The Man’s Guide to Dating After 50

Boomers, like many other people, feel the need to develop close, nurturing relationships with another human being, as well as to occasionally get a free meal at a nice restaurant.  For this reason, Time reports that people over the age of 45 have stampeded in record numbers to online dating sites.  Internet dating can lead to lasting love.  It can also lead to tragic blog posts about meeting dates in public who have antlers on their head.  Because of this, AARP has just come out with an article (“The Man’s Guide to Dating After 50”) geared to men over 50 who want to get back into the dating world.  Although the article has a paragraph about the advantages of dating sites, the paragraph that follows it, a much longer one, cites the disadvantages of dating sites.  According to AARP:

“Some of the members are flakier than piecrust. They seem interested, but after a few e-mails, they disappear. Or their phones are disconnected. Or they stand you up. Why? Who knows? One theory is that many are not single. They’re coupled but bored, and hope to reassure themselves that they’re still attractive by hooking men like you.”

Members being “flakier than piecrust” might not be the best way to encourage men to venture onto dating sites, especially because most pies nowadays, ever since people stopped using lard, don’t have very flaky crusts.  And the phrase “hooking men like you” would deter even the most desperate hardy of souls.  About the only thing the article left out is that after these women have their phones disconnected or they stand you up, they then finally agree to meet you but it’s in a really dark place, where they steal all your internal organs and then don’t even give you a lift home.

But what follows is even worse.  Again, according to the AARP article: “Profiles often lie. One study found that on average, people claimed to be an inch taller than the national average. Women said they weighed 20 pounds less than average. Most claimed to be “more attractive than average” — 72 percent of women, 68 percent of men…” It isn’t clear how many men would even still be reading this long enough to get to the final tip of the paragraph, which is: Tell the truth. As soon as you meet, she’ll see your height and weight and how attractive you are. So the message seems to be to tell the truth to someone who is, most likely, not telling the truth to you.

In order to bring men back from the brink (or the Barcalounger), the article goes on to say   “Keep condoms handy. One pleasant surprise about dating after 50 is less groveling for sex. After a few dates, most older women feel fine about going horizontal, and don’t care if your erections are iffy or gone.”  It’s difficult to know which of those statements to address at this point.

In sum, “Just as gold miners move tons of rock to find a few nuggets, you’ll probably have to date dozens of women before you find Ms. Right.”

And, remember, tons of rock can turn into a huge, scary landslide and come barreling down the mountainside at a million miles an hour and swallow you whole, and you won’t be found until some archeologist comes along like 2000 years later, and the only thing left of you will be the package of condoms.