Fashion
Dating After 40: It’s Not for the Weak of Heart
But neither is it hopeless. Forty-somethings describe their dips into the dating pool, ranging from horror stories to happy endings.
By the time Winter Harris was in her early 40s, she had begun to accept a reality in which she might be single for the foreseeable future.
After two failed marriages and a handful of bad dates, Ms. Harris, a marketing and communications consultant in Washington, D.C., had become more at peace with the idea.
“Clearly the dating pool has pee in it, and this is going to be my life,” Ms. Harris, 42, said.
Daters over 40 are not a monolith. But in conversations and online, there’s a consistent subtext to accounts of their experiences: The stakes are higher. There’s a common fear that once you reach your 40s, the likelihood of finding the kind of love that spawns butterflies grows slimmer and slimmer.
People dating in their 40s might complain about the ever-changing dating terms and dynamics. They might point to their specific circumstances — parenthood, divorce, death, work — as evidence of why it’s so hard to find a suitable mate.
Ms. Harris, who married her first husband at 19 (they divorced about 15 years later) and her second husband at 38 (they divorced within a year), said she was “low-key traumatized” by her return to the hunt. “It just really opened my eyes to how different the dating world was,” she recalled.
