“I’m 57. Booty calls are a dime a dozen, but a relationship worth having is rare at my age.” This comment came from one of Facebook followers. Yes, when you’re smart, successful and dating in your 50s you face a unique dating pool. I’ve worked with some women who are Fab & Fifty who have never been married and others who are re-entering the dating scene after a divorce or death of a spouse. What they’ve encountered are men who still haven’t matured (yes, age isn’t an indication a man has grown up yet!) or who are wanting to date around because they were married for most of their lives and now want to just “be friends” and “enjoy one another’s company.” Some have emotional and financial baggage and are trying to recover from a divorce or a lifetime of poor financial choices. When they do meet a man who wants a wife, these men are often looking for a younger woman or they act like old men who are so set in their traditional ways and just want someone to cook, clean, and play nurse when they get sick. Some of them really are sick, like the man Essie was seeing. “He said with all of his health issues, he wasn’t sure he wanted to involve me in that. But he’s happy to have my company.” But it is possible to meet a partner in your 50s! Let me share tips from the work I’ve done with a client named Essie (not her real name) 1. Reinvent yourself Using my Making Room For The One System, we took...
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“Maybe it’s just not meant to be.” I could hear the hopelessness in her voice, even though she tried to convince me she was happy being single. My former roommate was approaching the age of 40 and she was freaking out because she hadn’t found a husband. Her biological clock was ticking and since she didn’t have any prospects, she figured it’d be easier to just give up on her dreams instead of holding on to hope that she’d find real love. I couldn’t let her give up. She was my sister-friend, and she deserved to be happy. She was beautiful, talented, giving, and a successful career woman. I knew she would make a great wife and mom. We were hanging out in her master bedroom, with me watching her as she was cleaning out her cluttered closets. All of a sudden, I blurted out: “You gotta make room for love! Just like you’re cleaning out your closets, you gotta clean out your life so the right man can come in.” Then I told her I could see her holding a beautiful baby boy with big, round eyes. Later that day, we went to the mall. As soon as we stepped through the doors, we saw a sign that read, “MAKE ROOM.” The building was being renovated and these signs were everywhere we looked. I knew it was a divine download. God was giving my sister-friend a lifeline of hope, but it was up to her to reach out and take it. In a few short months, my sister-friend called me. She’d met someone! They got married a year later and she asked me to pray for her as they...
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“I feel like I’m behind all my friends! They’re either married, having a family, or planning a wedding. One of my friends is getting married a second time. I can’t even get one man to marry me! “ “I’m not sure if marriage is for me. Maybe I should focus on work and wait until my kid are grown.” Both of these statements came from 2 different clients, both in their 30s, who had discovered that dating wasn’t what they’d expected it to be. They were on opposite sides of 35, but both women found themselves frustrated with their experience with love. Dating in your 30s usually isn’t what you expected to be, especially if you thought you’d be married by now ( Or maybe you thought the first time you said “I do” would have lasted forever). Now that you’re on the dating scene you’ve discovered that kids complicate things because you already have them, don’t want them, or can’t have them, and the men out there don’t always know how they feel about that. You also expected to date your peers, but sometimes those men don’t quite have their lives together yet. You’re growing in your career, you’ve put down roots and you’ve got a future to consider. Security is a big deal to you, and you may have been tempted to settle down with someone just because he’s got a house, a car and a stable job. You experience a cocktail of emotions like anxiety, excitement and recurring disappointment as you see your 40s quickly approaching and you’re still without a partner. You also may have some regrets...
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Meet Loretta. A beautiful sista in her mid 20s who is a boss in her male-dominated career. She was already making more money in her 20s than most people make after working 20 years at the same job. She’d traveled the world, was admired by her family and friends, and wanted to get married and have a family someday. We met at an Italian restaurant to talk about how I could help her meet and date quality men. She was stunning, her smile was radiant and she turned heads as she walked from the lobby to the table. Our waiter kept flirting with her, but she wasn’t giving him the time of day. After our appetizers, I asked her what her challenges were in relationships. Before I knew it, she was fighting back tears. She’d had a long-term relationship in college that ended after she realized she didn’t really love him and that she wanted to focus on her career. Moving to a new city brought on the revelation and she had a lot of guilt about how that relationship ended. When it was time to start meeting people, she realized that dating wore her out! She didn’t really trust new men, so she friend-zoned them and watched how they treated her before she decided she’d give them a chance at being her boyfriend. She gave all kinds of men a shot, believing that she could help some of them change. One man really broke her heart and her soul, though. She fell in love with him because of his “potential,” only to realize that he was insecure, controlling—and...
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What do you do when the man you’re dating says, “I’m not ready for marriage”? Let’s say this news really puts you through the wringer. You’re completely confused, hurt and shattered because when you met, he said he was looking forward to marriage. But now that you’ve had “The Talk,” he has deviated, saying he wasn’t sure. So what do you do? I was actually in this similar situation when I met my husband, Roy. We were in a grey area when we began seeing each other. I couldn’t even really tell if we were dating or not. We were going out for coffee, catching a movie, grabbing a bite to eat, talking on the phone (remember when people actually did that?!), etc. And every time I thought I knew for sure that he liked me, he’d say, “You know I’m not really looking for anything serious right now. I’m focused on my career and getting closer to God.” I was confused. So I prayed! I believe in asking God questions, specifically when you need to know the truth about a situation. I prayed about the person I was dating in past relationships, but I always denied the truth. I’d push past that still, small voice telling me what to do. This time, I was determined to lean in and listen. I heard the following words in my heart: “Watch his fruit.” Of course, I wanted a clear, black or white answer (or maybe a neon light, telling me what to do!), but what I heard was less direction and more discernment. Yet, there was great wisdom in what I heard. Here’s why: A person produces fruit in...
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“I don’t need a man. I’m fine with or without one!” If I had a nickel for each time I’ve heard a single sister say this, I’d have another stream of income! I get that we’ve been taught by our mamas, grandmamas and auntie’s ‘nem that we don’t need a man. Some women have even told me it was the father figures in their lives who taught them to be independent. Our family was trying to ensure our survival so that if we ended up abandoned, abused or mistreated, we could still make it in this world. But here’s the thing: This mantra that you don’t need a man was designed to help you survive. And that means that it was birthed from pain, pain that was passed on from generation to generation. We can’t allow our pain to define us. You may have been hurt by a man, but you have to make a decision that you won’t let the past affect your future happiness. When you don’t need a man, it shows. I can’t tell you how many women have told me that they’ve gotten into their 40s and 50s desiring a relationship and when they asked men in their lives if they had any single friends to introduce them to, the fellas would say, “Wow, I didn’t know you wanted a relationship. You look like you were fine by yourself!” If you want a relationship, you’re going to have to have a “come to Jesus” moment and flip the script on your beliefs about wanting a man vs needing a man. Needing a man ain’t so bad,...
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Being single is hard. That’s what one blogger, Emma Lindsay, shared in a deeply moving, soul-bearing piece that is now breaking the Internet. Single ladies everywhere put their hands up—not to declare that a man needed to put a ring on it—but to bear witness to the pain of doing life alone. Women especially resonated with Lindsay’s discovery that the myth of self-sufficient, Independent woman crumbles when you’re faced with the devastating loneliness of returning to an empty apartment at the end of a long day. Who brings you a bowl of soup when you’re sick? Who checks in on you to make sure you have everything you need during a snow storm? Who is there to hold you while you vent about the horrible thing your boss said to you at work today? Who is there to celebrate when you get the promotion? But the worse part, Lindsay said, was that you can go weeks, months or years without anyone touching you. No, she’s wasn’t talking about sexual touch. She’s was talking about the basic human need to have someone touch your arm and ask you, “How was your day?” Think about it. Touch is one of the first senses we develop as infants. Skin-to-skin contact sparks a chain of chemical reactions in that infant, which helps to foster better emotional and physical wellbeing. But those emotional needs that touch fulfills don’t go away after childhood. Take the case of Candice Benbow. As a writer and Ph.D. student at Princeton Theological Seminary, Benbow responded to Lindsay’s piece from the perspective of a black Christian single woman who has been made to feel...
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Today I’m celebrating my 10 year anniversary with my husband and in the midst of the celebration, I couldn’t help thinking about you. No, I’m not going to tell you the 10 things I’ve learned in 10 years of marriage. Instead, I’m going to give you the message that someone gave to me when my heart was longing for a safe place and I couldn’t see beyond the broken promises which led to my broken heart: It’s time to be happy again. How did I find happiness after heartbreak? In the last 10 years, I’ve moved to three different parts of the country and some of the boxes have moved with me each time. While I was sorting through the piles of papers, photocopied articles, and classroom notes from the time I was a college professor, I found some of my journals where I had recorded the good, bad, and ugly aspects of my life when I was single. One journal entry marked 12-6-05 really stood out to me. I had met the man of my dreams two months earlier, but apparently I had a lot of doubts, questions, and fears: Is he the one, I wondered? To get clarity on what I was feeling, I picked up a pen and wrote: “I’m still nervous about him for a couple of reasons: 1) My track record isn’t too hot when it comes to choosing men. I get a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing. 2) When I would let my guard down and trust someone that’s when something bad would happen. I don’t want to be disappointed again. 3) I’m not sure...
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