It’s Never Too Late to Find Love

While society pushes romantic partnering on young women, it sends a totally different— and harmful— message to older women

In a world filled with Disney fairy-tales and Hollywood rom-coms, it’s hard to escape the pull of romantic love. And the fast-approaching Valentine’s Day ups the ante, often making single women, even those who are generally content with their life, feel a tad out of step. It would help if we weren’t bombarded with advice on how to “cope” or “survive” the day. It’s not a disease.

But while society pushes romantic partnering on women in their 20s and 30s, it sends a totally different message to women at midlife and beyond: Sorry, gals. You’re too old to find love again, no one even sees you (damn that invisibility!), and who would want you at your age when they can have a younger, prettier and more sexual version?

We’ve come a long way from the Newsweek cover story in 1986 that proclaimed that if a woman hadn’t tied the knot by age 40, good luck — she’d more likely to be killed by a terrorist. Although the research was later debunked and the news magazine retracted it, it has entrenched itself in our collective consciousness — after a woman’s “sell-by” date, she will not find love again.

How wrong that thinking is!

Vice President Kamala Harris was a never-married, child-free woman when she married for the first time at age 50. Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who was widowed at age 45, got engaged at age 50 to a man four years younger than she is. Celebrated author Anne Lamott married for the first time at age 65 to a slightly younger man. Gwyneth Paltrow tied the knot for the second time when she was in her late 40s.

All of their attractive and accomplished men most likely could have committed to women much younger than Harris, Sandberg, Lamott and Paltrow are. We have seen this happen repeatedly, and research indicates that the older a man is when he marries, the more likely his wife will be younger — anywhere from seven to 13 years younger — whether he’s rich and educated or not. That they didn’t skew younger just proves that smart men have no problem committing to women their age or even older.

Hetero women seeking an equal partnership are much more interested in age-appropriate men and even younger men who are actually interested in us (looking at you, Harry Styles). Those men are more self-aware, interesting, multifaceted, experienced, confident and intriguing. And that’s incredibly compelling.

But we are so bombarded with images of older celebrity men dating and marrying women much younger than they are that it’s easy to convince ourselves that no man around our age would want us. Clearly, that isn’t the case.

It also isn’t the case that older women can’t find age-appropriate women to love. As I recently wrote, Elizabeth Gilbert was in her mid-40s when she left her husband to be romantically involved with her best friend, a woman. Glennon Doyle was in her early 40s when she wed Abby Wambach, who was 40 at the time. Niecy Nash was 50 when she married Jessica Betts, who was in her late 30s.

After two marriages and divorces, Eve Pell did not expect to say “I do” again, and yet she did, when she was 71 and he was 81. The San Francisco Bay Area residents couldn’t help but wonder, “How lucky are we to find love late in life?”

But they were hardly the only ones, as Pell discovered when she wrote a Modern Love column for The New York Times in 2013, two years after her husband died of cancer. Originally rejected, it was among the most-read Modern Love columns of all times.

After it ran, Pell heard from hundreds of people who had also found love late in life, and they were eager to share their stories with her. That became the basis of her 2015 book, Love, Again: The Wisdom of Unexpected Romance.

Proving that it’s never too late to find love.

And let’s face it — if someone at midlife or older isn’t interested in being with a woman at midlife or older, they’re probably not the kind of person we’d want to be with anyway.

Hey, I’ve written on a book on changing the narrative about middle-aged and older women, “Not Too Old For That: How Women Are Changing the Story of Aging” (April 2022). Pre-order it here and follow me on Medium, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you want to support my work and have unlimited access to my writing and the writing of all Medium writers, please become a member here. And if you’re interested in individualizing your marriage, please check out the book I co-authored, The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels. You can support your local indie bookstore (please do) or order it on Amazon. We’re also on Audible.

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