Looking for love after 40

With more 40-plus women looking for a relationship, it's a jungle out there. Here's a survival guide.

Updated:: 2009-09-27 17:17

Published:: 2009-02-04 00:00

By: Jacqueline Foley

Understand the dating market

After she divorced in her late 30s, Joanne decided to concentrate on raising her two sons rather than start dating again. A decade after her breakup, she realized she was ready — in fact, longing — for a fulfilling relationship.

At first she met a few men through mutual friends. She tried online dating, but found it awkward meeting men she knew absolutely nothing about. Then she met Dave. Joanne liked Dave more than the other guys she had dated, and the feeling seemed to be mutual.

They'd gone out for about four months when he asked her to go on a cruise with him. But on their holiday together, Dave let it slip that he had invited his ex-wife on the cruise first, but she had turned him down. Needless to say, the fledgling relationship didn't survive much longer. "It was clear that all he really wanted was for his ex-wife to come back to him," says Joanne, now in her 50s, who began to wonder if she would ever meet the man of her dreams.

A different dating scene
Joanne isn't the only woman in midlife looking for love. Gloria MacDonald, a professional matchmaker in Toronto who has paired up 1,600 people, says high divorce rates and women postponing marriage have changed the mate-seeking demographic.

"There are more single, middle-aged women dating than ever before," says Gloria, owner and founder of Perfect Partners and coauthor of a book called Laws of the Jungle: Dating for Women Over 40 (WAM Publishing, 2007).

Fewer fish in the sea
If you're a woman looking for love and it feels like the pickings are a lot slimmer now than when you were 25, you're right. There are simply fewer single men to choose from as you get older. For example, between the ages of 25 and 29 there are 10 available single men for every eight single women, but by the time we are between 60 to 69 years of age there are 25 single women competing for every 10 single men.

And it's not just that men generally die earlier than women do. Many newly single men do remarry — but often, they hook up with women who are much younger than themselves. This means that women — who tend to look for men within a few years of their own age — are fishing in a much smaller pond.

But the news isn't all bleak.

Click to continue to good rules for finding love after 40...

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