By Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette
October 27, 2007
Lili Skinner and Elmer Gerardo had a quick conversation at a speed-dating event at Colorado Springs Senior Center this month. Skinner hoped to find someone to go dancing with. Other daters’ motives for showing up included friendship and sex.
Single female seeks tall, older man for friendship, possible romance. Must play bridge and tennis. Poor dancers need not apply.
Lili Skinner has met Mr. Two Left Feet. Now she needs Mr. Right. But if you think finding romance is hard at age 20, try doing it (again) at 81.
“I really have no trouble meeting people,” she said. “To meet eligible people is hard.”
Women complain that they outnumber men. Men complain that the women are too aggressive. Everyone complains that there aren’t enough places to go or things to do to ferret out that special someone.
Apparently dating in the golden years isn’t all that golden.
“Even at church there’s nobody that wants to do something,” said 65-year-old Jonnie Price. “There are a lot of us out there that are looking. You just want somebody to talk to.”
Well, Jonnie, the Colorado Springs Senior Center can do you one better: It has started hosting senior speed dating to maximize meet-up opportunities. Speed dating, which one sex for an evening while the other switches seats about every five minutes to “date” around the room, has become a popular approach to meeting as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
And for those in their later years, time is precious.
“When you’re a senior, you’re not on borrowed time, but you don’t have 30 years to waste,” said Sid Hackman, a 65-year-old speed dater.
The center held its first speed-dating night Oct. 10, the first of its kind in the area for the older generations. Organizers were overwhelmed by the response: The event attracted 85 singles ranging in age from 54 to 88 (although more than twice as many women signed up as men). It’s likely to be held again in a few months, said Mendy Putman, director at the senior center.
Putman said the event addresses the notion that it’s hard for older singles to get back “out there.” Whether widowed or divorced, many seniors haven’t dated in years, she said.
“You’ve been in this comfortable zone with this one person for 40 years or more,” Putman said. “I see that being the hardest thing, just taking that first step.”
Even then, ambivalence can get in the way.
“I think there’s this stigma that they think exists — that they aren’t supposed to have these feelings,” Putman said. “I know that these people long to have those relationships.”
Speed dating is just one of many ways seniors have found companionship — or at least tried to find companionship. There are always those wellmeaning friends who try to play matchmaker, and groups that center on an activity such as bridge. And thousands have gone online: Match.com, eHarmony and SeniorFriendFinder. com, three popular dating Web sites, have all reported boosts in membership with the 50-and-older crowd.
But some seniors aren’t interested in matches found online. Many still prefer good ol’ person-to-person contact, said Hackman, who tried Match. com and began the 436-question profile quiz at eHarmony.
The problem was, eHarmony didn’t nail his personality, he said. And the woman he met on Match.com turned out to be less compatible than he thought.
“I don’t trust it,” he said. “I like to talk to people, not write notes to them. I like to hear their voice.”
And some seniors, such as Skinner, are downright scared of it. “They can say anything they want to, and you have no real way of knowing,” she said. “It’s not for me.”
But senior dating has a big silver lining. Older people tend to know who they are and what they want — a serious leg up on their younger counterparts. Older women also say they worry less about horndog men and ulterior motives than they did when they were younger. (Their guards can’t be down entirely, though, with about 30 percent of speed-daters at the senior center naming sex as their reason for signing up. Some things never change.)
The majority of the speed daters, however, pegged friendship as their reason for signing up, and many said they were looking for companionship, not love. They’ve done the marriage thing. They’ve done the kid thing. Now it’s time for fun.
Seniors mingled with plastic cups of wine, slightly nervous but armed with a list of questions to ask one another. They had only three minutes (time was cut short by organizing glitches), so they had to get right down to business.
As women created a circle of chairs around a smaller circle of men, one guy leaned to another guy and whispered, “I got your back.”
Seniors were split by age into three groups, and women outnumbered men more than 2-to-1 in every group except the 76-and-older crowd. Thirtythree women surrounded nine men in the 55 to 65 group, prompting Putman’s warning: “You may have to throw up a red flag if you need to go to the bathroom because you’re going to be here awhile.”
Most daters said they’d come back. Many women spent as much time talking to other women as to men, exchanging phone numbers and setting coffee dates.
The day after the event, the organizers gave numbers to couples who both listed an interest in each other. Then it was up to the couple to arrange a date.
That’s where Skinner got stuck. There’s a dance she wants to go to, but she’s too nervous to call her match.
George, call her!
Source: Global Aging http://www.globalaging.org/elderrights/us/2007/speedating.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment