Dating’s harder for older women

By Jill Keech

In its prime, The Single Gourmet catered to a younger clientele than in September when the Hampton Roads singles’ dining club met its demise.

In the beginning, Gourmet owner Ethel-Raye Greenspan of Norfolk says a 65-year-old member of the group would have been “old.”

Today, she says, “it’s not.”

The change in the club’s make-up may be related to Greenspan herself, who was 50 when she started the club. She’s 71 now.

“As I got older, my members got older,” says Greenspan, who is divorced, adding that Single Gourmet chapters “sort of take on the personality and temperament of the person who’s running it.”

But demographics also figure in the mix as older Americans, defined as 65 and older, flood the market and for some women interested in finding love, that’s not promising.

According to “A Profile of Older Americans: 2007,” in 2006, older women outnumbered older men at 21.6 million older women to15.7 million older men, for a sex ratio of 138 women for every 100 men. The report was developed by the Administration on Aging, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Nor is there to be any slowdown of the graying of America.

The report also predicts that the population of people 65 and older will increase from the 2000 figure of 35 million to 40 million in 2010, a 15 percent increase, and to 55 million in 2020, a 36 percent increase for that decade.

And while a woman who is 65 grew up corresponding on a typewriter rather than a computer, don’t think for a minute that she isn’t turning to the Internet to find Mr. Right.

Jean Sullender, 66, of Chesapeake tried Match.com. In hindsight, she says the man she met online wasn’t very truthful about himself. She later had a relationship with a man she met through eharmony.com.

Sullender joined The Single Gourmet and didn’t meet anyone to date but did make some friends.

She joined another singles club for which she had an interview and said what she was looking for in a match. She wondered whether the club had enough men in her age group.

“Is there a pool to draw from?” she wanted to know.

She was “ssured there was an equal number of men and women but didn’t find that to be so.

Once you’ve passed your 50s, she says, the men her age are looking for women 45 to 55.

Sullender wants somebody her own age but says that even an online photo in which you don’t look your age doesn’t help.

“All they look at is the age,” she says. “That’s the deal breaker.”

Sullender also tried speed dating. In this a type of event, singles sign up for their age group and gathering go from person to person to talk for a few minutes. Sullender didn’t find a pool of men past 60 from which to draw.

“If I go to ’senior’ groups, I’m too young — everybody’s 10 years older. If I go to other single groups, I’m too old,” Sullender says.

“For women, you just fall in a hole once you get to 60.”

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This entry was posted on 28/10/2008 at 08:01 pm and is filed under Senior Dating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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