Blogger Ann Brenoff recently shared her take on the big reasons why baby boomers fail at online dating — and given the increase in “gray divorce,” she has a large pool to draw from for inspiration. However, while reading her post as a 35-year-old man with some divorce papers under his own belt, this guy, as in me, realized that her insight can be applied across the board.
In other words, it’s not just a boomer thing. It’s an all-of-us thing. Here was one of the tidbits that really stood out from Brenoff’s piece:
“We don’t stick to people our own age.”
Brenoff, in noting that boomers tend to date people “the age of their kids,” realizes that differences and dreams are simply far too different for people with a wide age gap. Of course, there are always exceptions, but the rule mostly applies, and it applies to more than just boomers. When I decided to file for divorce from my philandering spouse, I felt the need to “get back out there” in a hurry.
Trouble is, a lot of the people my own age were married or in life situations that didn’t appeal to me (i.e. two or three kids). That sent me — sneaking up on 30 at the time — towards 22- and 24-year-old women. It didn’t work out, not because there was something wrong with any of those women, but because we were simply in different life circumstances. Now there are times when six or eight years age difference isn’t that big of a deal, but for that time in my life, it was.
Had I dated someone north of 25, I would have had an easier time. And while I’m now remarried to a woman five years younger than me, we didn’t meet up until she was 27. At that point, we were both in the same stratosphere when it came to life goals. We were also about even on maturity.
In Summary
If you are curious as to why your online dating adventures aren’t working out, click on Brenoff’s name at the start of this post. She has some insights that we should all be able to learn from so that, hopefully, the first time you file divorce forms will be the last time you ever do. Good luck!