ABOUT WOMEN
Same dating problems are common among young and old
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By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer
My grandmother has been a widow for nearly as long as I've been alive.
To my knowledge, she's never dated since my grandfather died, nor has she complained about being on her own. She's in her 80s and still works in a school cafeteria. Retirement is like a dirty word to her.
I've always admired her independent spirit and feel like I must have inherited some of it. Any eightysomething who can still cut her own grass and navigate a narrow driveway with no scratches on the car has some spunk left.
I just wonder if she reads AARP's The Magazine and knows what she's been missing in the more than three decades she's gone without dating.
Maybe it was a relief to her to have those years behind her. Maybe she knew I'd find out without any words of wisdom from her that dating can be a drag. Maybe she doesn't need any advice from a youngster like me about how dating also can be pretty amazing.
AARP's The Magazine, the flagship publication of the country's largest advocacy group for people older than 50, reports in its November/December issue on a sweeping survey of more than 3,000 Americans ages 40 to 69. It says an unprecedented 36.2 million people 50 and older are part of the dating scene.
The magazine has hyped the Demi Moore/Ashton Kutcher phenomenon in the findings, reporting about a third of older women say they are dating younger men. (Maybe I'm mistaking a lot of those couples for mothers and sons, but I haven't noticed many Demi/Ashton-y couples out there.)
The singles scene for older folks gives a depressing glimpse at what's going on in a lot of our families: Sixty percent of singles ages 40 to 69 are women, and most are divorced.
I count Gramma in the category of nearly half of AARP singles (43 percent) who have not had a date in the past year (give or take a few decades).
And even of those who have had recent dates, 39 percent of men and 61 percent of women in their 50s had not made love in the past six months.
I guess I can take comfort knowing that the most common dating problems are the same for my single friends as they are for our parents and even grandparents: The top complaint for both sexes is that dating prospects have too much "baggage."
That is quickly followed by men complaining that women are "too hard to get along with" after the first few dates and women venting that they have no idea where to meet men. Sounds like somebody's been eavesdropping on my phone line.
I'd love to know Gramma's take on all this. But dating and sex are pretty much off-limits for discussion in her house.
She's more like half the women surveyed who said they'd love someone to talk to but aren't that interested in getting serious. Sounds like I've heard that somewhere before.
Grandma's generation isn't so different, after all.
Tanya Bricking writes about relationships for The Advertiser. Reach her at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.
