The Singles Life, After 50

Blog # 14

I moved to Florida right after I turned 57 and was freshly divorced. It was in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Everybody was staying home. So getting back into the dating world was pretty low on my list of priorities.

First, I bought furnishings for my new home and spent weeks happily setting up and arranging my little house. I applied for a new driver’s license and voter card and tended to the other minutiae of moving to a brand-new state. I searched for freelance writing and editing work that I could do from home. I drove all around Palm Beach County getting to know the area, including the coastal road (A1A), the beaches, and the dog parks. And I looked for volunteer opportunities with the local Democrats for the 2020 presidential election.

Signing up for dating apps would come later, I told myself. I first wanted to establish myself in the area and have some steady work under my belt. And I wanted to make new friends and get involved in the community and politics. Those were higher priorities for me.

Plus, after 25 years of marriage to the same man, I was feeling really, really nervous about possibly dating someone new. It was not something I felt comfortable with yet. I was enjoying living alone and being a homeowner by myself for the first time in my life. I liked being independent from a man. And I had no desire to remarry or live with someone again. I probably never will.

Add that to life in the COVID pandemic, unvaccinated, not knowing who could be carrying the virus, and there was no real desire to put myself out there.

I have a friend who separated from her husband after being married to him for even longer than I was with my husband; she did this a few months before I moved out of the house from my husband. My friend immediately started dating again, first with a man she had known for a few years, and then with a bunch of guys she met through a series of dating sites. And this serial dating was taking place during those dark days of 2020 when COVID could be anywhere and nobody was vaccinated.

I couldn’t imagine doing that at the time. For me, it was due to two reasons: (1) I was apprehensive about being with anybody else after all my years with my husband, even though it was me who left him; and (2) COVID! I didn’t want to meet any strangers during this unsettling time. I didn’t know how that could possibly be safe.

I did, however, eventually sign up for the Bumble app, which that said friend told me was a good dating site that gives the woman the upper hand when virtually meeting men. After I had been in Florida for a few months, I downloaded it on my phone and checked it out. I discovered that you could look for friends as an option, not just for people to date. I thought, “Okay, I’ll start with that.” I figured I’d look to make some friends in the area through Bumble, and eventually I’d advance to the dating part of the app, which was a little bit scarier for me.

I met a few friendly women through Bumble, other transplants to south Florida, and that was nice. I planned to add the option later that would put me in the category of women looking for men to date. I’m still planning on it! Someday soon….

Fall 2020 turned to winter, and my father came to live with me for a while. Well, I couldn’t be going on dates while Dad is here! That’s what I told myself. He and I went on a lot of outings together around the area, and I enjoyed my time with him.

I also wanted to lose weight. I figured I needed to be in better shape before I put myself back on the market. So that was a longer-term goal. And I couldn’t do that while Dad was staying with me, because it was hard to diet when he and I were having all these meals together. The dating sites would have to come later, I decided, after he was gone and after I had shed a few pounds.

So I had my reasons — excuses? — on why I didn’t want to try dating yet. I had been separated from my ex since October 2018, and divorced from him since January 2020. But I wanted to take it slow.

In December 2020, I signed up for some local singles groups on Meetup, the app that helps you find fun activities and social events in your area. There are meetup options for just about anything you want to do — sports, walking groups, various hobbies, doggy play groups, political volunteering, community outreach, socializing, you name it. Anything you can think of, you’ll probably find a Meetup group for that activity, or you can start one of your own.

I decided to join Meetup social groups for singles over a certain age. I figured that would be a good way to slowly, gingerly, join the singles world after all of this time. And I would meet people around my own age, both women and men. It seemed like a good way to start out.

Here are the (real) names of some of the groups in my area:

• “Wow” Mixers

• Saavy Singles

• Singles Scene Social Club

• Fabulous & Fun Mixers Social Club 45 to 65 Years Old

• Over 50 (Going on 30) in South Florida and Not Dead Yet

That last one cracked me up. So I joined some of these groups, and I began to receive regular emails from them with all the events planned each week. For the first few weeks, I just scanned the listings that arrived in my inbox, with no desire to commit to anything yet. I was a little worried that the events were not COVID-safe, and I wanted to make sure that something was being held outdoors before deciding to join in. Because, of course, my 80-year-old dad was living with me and he was very cautious about the risk of catching the virus. Until he was vaccinated, I had to be careful.

In early January 2021, I saw that that one of the Meetup social clubs was meeting in my town, Boynton Beach, for an event called “Nicoletta’s Under the Stars” on a Saturday night. The description of the event was that they would be reserving outside tables near a band that would be playing in the courtyard of a popular Italian restaurant. I decided to go and RSVP’d yes. I told Dad that it would be an outside event and I would be careful. He wished me well, and I took off that Saturday excited but apprehensive about this new thing in my life.

I arrived at Nicoletta’s around 7:20 p.m., 20 minutes after the meetup had started. The band was in full swing as I walked up to the outside area with my mask on. I saw swarms of people and had no idea who was part of the Meetup group. I stood nervously outside, trying to appear nonchalant, as I looked for “Ann,” the organizer of this event. I had seen a photo of her in the email, but there were so many people outside, and walking in and out of the restaurant, that I wasn’t sure where to go or what to do.

Eventually a woman carrying a bunch of small bags of party favors walked up to me and said, “You here for the Meetup?” “Yes!” I replied, “I’m Jennifer.” She handed me a party favor bag (!) and told me that the outside tables she had reserved were all filled up, and I would have to go inside. I must have looked nervous because she said, “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of space inside. Hardly anybody in the restaurant.”

Okay, I guess I had no choice. I looked over at the outside tables and saw all the seats were taken. So I walked into the restaurant and there were only a few large tables inside, with a lot of empty floor space between them. I saw a big round table with a bunch of people around it, and party favors on the table. That was part of the Meetup group, so I walked over and someone motioned for me to sit down.

I cautiously took a seat, mask firmly on my face, and looked around at the group. It was almost all women and just two men, and nobody had a mask on except for one woman, who was next to me.

“Take off your mask!” a tattooed, balding man obnoxiously demanded of me. “No,” I replied, offended. Who did he think he was? He acted like he was holding court, and wanted to see all the women available to him. I turned to the only masked person, the woman next to me, and said “Hi” and muttered something about people not wearing masks here. This was in Florida, where COVID was rampant! What the heck was going on?

She seemed nice and sympathetic, but I realized I could not stay. This was just crazy. This meetup was not as advertised, it was not “under the stars,” and I needed to get out of there. I mentioned that my 80-year-old father was living with me and I couldn’t risk catching COVID, and I left my party favor on the table and fled.

So much for local singles events! I drove back to my safe little house and my dad, and I decided I would not go to any more of this group’s social meetups, or any others, for that matter, until after my dad and I were vaccinated. And because I always like to give feedback, good or bad, I filled out a little feedback form the next day when asked how I liked the meetup. “Not safe!” I commented, and explained how the event turned out. I never got a reply to my feedback, and I officially removed myself from that group in the following days. I still get a bad feeling when I remember that moment at that round table inside the restaurant surrounded by maskless people, and I don’t want to ever return to Nicoletta’s again.

Soon after that night, however, I got my dad scheduled for the COVID vaccine. On January 20, 2021, we got him vaccinated and — surprise! — I got one too, as they had leftover vaccine at the end of the day. We returned February 10 for our second jab, and slowly the fear of the virus started to dissipate for me.

My dad stayed at my house until the first week of March and then went on to my sister’s home in Orlando before returning to his condo in Chicago. A couple of weeks after he left my house, my mom and stepdad came to visit, now that they were fully vaccinated as well and could finally travel after a year of quarantining. So I kind of forgot about singles events for a while, as I was busy playing hostess in Florida for those days.

After I had had the house to myself for a few weeks, I considered doing another singles event with a different social group now that I was vaccinated and alone in my house again. But I was still a little wary. And so I put it off.

Then one night in mid-April, I was on the phone with my daughter catching up on things, and somehow the subject of her father came up. I found out that my ex was now dating someone. He had gone to visit my daughter and her brother at their university recently and at one point revealed that he had met a woman through a dating site and had been dating her for two months.

Wow. I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect that. He was moving on after his life with me. I should have known that would happen, of course, but it gave me twinges of sadness and surprise. I remember him telling our daughter after we first separated that he wasn’t interested in finding anybody else or dating again. I guess then he thought that our separation was temporary. Which, to be honest, was an accurate idea. I had painted it as a trial separation when I first moved out. But then a year later I filed for divorce, and some months after that, I moved several states away. So of course he had every right to replace me now.

After I got over the shock that my ex-husband was moving on with his life, I decided that I would, too.

I signed up for more singles groups through Meetup, and then I started to consider joining dating sites. One thing that I had told myself in recent months — as a liberal who had had two long-term relationships in my life, both with conservative men (the college boyfriend who got me out to the East Coast from Chicago, and then my husband who I met in my late 20s) — was that I was only going to surround myself with liberals from now on. If I did find anybody else to date, he would have to be left leaning. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

The main difference that my husband and I had in our marriage was that while I am a left-wing agnostic, he is a right-wing conservative who was becoming more and more religious the longer we were together. By the time we separated, he was identifying as a “creationist” who did not believe in human evolution or that the earth is as old as it is. Everything in life for him seemed to be about the Book of Genesis and biblical morality, and he didn’t believe in the separation of church and state. I thought that his beliefs were crazy, and it aggravated me to no end. As a result, I knew that I could not go down that path again.

So, I did quite the opposite: I signed on to an atheist dating site. Yeah, I went that far. No, I’m not actually an atheist. That seems a little too extreme for me. I don’t know that there is not a god, but I am certainly not religious. I am definitely an agnostic. I don’t like organized religion. And I don’t want any more church-going men judging me ever again.

But unfortunately, there aren’t any “agnostic” dating sites that I could find. So I joined, and paid for, an atheist dating site. There seem to be plenty of those. I filled out the online information form asking about my likes and dislikes, what I’m looking for in a mate, etc. I mentioned that I’m an agnostic. I uploaded a photo. And then I waited to see what would happen.

Well, so far there have not been great pickings. Very slim pickings, in fact. The photos of the men within my desired age range (from 10 years younger to 10 years older) are not great. Nothing that’s attractive to me at all. Too many tattoos here in Florida, not great teeth, and many low-quality photos of men who weren’t even trying…. “Ugh,” is all I can say. And what they wrote in their profiles is not any better. I cringed at some of their comments.

So, the atheistic website may not bring me any dates. I’m pretty sure it won’t. I may get back on Bumble in the near future, and I’ll try to tailor it so that I only find liberal guys. We’ll see if that works. One thing I do know is that I will not stoop to trying Tinder or anything of that caliber. A woman has to have scruples, and that’s where I draw the line (grin emoji here).

But guess what, I joined a new Meetup group recently and went to their singles event in my favorite town, Delray Beach, and met a cool new friend, Sandy, who loves to go out dancing! We are going together now to social events and special dance nights at bars and restaurants. We have met some other regulars at these events, and I am starting to have a new social group. It’s all women in their 50s and 60s, mostly divorced “year-rounders” like me, where here in Florida half of my neighbors are “snowbirds” and most are married couples. But these new friends are neither. It’s good to find some people in the same stage of life as me.

So I’m going out dancing again, which is something I loved doing in my 20s before I was married. Sandy and I like going out to hear retro music, like a weekly Motown night at an outdoor venue near the ocean with a dance floor. I’m dancing a lot and getting some good exercise (hoping to burn more calories!). I can’t do all the same moves I did at 27 now that I’m 57. But I’m having fun. I dance with some men; I avoid some men. Just like when I was single 30 years ago. Some things haven't changed.

We’ll see if it leads to any actual dating. But for now, this is all I need. Stay tuned.

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