Older dating
Did you watch “Age Gap Love” on TV the other evening? I did, and thoroughly enjoyed the heart-warming stories of couples who had found love despite an often huge age gap. Most of these were, of course, extreme cases, as that makes for the best TV, but there were reasons why these people were together, from which I think we can learn something – two of the young men with older partners had health issues, and had been unsuccessful finding a partner in their own age group. In their older partner they had found a tolerance and understanding, patience and acceptance that nothing is perfect. By opening up the possibilities, going beyond the ‘norm’ these couples had found a fulfilment that often eludes single people today.
Although everyone joining our agency is looking for a partner they are often so specific in their criteria that we believe they could be missing out on the one match that could change their lives, simply because the tick is not in the right box. Over the years it has become accepted that a gentleman will often be looking for a younger partner – it seems easy in the outside world for a man to bag himself a much younger woman if he has a fat wallet – that doesn’t happen here! Our female members in their 30s would never state a preference for a man in his 60s – but we do get approached by men in this age group who think we can find them a lady in her 30s – without focusing on wallet size, and we don’t, it is very difficult for us to see how we can ‘sell’ such a gentleman to the sort of lady he thinks he wants.
As professional matchmakers, we have years of experience in making successful matches leading to long and fulfilling relationships, often marriage. To use our skills to best effect, we need the clients to trust our instincts, and allow us the freedom to propose every match we think could be right for them. When very strict criteria are imposed on us, our hands are tied – so clients who have paid a lot of money for our services might not be getting full value. Last autumn a lovely gentleman approached us, looking for a partner in the north of England. We talked at length and got to know each other well enough for him to allow us the freedom to propose the matches we thought would suit him. Sticking with his preferences, the first match did not get beyond the first date, so we followed our instincts and offered him a profile of a lovely lady, well presented, stylish – we knew he would like her look – but would he accept her age – five years older than him? To his credit, he did, and five months later this happy couple are making plans well into the future – without that open minded approach they would not even have met!
Statistics show that women live longer than men and the ladies on our database certainly ‘age’ better than many men – they need a man to match their youthful energy levels, and this will often be best achieved with a gentleman slightly younger than themselves.
If you engage the services of an agency to speed up the process of finding a partner – please, be as open minded as you can and you will get the best value for your money – we are professionals and our wealth of experience means we can often see things you don’t. As the programme showed, age really is “just a number” – ignoring that number could be the key to finding true happiness.
