Dating after 40 can be a whole different kettle of fish to what it’s like in your teens, twenties, and thirties. We talk to one woman about her experiences and then hear from a psychologist and relationship expert for some top tips and advice about it.
Welcome to our series, The Love Diaries – a space for you to share your experiences, advice, fairy-tale endings, setbacks and heartbreaks. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences with love – from the woman who cheated on her husband with a work colleague, one woman’s temptation now the love of her life is finally single (although she’s not), and the woman who forced her husband to choose between her and his girlfriend.
When Kristy and her partner of 20 years broke up, her very first thought came as a bit of a surprise.
“I remember us having ‘the talk’ and when we realised, yip, this was us breaking up, my first thought was ‘Shit. What’s it going to be like dating now?’,” she says. “I mean, if you need any clarification as to whether you’re making the right decision, the fact that your first concern is that moving on and dating is going to be tricky, rather than worrying about life without that partner, well, that’ll do it.”
Kristy was last single when she was 18. Back then, she’d only just got her first cellphone. And texts cost 20 cents a pop. There was no Facebook or Instagram – not even a Bebo or MySpace. Even finding a date over the internet was unheard of.
“Back then, everyone met their boyfriend or girlfriend in some dodgy bar with sticky floors and bad lighting,” says Kristy.
That’s how she met her former partner. But now, she was single again in an entirely different dating landscape – while she was in her early 40s.
“We broke up in 2020, during the pandemic – which, after reading a lot of Capsule stories, I’ve discovered was quite common!” she says. “I wasn’t really ready to date until a year or so later – but even despite the fact the pandemic had changed things, it was so different to how things were when I was last dating. I didn’t know how to do it.”
Kristy says she wasn’t even sure how to go about meeting new people, let alone a potential partner. “I don’t have kids – I know friends who have met new partners in their 40s through their the parents of their kids’ friends,” she says. “But, as an adult it’s actually quite hard to make new friends if you don’t have that. I started joining a few hobbies, but they were all women anyway.”
Eventually, she gave in and joined a few dating apps. “I was loathe to do it, because you mostly hear negative stories,” she says. “It was brutal at times, but I also went on a few really good dates. I dipped in and out of it.”
But in the end, a year ago, Kristy met her current partner, in a much more unusual way.
“I got hit by a bus,” she says.
Yip, Kristy stepped out when the pedestrian light turned green – but unfortunately a bus hadn’t quite noticed their red light in time. She was in a world of her own, oblivious to the screeching of the bus as it tried to come to a halt in time, and it wound up hitting her (although thankfully, at a fairly low speed). Still, it was enough to throw her to the ground, resulting in a broken arm.
But, onboard the bus, was a 45-year-old divorcee whose car didn’t start that morning and had seen him instead jump on the bus to get to work. The very day before he had completed a first aid training course, so his first thought when he heard the screech of the brakes and then a thud, was that he might be able to put his fresh skills to work. He helped Kristy and got her into and uber and off to hospital. That Friday night, she took him out for dinner to say thank you – and they’ve been together ever since.
But, of course, getting hit by a bus is clearly not a great game plan for finding a partner – so, what is the best way to go about dating in your 40s or beyond?
Psychologist Tiare Tolks has more than 20 year’s experience as an organisational development consultant and mental health therapist, most recently working with Compatico – a premium, personalised and private matchmaking service designed for those aged 40 and above.
Tiare says that Kristy’s experience of finding it hard to meet somebody new is extremely common as we age.
“Once you get to a certain age and stage, your life has quite a defined social footprint,” she says. “You go to the same places, you see the same people – you have a repertoire of a few different groups that you do things with, but you don’t tend to meet new people. That does then make it difficult to meet someone because of tat social footprint.”
But, beyond just the actual ability to meet someone new, dating when you’re a bit older, can also come with some other challenges.
“There’s all those things like if you’ve had past relationships and they haven’t ended well, or there’s been a significant loss – often people have got relationship related trauma that they have to work through,” she says. “One of the things we do see is people coming back to dating too soon or when they haven’t done that processing.”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t make for a good situation for either party, if one is clearly not in the right headspace to start a new relationship.
It’s not all doom and gloom though – dating in your 40s plus can have a lot of advantages compared to what it was like dating in your 20s. By your 40s, you’re hopefully a lot more secure in who you are and know what you’re looking for.
“When we get to a certain age and stage, we like to think we’ve developed a bit of emotional maturity or wisdom,” Tiare says. “You’re much clearer about what you like and what you don’t like.”
In dating, that can be a very powerful thing – you know what you’re willing to tolerate, you know what you need in a partner, and what you don’t want.
Tiare says, it’s just very important to make sure that positive doesn’t actually become a negative, by closing you off to experiences and different people, who could actually be a good match for you.
“One thing we’re always trying to encourage our community to be, is openminded to meeting new sorts of people that you might not necessarily have met before,” she says. “Dating again can be an amazing opportunity to expand yourself – for personal growth. If you come with an open mind and curiosity, you can develop a whole new interest field, go to new places, see new things – and all that stimulation is so good for your wellbeing, at any stage of your life, but even more so as you get older and experience it less.”
Tiare says if you are in your 40s and beyond and are looking to date again, there’s a few steps you should take before getting out there. The first, like she mentioned earlier, is definitely making sure that you are ready and have processed any hurt or trauma from earlier relationships – getting the help of a therapist is recommended, if there is work to be done.
Then, she says, it’s time to do some deep thinking.
“The first thing is to just be really clear about what you want, what your goals are for dating,” she says. “You don’t want to set your filter too narrow, but be clear about what your non-negotiables are, in terms of what is important to you from a value perspective. And again, when you’re doing that self-reflecting and thinking what you want, also really just sit with it and be sure that you’re actually ready to date. Because it really doesn’t work well when you meet someone new and great and then spend the entire date talking about your ex.”
But Tiare says it’s also important to think positively about what’s ahead. “I think just having a positive, open-minded outlook is important. If you can bring that mindset and treat it like a journey of its own – not like there’s necessarily got to be an end goal, but what each day might bring,” she says. “One thing I always say is that every person you meet in life, you can learn something from them. There’s something they know that you don’t. So, you can just treat dating like an opportunity to learn something about a new place, a new hobby – there’s always going to be something you can take away from a date.”
Taking the pressure off, can make the whole thing more enjoyable, says Tiare. Because, it’s inevitable that you’re going to be feeling some nerves when you first dip your toe into dating again. “If you haven’t been dating for a while, it’s important to acknowledge that it’s really normal to feel nervous!” she says. “The good thing is, chances are the other person is going to be feeling nervous. Perhaps it’s even something to make a light joke about!”
