident. She says she came to the U.S. three years ago and now lives in Traverse City, where she works in food service.
She will be in contact only via text. But she texts and then often doesn’t reply for 30 or more minutes with no explanation. After a day or so, she sends you an email introducing herself and asking you who you are, when it’s clearly you — because who else gave her your email?
When asked about this, she says she wanted to make sure you were the you she was texting! You tell her this email plus her vanishing texting makes her the most inconsiderate person you’ve ever met online. She emails in reply: “Looking for someone I could confide in, a best friend, good times, lots of laughter and good vibes … an open-minded partner … to experiment, to give and to receive. Discretion required and assured ... We should be comfortable and good company together, enjoying each other both in and out of the bedroom. I am sorry for everything. Let’s fall back together & get things rolling…”
This email is so surprising (discretion required?) that you give her the benefit of the doubt. When texting, her idioms are all wrong; probably English is her second language? But she remains opaque. One time she doesn’t respond to your text request for a real-time selfie, then after 20 minutes finally explains she can’t because she’s in church! The next day she says her phone is damaged and asks you to help her buy a new one. When you refuse, you don’t hear from her anymore.
You have come to appreciate the independence of living alone... But clearly, some part of you longs for that terrible inconvenience of attachment.
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More contacts prove elusive. Paula lives nearby. She says too many men on SS make inappropriate sexual comments. She wants to talk by phone before you meet, so you do. It seems to go well, but afterwards she tells you she needs more time before she would consider meeting. You haven’t heard from her since. Ball’s in her court…
With Eileen, a music teacher in the Toledo area, you have a long messaging exchange on the site. You leave it up to her to recontact you, and so far she hasn’t. By this point you wonder if any of this is worth the time and effort.
Louise contacts you, asks you to call her, though she lives eight hours away. She and her late husband have been therapy clients of two friends of yours who live in the same town! Quite a coincidence, so you call. After 45 minutes in, she says she is dating a man much closer to her but wants you as a backup just in case! The conversation lasts 68 minutes; she talks for 67 of them.
Reflecting on this past five-month quest, you realize this is the longest you’ve been uncoupled in a half-century — but even so, how much effort will you keep expending? Since you joined, you’ve contacted 200-plus women on SS — either by sending a “smile,” by messaging, or by requesting a photo. It’s a lot of chasing after phantoms. Time to concede defeat?
But you are still checking out the potential matches presented daily. Most of them do not spark your interest, and most of those you contact don’t reciprocate at all.
And actually, you have come to appreciate the independence of living alone; no one’s telling you when to eat or what to do. But there’s no audience for your narrative of daily thoughts and trivial observations, either. Clearly, some part of you longs for that terrible inconvenience of attachment.
Weeks later you chuck your skepticism. You drive three hours to meet Cheryl, who you’ve done two FaceTime sessions with and believe you know very well. It’s a rainy day and when you get to the lunch spot in Ohio, you talk to her on the phone.
She says she can’t believe you’re the kind of man who wants her to drive through pouring rain and lightning and flooding to risk her life just to meet you. You’re not the kind of man she ever wants to meet. She slams down the phone, and you drive the three hours back home.
And then you join a second senior dating site a few days later…
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