older women dating younger men

Bulging biceps. Chiseled pecs. Taut tushes.

The gym is part of their daily regimen.

They look great in — or out of — their clothes.

I describe these guys as”hunkalicious.”

• Three dates.

• One month.

• Ten dates.

• Three months.

I’ve heard all these as people’s criteria for when to first get intimate with a new love.

The doctor in my exercise class is always off a beat. He enthusiastically flails his arms and legs — if occasionally in time with music it is by mere accident. I wonder how it would be to be coupled with a highly intelligent man who had no rhythm and no consciousness that his body is moving very differently than our instructor.

We all have an idea of our perfect mate. Perhaps he’s artistic, articulate, rational, a great dancer, musically adept, introspective, appreciative of nature, and a great communicator.

If you want all of the above, good luck. As they represent competency in each of the 8 intelligences Harold Gardner presented in his 1983 theory on multiple intelligences.

When you think of Peanuts’ Lucy and the football, you see a comic strip series where Charlie Brown, the ever hopeful and trusting soul, believes Lucy when she tells him — once again — that she’ll hold the ball for him to kick. Every time — for decades — she pulls the ball away at the last minute, causing Charlie to land hard on his backside. No matter how much she’s promised him she won’t, she does.

In dating, I’m surprised by how many men think it’s perfectly okay to pull out the football in many ways. It can be as simple as he says he’ll call on a certain day and he doesn’t. While you might not sit by the phone waiting (as you may have when younger), if you have any connection with him you look forward to the call.

With apologies to Queen (but without the violence of their song), I share that another one bites the dust. Number 102. The result of my latest foray into Match.com.

After one has been dating for a while, the excitement and novelty of meeting new people wears off. Couple that with too many one-time-only encounters, and you become more guarded with your time and emotions.

At least I know this is true for me, and I’m guessing it is for others who have been searching for their next mate for years.

It’s Never Too Late to Date: Shirley and Howard’s Rx’s For Dating and Mating After 50 by Shirley Friedenthal and Howard Eisenberg

This is a good primer for women in their “golden years” (the author’s words) who haven’t dated in 30 or 40 years — or perhaps ever. If the readers are like my mother, they may have never really dated except their husband. So after a death or divorce, these women are often unhappily resigned to living a life alone even if they’d like a male companion, as they are petrified to date.

At some point in dating you have, no doubt, encountered jerks, players, and self-absorbed individuals. Perhaps you labeled some narcissists. But have you ever encountered someone you’d deem a psychopath?

In researching a relative’s extreme personality disorder, I decided to read Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work to determine how to best respond to the anti-social behavior with which I was having to deal. While the book focuses on psychopaths in the workplace, I thought I’d glean some ideas for identifying and dealing with these folks anywhere.

First, what’s the difference between a narcissist, sociopath and psychopath? I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I can only paraphrase the authors’ description.

Midlife daters have admitted to me that they don’t know how to flirt anymore. Some even say they never knew how. Now that they are single in midlife, they are feeling they need — and want — to learn.

But how does one practice? Chatting up strangers in the grocery store? Smiling and winking at others in the gym? Offering, “You look familiar” to someone at the coffee shop?

Instead of strangers, should one practice on folks you think are single at church, school events or work? What if they aren’t single and they think you’re being inappropriate? If your flirting backfires, you’re stuck seeing them at future functions.

So what’s a neophyte flirter to do?

There are various types of “buddies” in dating. Some you’re good with; others you’re not. You don’t really want a  no-strings-attached sex-only relationship. You want some strings if you are going to get intimate — at least some interest in exploring if you both want there to be strings, not just “That was fun. See you later.”

You crave tender touching and caresses, but there’s no one on the horizon that interests you enough to go down the physically intimate path. So you seem caught between no physicality at one extreme to enduring a booty call just to get some physical contact.

I’m struck that many men’s online profiles say they want a spontaneous woman. It’s made me look at my own level of spontaneity.

My experience of spontaneity is that someone else (a friend or suitor) calls or shows up and says, “Hey, I’m on my way to XXX. Wanna come?”