Dating ain’t like it used to be.
For example, more people of all ages are meeting on “the apps”—and, not unrelatedly, more of them are complaining about the exhaustion of modern dating. Perhaps as a result for some, many say they are happily single and have no interest in finding a romantic partner.
There’s another change we’ve seen over the past few decades that has been less noticed—many of the people still interested in dating and long-term relationships aren’t in their 20s and 30s (who are often seeking to marry and maybe have children), but rather are middle-aged and older. There are more later-in-life singles than ever before, thanks in part to the rise of “gray divorce”—people in their 50s and older who are divorcing faster than any other age group.
Perhaps in response, we’re starting to see reality-TV shows about this group like Later Daters, The Golden Bachelor, and The Golden Bachelorette. In popular culture, we’re seeing high-profile people in their 50s and older partnering up, including author Anne Lamott, who married for the first time at age 65, and model and pro-aging activist Paulina Porizkova, who recently got engaged at age 61.
In fact, a cultural shift seems to be taking place—the idea that there is no expiration date for the desire for love and sex, or at least romantic companionship. Even so, there are some challenges to finding love later in life, especially for women, who tend to live longer than men and outnumber their male counterparts as they age. Just knowing in advance about these challenges can help you to navigate them—but the bottom line might be that the path to dating happily in later life is to let go of the hopes and expectations you held at a younger age.
Gender and sexuality
The first challenge that may come to mind is a common (and not completely inaccurate) belief) that most men prefer youthful beauty. It can be harder for a woman in her 60s and older to find an age-appropriate male romantic partner—often referred to as “silver foxes”—as many tend to skew younger, often 10 years or more, when partnering again. That tendency may no longer be restricted to men, as we see the rise of “the cougar”—older women seeking younger men—which seems to be experiencing a moment.
Older gay men, too, often experience ageism in a dominant gay culture that also elevates youth, fitness, and beauty, which makes partnering a challenge. There’s even some evidence of age gaps in lesbian relationships.
But the desire for youth and beauty isn’t the overwhelming reason why many later in life adults aren’t romantically partnered. Actually, there are many reasons, all of which deserve greater scrutiny—and honesty.
Perhaps surprisingly, they tend to touch upon things like family and gender roles.
A big barrier is caregiving. In social scientist Lauren E. Harris’ 2023 study of how family caregiving responsibilities among single men and women aged 60 to 83 affects their desirability to someone of the opposite sex, an unexpected pattern emerged.
The men often found women in their age group to be less desirable if they were heavily involved in caregiving their adult children or grandchildren or both. The women, however, found men in their age group who were close with their families to be more desirable, perceiving their carework “as a sign of good character and family orientation.”
While the men stated they wanted to be a romantic partner’s top priority, most of the women didn’t demand the same. They did, however, have one major concern—taking care of the men, especially if the women already had caregiving responsibilities.
“Older single women were quite aware of the ways men may require their time, attention, and care,” Harris writes. “Though they were looking for romantic relationships and companions, women prioritized performing less carework over a relationship that required carework like raising a man’s children or nursing him through decline.”
Family matters
There are other family issues that pop up for those dating later in life.
Understandably, having minor children in the house might impact a parent’s re-partnering decisions. But it doesn’t necessarily change when the kids reach adulthood. Although a young child might not have much control over whom their parent dates, lives with, or marries, adult children and stepchildren have much more power in the decision and often aren’t afraid to exert it.
When author Eve Pell married a widower when she was 71 and he was 81, his adult children were resistant at first. She didn’t expect that. But in interviews with later-in-life couples for her book, Love, Again: The Wisdom of Unexpected Romance, many had similar experiences.
Some shared that their adult children liked their family “as is,” with their divorced or widowed parent or parents remaining single. Some adult children didn’t want to let go of their childhood memories. Others feared that a new romantic partner would take time or inheritance or both away from them and their children.
Adult stepchildren can be as disgruntled as younger stepchildren, writes Wednesday Martin in Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do. “As the kids get older, issues like estate planning and inheritance can come into play, adding an extra layer of anxiety and resentment.”
In fact, the desire to pass on wealth to their children is why many older single parents won’t marry a new romantic partner, research suggests.
Some adult children who no longer live with their parents react poorly to a new partner and may limit the number of times they visit their parents, not allow their children to visit their grandparents, especially if the new couple moves in together, or refuse to forge any type of bond with the new partner, as a study of middle-aged divorced and widowed people in the Netherlands finds. Some even severed their relationship with the parent altogether.
This is why, the study notes, some single parents choose to be in a live-apart-together (LAT) relationship with a new partner, although not always happily. But even that didn’t always guarantee things went well.
As one 78-year-old woman in a long-term LAT relationship told the researchers, her daughters wouldn’t visit her if her new partner was over, and she was not invited to his granddaughter’s wedding.
While they wanted to enjoy their new love, their adult children’s negative reactions made them feel sad and stressed.
“Children of all ages feel betrayed and abandoned when their parents divorce because their cozy nest is disrupted. This even upsets kids who are already out of the nest,” says psychiatrist Dr. Carole D. Lieberman. “The message their parents are sending is that it is more important for them to have a life of their choosing than to remain in their prior, primary role of mom or dad.”
Not all adult children and stepchildren create complications for their parents, however. In a 2025 study, family sociologist Cassandra Cotton found that two-thirds of the adults (aged 55 to 92) she interviewed shared that their children, grandchildren, or siblings were generally supportive of their search for a new partner. Some even set up a dating profile for them or helped them navigate online dating.
Still, that means about a third of those surveyed experienced some pushback by family, which may prevent them from re-partnering even if they want to. And they tended to see their prospective partner’s family—not their own—as being potentially problematic.
Facing the stress of dating
Beyond family concerns, there are other barriers to a new relationship later in life—they’re stressful, at least at first, according to a 2025 study.
Exploring how later daters manage conflict in newer dating relationships, the researchers found that many struggle to find a way to merge their daily lives and get their routines in sync. Without the history of shared positive experiences and trust that long-married couples typically have, later daters were quicker to have negative feelings about a new partner and often saw small annoyances—ones that might easily be ignored by long-term couples as a way to keep the peace—as threats to the relationship’s future.
While both men and women suffered physically in the early throes of a new relationships when there was tension, women also suffered emotionally, reenforcing what previous studies have found: women tend to carry a heavier emotional burden in a heterosexual relationship and often are more sensitive about handling conflict.
Still, the study found that while later daters’ well-being may suffer in the beginning, it could be beneficial in the long term as it might prompt them to leave an unhealthy relationship or one in which they have different dating goals—marriage, cohabitation, LAT, something casual or a committed monogamous relationship—quickly.
Different dating goals is another barrier to later-in-life partnering. Single men in their 60s and older often want and expect to cohabit with or marry their female romantic partner but many women did not, stating that they were unwilling to give in to the “structural commitments” of cohabitating relationships such as cooking, cleaning, and caregiving. While those women said they dated for companionship, they indicated they were willing to be lonely before sacrificing their independence. That often led to the end of otherwise satisfying romantic relationships.
Some struggle more than others
While some of the complications to dating later in life seem to be universal, there are some that are unique to people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) people, adults with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and other marginalized people.
Some lesbians often feel a need to go back in the closet as they age for fear of discrimination, making finding new potential partners a challenge, North Carolina State University professor Paige Averett tells me.
Growing up at a time when society was less accepting and more stigmatizing about being LGBTQ+ than today could influence boomer lesbians’ self-image and thoughts about forming romantic relationships, she shares. Some LGBTQ+ people who came out in mid- or later life, often after having been in heterosexual relationships, feel that they’re inexperienced in dating. It can be hard to put oneself out there and so they often don’t.
For African American women, who are the least likely to marry, dating later in life can be challenging, sociologist Cheryl Y. Judice discovered while doing research for her book, Interracial Relationships Between Black Women and White Men.
There just aren’t that many available single Black men to date, she notes, and they have longer life expectancies compared to Black men. Older Black people are twice as likely as their white peers to live below the poverty line, which has an impact on dating possibilities. In addition, health factors in: Black women have higher rates of disability than white women and both Black and white men, which also can create challenges to finding a romantic partner.
So, too, can socio-cultural issues. For older divorced or widowed Mexican-American women, who make up a substantial portion of the older Latinos in the United States, seeking a new partner could possibly lead to vergüenza (sexual shame) or culpa (guilt) in a culture where a woman expressing her sexuality in later years or outside of a church-sanctified marriage is frowned upon.
Finding a romantic partner can be challenging for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) of any age due to barriers such as caregiver control, often removing the ability for them to make decisions on their own; limited social opportunities; and a lack of privacy among others and the potential loss or reduction of essential federal programs such as Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid if they wed or even if they live with a romantic partner.
Because more people with IDD are living longer than ever before, the population of those aged 60 years and older is growing and projected to reach 1.2 million by 2030. Many will have lived much of their adult life without a romantic partner.
Letting go of old scripts
Ultimately, researchers find that later-in-life dating and partnering, while often desired, can be complicated.
“There are many unanswered questions regarding the role of gender, age, and family in the dating process that deserve to be addressed,” Harris writes. “At present, practitioners need to be aware of the hurdles, as well as the stigma, that single older adults face in seeking a romantic partner.”
That said, older singles don’t have a romantic script to follow as many of us do when we’re younger, often without realizing that we are. We all know that script: meet, fall in love, move in together, maybe put a ring on it, and pop out a few kids. Once you’ve hit your 50s and beyond, many have been there, done that. It’s perhaps the first time in life when we can create our own script without societal pressure.
That’s why many embrace the LAT lifestyle. Others seek casual relationships to satisfy their needs—or even embrace polyamory, the practice of cultivating multiple, simultaneous romantic partnerships. As one 84-year-old woman in an ethical non-monogamous relationship shares in the 2023 anthology Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60:
No longer are there many plans for the future or discussions around raising a family. No longer do I feel the need to live with someone or be in an exclusive relationship. … the need for companionship, intellectual connection, warmth, holding, and sex are all still present and central to what I call “old love.”
In other words, our desire for love, intimacy, companionship, and connection doesn’t go away just because we’re older, but it can take on new forms if our expectations of what a romantic relationship “looks like” become more expansive. If you’re looking for love in your later years, perhaps the most important takeaway is to be open to the various ways you may find it.
