In April, I wrote an essay for Madison Magazine about a date I had with a man my age, 62 years old, where he openly told me that despite his success and fitness, he was surprised he wasn’t dating younger women. This made me angry with him, and then with myself. I walked out without saying a word, smiling, and later realized there were so many things I wished I had said. What I wanted to do the most was to point a finger at him and call him out for his ruthless prejudice, which I eventually did by writing that essay.
After publishing it, I found out that people on social media had mixed feelings about love and dating at a certain age. It was exciting to feel like I had discovered something, a cultural moment, but it was also disappointing to see how many reactions were from people concerned that I hadn’t found my person yet. There was a tone of sad eyes and tilted heads that said, “Don’t lose hope!”, as if I were battling an illness called singleness instead of cultural disdain for women over 40.
A reader suggested that my “picker” was broken and reminded me that I can’t have it all in one person. Another told me that I would find my partner as soon as I stopped looking.
“Your soulmate is out there,” wrote a woman. “I just know it”. Didn’t they realize that I was complaining about ageist sexist discrimination, not because I didn’t have a partner?
While my phone rang loudly and often with messages from friends and strangers as I tried to keep up with the comments and interactions, my old friend Jim, a carpenter, was at my house building a cabinet for a generation of people who only had two shirts. Occasionally, he would call me up and I would rush up to help him balance a shelf while he secured it in place.