The Sunday Read: ‘Online Dating After 50 Can Be Miserable. But It’s Also Liberating.’

When Maggie Jones’s marriage collapsed after 23 years, she was
devastated and overwhelmed. She was in her 50s, with two jobs,
two teenage daughters and one dog. She didn’t consider dating.
She had no time, no emotional energy. But then a year passed. One
daughter was off at college, the other increasingly independent.
After several more months went by, she started to feel a sliver
of curiosity about what kind of men were out there and how it
would feel to date again. The last time she dated was 25 years
ago, and even then, she fell into relationships mostly with guys
from high school, college, parties, work. Now every man she knew
was either married, too young, too old or otherwise not a good
fit.


That meant online dating — the default mode not just for the
young but also for people Ms. Jones’s age. Her only exposure had
been watching her oldest daughter, home from college one summer,
as she sat on her bed rapidly swiping through guy after guy —
spending no more than a second or two on each.


Ms. Jones tells her story of online dating in later adulthood,
and what she learned.