Online dating sites are like virtual Amazon.com’s for finding a mate. There are all sorts of sites to find all sorts of people. There are sites for young people, old people, tall people, short people, religious people, people who are farmers, people who make a lot of money, people who don’t make a lot of money, people who are beautiful and people who aren’t so beautiful. Whatever it is you are looking for, you can find a site that will have a wide range of people fitting your criteria. I have done some online dating and I’ve always seemed to find a date. Not a mate per say, but definitely a date. However, what are people actually doing on dating websites?
As a woman in your forties, you better be very specific with what you are looking for. Are you looking for a hook up? A forever soul mate? A good time? A night out? A companion? If you aren’t sure what you are looking for it’s guaranteed that the website algorithm isn’t going to be able to find it for you. Most people our age, know more about what they don’t want than what they do want. Women specifically in their forties don’t want to be tied down, but they want a committed relationship. They don’t want to be seen as easy, but sex is a very big part in finding a partner. It gets even more confusing when you add the fact that most women in their forties have kids, have been divorced, come with a little or a lot of baggage and to tell you the truth, they are tired. They don’t want to play games. This can make putting an online dating profile together very difficult.
If I were to put a real live profile together, about what it’s like to be a mid-forties woman looking for love it’d go a little something like this:
I am a forty two year old, semi-attractive, highly intelligent, very funny woman who has been married and divorced twice. I have two very challenging, time consuming teenage daughters that will most likely hate you no matter how awesome I think you are. I host a myriad of debt from medical bills, to late utility bills to the never ending payments of private school and divorce lawyers. I don’t like to work out unless you consider me lifting my wine glass to my mouth numerous times per minute exercise.
I have way too many animals and sometimes fear I will become the old woman with too many cats and one day you will find me dead on my kitchen floor as they eat from my decaying body. I sometimes still like to wear miniskirts, put on too much make up and jam out to Bon Jovi, which is now showing my age more than I’d planned. I would love to get dressed up, be taken out to dinner, made to laugh, feel pretty and have no obligation to A) pay the bill or B) have to sleep with you. Unless of course it’s been way too long since I’ve had sex with another human being and then I will most likely engage in sexually explicit behavior only to ignore your texts and calls the next day due to mid-forty mom guilt.
I will try to “fix” you because I’ve spent the last fifteen years or more taking care of people, mainly my ex-husbands who are more childlike than my actual children. I spend a lot of time with my girlfriends because women in their forties need woman friendships more than we need you. We want you, which is completely different. So don’t get it twisted that I am desperate and in need of a man because I am approaching midlife and you think I want to be taken care of. I am a woman, a woman in my mid-forties, in the prime of my life, a sexual being capable of more than you will ever comprehend. So if you are looking to bite off more than you can chew, let’s say we get together huh?
Not exactly the enticing profile to draw a man in. My point is, be you. Whether you are putting together an online profile or getting together for the first date, you want that person you find to like you for you. The beautiful, complicated, wise woman the years have had you become. So let that you shine through.
Allison Hill currently writes a blog called AccidentallyAllison. She has been writing and doing speaking engagements on her work for the past year. Her blog is her chronological journey of transformation on her quest for never ending love, making everyone feel normal; one disastrous relationship at a time. Funny thing about relationships in that they seem to be a big factor in us defining our self-worth and this is where her story begins
