Looking for love, or....

The Globe and Mail did a feature on aging last week. One section took a look at seniors and dating at the Terraces of Baycrest in Toronto, Ontario. The article and video focuses on the challenges of dating and the disproportionate ration of men to women. With women numbering 4 to 1, finding a mate is difficult due to supply and demand.

To see original link and watch video, click on this link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080520.wretirement3/BNStory/retirement/?pageRequested=all&print=true

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Looking for love, or.....
The equipment may be rusty, but you can still get lusty. And the desire for companionship never fades. Reporter Rebecca Dube and photographer Kevin Van Paassen watch sparks fly

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 28, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT


Seymour Hersch has been dating the same woman for five years. He thinks she would love to get married; all he has to do is ask.

But marriage would only cramp his style – he would have to drop the other three women he's been seeing. He met some of his girlfriends through friends and family, others through an online dating service.

“They might be jealous, but I don't care,” he says. “I make it very clear I'm not interested in getting married.”

Just another commitment-shy bachelor – except Mr. Hersch is 77 and lives in a retirement home.

They may move more slowly than they did in their prime, but old people have still got moves. The number of Canadians 65 and older is set to double over the next three decades, and people are living longer and staying fit longer than ever before. They're still dating, hooking up and looking for love.

That's certainly true of Mr. Hersch, whose gap-toothed grin has become a flirtatious fixture at the Terraces of Baycrest since he moved to the Toronto retirement home last winter.

Age and illness often cause the body's sexual machinery to get a little rusty. After his prostate cancer, “it takes me all night to do what I used to do all night,” Mr. Hersch quips, with Borscht-Belt timing. But nothing diminishes the basic human desire for companionship, the yearning to love and be loved.

Given the cultural taboo regarding elderly sexuality, as well as the physical impairments that come with age, it's amazing that seniors have the bravery to put themselves out there and look for love. But they do.

One recent Saturday night, Mr. Hersch took Ms. Long Term to the movies, then to a burger joint for dinner. On Sunday, he rested because his angina was acting up. He knows it's bad, he says, when he gets breathless without even seeing a pretty woman. On Tuesday, he took his newest lady friend (as he calls them), a resident of the Terraces, for hot dogs at Costco. Other romances have blossomed over coffee, during a concert at the residence or on an outing to the mall.

The level of physical contact varies from couple to couple. Some express affection by holding hands, while others get hot and heavy.

“Completely depends on the person,” Mr. Hersch says. “One lady, on the second date she attacked me, and we went all the way!”

At the Terraces, 90 per cent of the residents are single. Women outnumber men 4 to 1, but a recent influx of single men such as Mr. Hersch has injected a jolt of excitement. Some men work the lunch room like Casanovas, throwing winks and smiles to women in all directions, and some women are happy to take the new men under their wings, shepherding them to activities and fussing over them the way they used to do with their husbands.

When Mr. Hersch arrived at the Terraces, his daughter announced to an elevator full of women that her father had just moved into apartment 310. They asked two questions: Does he have a car? (Yes.) And is he single? (Oh yeah, baby.)

“So,” Mr. Hersch says, “you can see how their minds work.”

Retirement homes have struggled to acknowledge senior sexuality. In the past, elderly people who were “caught” making out or even masturbating in their own beds were chided like naughty teenagers. That's changing, with more private rooms, better training for staff members and more open discussions of intimacy and sexuality.

“Attitudes are changing, slowly,” Baycrest social worker Ruth Goodman says. “The residents do have rights to have meaningful relationships with the people they choose. … People's need for emotional connection, social connection and intimacy is a lifelong need.”

If it's hard for workers to deal with romances among the residents, it can be even harder for sons and daughters to accept that their elderly parent has sexual needs. Some get angry at what they see as a betrayal of the deceased parent, or question their parent's judgment.

Mr. Hersch's daughter, Randi Kwinta, not only accepts her father's busy social calendar, she's constantly setting him up on blind dates. It's a little bizarre to be checking out 70-year-olds on behalf of her father, Ms. Kwinta acknowledges, but more than anything she wants him to be happy.

“He loves women and he loves to be in the company of women,” Ms. Kwinta says. “No one will ever replace my mom. But I want him to be in a relationship where there's mutual respect, where he can have fun and laugh. I would be very happy if he had a woman in his life he could take out to the movies and dinner, and maybe she would have him over once a week and cook him some chicken soup. I think he longs for that.”

Rebecca Hoch, 96, has lived at the Terraces for nine years, and although she's not interested in playing the dating game, she still keeps score. From her wheelchair, she notices which couples linger together after lunch and who's on the prowl. When an 80-year-old man says hello to her in the hallway, she nods back and whispers: “He likes the ladies.”

She says many women of the women here read Harlequin romances – “that's where they get their kicks” – but she prefers Jane Austen. (She's particularly partial to Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.) She read one Danielle Steel novel to see what the fuss was about and was scandalized. “It wasn't even grammatically correct,” she says.

Mrs. Hoch sees how some women flirt. “They touch a man on the shoulder, on the arm. Maybe they want a man,” she says with some disapproval. But on second thought, she softens: “They're only in their 80s, they're young.”

Heather Lisner-Kerbel, a social worker at the Terraces, recalls one woman who fell in love with a man who had memory problems. Their relationship followed a frustrating pattern: They'd make plans, he would forget and stand her up, and her feelings would be hurt.

On top of the usual dating dilemmas – does he like me as much as I like him? – the elderly carry a lifetime of emotional baggage into each new relationship. Those widowed after a long and happy marriage often feel the most eager to start dating again, but new loves can discover it's difficult to compete with a memory.

Mr. Hersch keeps a full dance card, but his heart still belongs to his beloved Sylvia, his wife of 49 years. They met on a blind date when he was 17, and he loved her from the moment he saw her.

“Something clicked,” he says, a faraway look in his eyes. “I don't know what it was, but it lasted a long time.”

Mrs. Hersch died on July 4, 2002. Mr. Hersch still wakes up in the middle of the night and reaches for her.

While he longs for companionship, sometimes he feels like a magnet for the wrong kind of woman.

“That's my problem, I always find these women with problems,” he complains. And not stuff like being a close talker or having ugly feet – they've got issues such as Parkinson's, arthritis or senility. One girlfriend broke up with him because he didn't visit enough at the hospital after she broke a hip.

“It might sound hard, it might sound bad, but I've had my share of hospitals,” he says.

Mrs. Hersch struggled with chronic illness and spent the last seven months of her life in hospital. He stayed by her side through every needle stick and intubation, watching his first and only love fade away.

“You can only take so much,” he says.

So he plays the field. His newest companion is Sylvia Miller, an elegant 89-year-old who moved to the Terraces from Florida two years ago. One night, he didn't feel like eating dinner in his room alone, so he called her up and they went to Costco for hot dogs.

“Cheapest date I ever had – $4.18,” Mr. Hersch says.

“A real night out, whee!” Mrs. Miller says sardonically, raising her eyebrows and twirling a finger in the air.

Honestly though, she says, it was a treat. She loves to banter with Mr. Hersch even if she doesn't think there's much romantic possibility. She's been married three times, and people at the Terraces gossip that Mr. Hersch is next on the list. But she insists she's not looking for No. 4.

“It suits me absolutely perfectly,” she says. “No commitment and no obligations.”

Mr. Hersch finds irony in the fact that Mrs. Miller, 12 years his senior, is in better physical shape than any of his other girlfriends. She's good-looking and a sharp dresser – almost the perfect woman. But she has memory problems. When he asked for her phone number, she couldn't remember it.

“She's a nice lady … except for her mind,” Mr. Hersch says, adding with a shrug: “You can't have everything.”

Both say they're content to be just friends. But they also both seem to revel in the spark of flirtation that jumps between them.

At a piano concert and singalong at the Terraces one night, Mr. Hersch swivels in his chair to wave at Mrs. Miller two rows back during a heartfelt rendition of Besame Mucho. She smiles and waves, but he turns back around quickly.

“There's two women sitting between me and her and now they think I'm tied up to them,” he whispers, glancing nervously at the two rows of nearsighted women who are now smiling sweetly at him.

Such are the perils of being a retirement-home player. Still, Mr. Hersch says he'll never give up on his search for love. Who knows, if he meets the right woman he might even get married again. But she'd have to be pretty special.

“Most of the women just want to be taken out and shown a good time. A percentage of them want to get married, they don't care to who. They want to live in the style to which they've become accustomed,” he says, summarizing the 70-plus dating scene. “I'm not looking for a business arrangement. I want some emotions, I want some feelings. I want love.”

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Sex and the single senior

And you thought the "sex talk" with your teenagers was awkward. Try discussing condoms and hookups with your elderly parents.

But as seniors live longer, healthier lives, they're more likely to stay sexually active.

This isn't just a Viagra-fuelled revolution. Though drugs do help with the mechanics, the real drive is deeper. "People's need for emotional connection, social connection and intimacy is a lifelong need," Baycrest social worker Ruth Goodman says.

So what do adult children need to know about their elderly parent's sex life - even if they're too afraid to ask?

Accept that they have one. A 2007 study of 3,005 adults published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that half of people aged 65 to 74 and a quarter of those 75 to 85 reported being sexually active (defined as "any mutually voluntary activity with another person that involves sexual contact, whether or not intercourse or orgasm occurs").

"A substantial number of men and women engage in vaginal intercourse, oral sex and masturbation even in the eighth and ninth decades of life," the study's authors concluded.

Intimacy doesn't just mean sex. Kissing, hugging, holding hands, dancing: All help people connect with their sensual selves, which can decrease loneliness and boost self-esteem.

If your parent is widowed, it can feel like a betrayal of the deceased spouse when they start dating. But people who had happy marriages are actually the most likely to pursue relationships.

Take your cue from them. If a relative wants to share with you, great. But they have a right to keep their sex life private. And if they want information, give it without judging. Your parents know their way around sex, but much has probably changed since they were last on the dating scene. While pregnancy isn't a concern, sexually transmitted diseases are.

Get over your hang-ups. Pop culture socializes us to think of old people having sex as icky or laughable. But remember, we'll all be old some day.

Rebecca Dube