Dating is difficult everywhere - even in Kansas
By Tom P Blake - Finding Love after 50
Middle-age and senior dating is not only a challenge where I live in California, but in all parts of the country.
Beth, age 50, Kansas, e-mailed, "Although I’ve had lots of dates, nothing is going past one or two times out. I feel like I have been sent back to junior high school. What’s up?
"The Internet hasn’t worked, dances haven’t worked, and fix-ups by friends haven’t worked."
Beth had a date with one man who ruined the evening by talking for two hours about things women do that turn him off.
"There’s no way a woman could spend more than a few minutes with this guy without breaking one of his 'rules.' He was 55 and had never married.
"Do you think any man in his 50s or 60s who has never been married could make a good partner?" Beth asked.
A few months later, Beth found herself unwittingly at the opposite end of the marriage spectrum. She e-mailed, "Why are there so many over-50 married men cheating on their wives, but act single? I think dating five married men in a year is a little much, actually, a lot much."
I asked if she hung out at the Married Men’s Club in Kansas – if there is such a place – or the local grange. "I am not meeting these men in bars and they are all educated professionals," she said.
Two of the men she met at the Kansas Speedway. One was 20 years younger than Beth and looked like racecar driver Jeff Gordon. "He was in town for the race – and maybe the chase!" she said. "How can ladies make sure a man isn’t married?
"Some use the ploy of being separated or in the process of divorce. Sometimes the obvious red flags aren’t there and people do become attracted quickly. What’s a lady to do besides hiring a private investigator?" she asked.
Wow, and we thought dating was a challenge for single women in South County. The first thing she needs to do is change where she’s meeting men. Are there tea dances in Kansas, Toto?
If a man says, "I’m still technically married, but …," Beth needs to excuse herself from the table and leave through the nearest exit (or gate, if she’s at the racetrack).
Regarding Beth’s question, about a never-married man making a good partner, that’s a red flag also. But, maybe the guy’s smarter than the rest of us for never having married.
Beth needs to focus on men somewhere in between being married and having never been married – a good old divorced man.
Where she’ll find one of them is hard to say. Maybe she needs to look across the border in Missouri.
There are a few divorced guys around Orange County also, but the competition for them is already tough enough.