Can Women Older Than 60 Really Find Love Again?

Can an older woman really find love again? Or even just hot sex? I was 45 and mom to two young sons when my marriage imploded, and was nearly 48 when we divorced. “Why couldn’t this have happened 10 years ago, when I was younger and prettier?” I thought at the time. “Who will want me now?” Like many women, I wasn’t looking forward to aging. The narrative on growing older is ageist and sexist — that we become invisible, irrelevant, undesirable. What was there to look forward to, especially as a newly minted single woman? Yet, much to my surprise, it didn’t quite work out that way. And, given an uptick in movies, series and novels featuring older women, the good news is that ageist stereotypes are being challenged — even busted. One example is the 2003 film Something’s Gotta Give, starring Diane Keaton, who at the time was 57, and Jack Nicholson, 66. The plot unfolds with Keaton’s character engaging in a hot affair with the much younger Keanu Reeves, then 39, but ends up with Nicholson, in true, passionate, sexy love. Then there’s the immense popularity of the seven-season series Grace and Frankie, featuring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, who launched the series when they were in their mid-70s. After their husbands come out as gay and marry, the two women become bestie entrepreneurs who create a company designing vibrators fit for arthritic hands. More recently, Emma Thompson plays a 55-year-old inexperienced widow who hires a young sex worker in 2022’s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and gains the sexual confidence — and orgasms — she craves. What is it about women discovering a renewed lust and a hunger for flings — or more — when they’re post-menopausal? Sociologist Susan Pickard, director of the Center for Aging and the Life Course at the University of Liverpool, sees this longing for a later-life love affair as “a vehicle for radical change, greater agency and further ongoing self-development, whether it ultimately ‘works out’ in relationship terms or not.” Gillian, a writer in her late 50s in upstate New York, wasn’t looking for a new relationship when she ended her 25-year marriage eight years ago. She married young and had not dated much, so all she wanted was to have no-strings-attached sex that focused on pleasure, which she did end up experiencing with many men. Like many women who initiate divorce at 50 and older — the so-called gray divorce — Gillian discovered that it got her out of her comfort zone and opened her up sexually. “I felt like I was making up for lost time,” she tells me, “like it was a rebirth and this opportunity I didn’t do earlier --sow those wild oats, as they used to say.” Gillian’s sexy second act is particularly inspirational for older single women, who are constantly bombarded with anti-aging messaging that taps into anxieties about approaching a sexual “shelf life.” And yet, later-in-life love and lust are possible. Former Vice President Kamala Harris married for the first time at age 49; author Anne Lamott was 65. Lean In guru Sheryl Sandberg said “I do” for the second time at age 53. A widowed co-worker of mine married for the third time at age 82, a happy marriage that lasted until she died at age 93. A deluge of readers shared their later-in-life love stories with journalist Eve Pell after she wrote about marrying at age 71 in a Modern Love column in The New York Times. Pell wasn’t expecting to find love and romance again at her age. Neither did the people she included in her book, Love, Again: The Wisdom of Unexpected Romance, a collection of stories from people who found love past age 60. “While the physical heart ages, the spiritual heart doesn’t have to,” writes Pell. “Who tells you that romance and passion and even true love can happen when you are old? In the past, no one, but that is changing fast.” I have no desire to marry again, but I, too, have found love — a relationship that lasted nearly eight years in my early 50s, one that lasted three years in my early 60s — and many more sexually satisfying flings of various lengths. My sexual life post-divorce has become expansive in ways I hadn’t anticipated, with men who were as interested in my pleasure as their own and with a newfound confidence despite my wrinkles and age spots. Friends have asked me if I’d still be married if the bad stuff — alcoholism, infidelity — hadn’t happened. Would I be tempted to blow it up instead of having it blow up on me? It’s hard to know, although I believe that my midlife divorce was one of the best things that happened to me (besides having my children, of course). If I had stayed married, I would have missed out on a lot, especially becoming an author who writes about living and loving outside of conventional norms. It’s been 20 years since my marriage ended. I’m certainly not “young” (albeit the youngest I will ever be) and nowhere near as “pretty” as I was then. At 69, there’s no longer any fear of being undesirable, or of not finding love again, or that anything will be a “last chance.” What we discover is that there is no cliff and there are many, many chances. Have any of you found love later in life? Let us know in the comments below.

Relationships

Why Reading My Late Mom's Journal Shocked Me

The Kind of Woman I Absolutely Love to Have as a Friend

Health

The Workout That Transformed My Body at Age 65

Think You Can't Lose Weight During Menopause? Think Again

Money

What I Learned While Working at Goodwill Store

The Real Reason I Have No Desire to Retire

Lifestyle

Affordable Fashion Items That Look Oh-So Pricey

7 Beauty Boosters You Can Find in Your Kitchen

Travel

6 Hidden Non-Touristy Treasures in Florida

I Vacationed in Italy With 18 Family Members

Entertainment

6 New Must-Read Books to Brighten the Coming Season

The 12 Most Epic Christmas Movies of All Time

Get the Must-Read Newsletter for Older Women

More from The Ethel

More to Explore, from AARP