Nadine Dorries wrote in her Tuesday column about men who suddenly began propositioning her, at the age of 66. Four men in six weeks, one of them whispering how sexy she found her at lunch!
They sense that she is emerging from the pain that affected her after the death of her beloved husband Paul in 2019, she concludes, and that she radiates a new kind of openness and optimism.
Well, good for her.
But also a word of warning. Far be it from me to ruin Nadine’s parade, but she’s not the only one who attracts a proposal or two later in life. And they are not always cause for absolute celebration.
To my continued surprise, at the age of 79, I too receive frequent, and often very bold, proposals from older men. Why not?, you might ask. I am single and single (divorced my husband 35 years ago), in good health and in reasonable shape thanks to daily exercise. But even though they persecute me for my appearance and personality, I think the truth is much more mercenary.
“To my surprise, at the age of 79, I too receive frequent, and often very bold, proposals from older men,” says Liz Hodgkinson.
I am convinced that what they want from me, at least in part, is not my brilliant company, but my money.
I don’t mean to say that they are outright scammers of the type who trick women online with lies about who they are.
No, these are real men, our age or older, who see a well-off wife as a ticket not only to fun, but also to a very comfortable old age with our feet under our well-laden tables.
I have often written about the nice house I lived in for 14 years, with its three bathrooms, and about my long career as a writer, and I am firmly convinced that a section of the male population sees me as a catch for my he .
It’s not just me and Nadine. My best girlfriend, a busy interior designer in her 70s, is also always propositioned. Another friend of hers, 84, who recently published her first book to great acclaim, says she has an admirer who wants to marry her.
“And he won’t take no for an answer,” he told me, although he repeats it quite frequently.
There, of course, lies the problem. They see us as a catch, but also as women of a certain age who will fall at their feet once attention is paid to them; hence their confidence (and, as Nadine has discovered, some of these men can be very frank).
However, we rarely see them in the same light.
A few years ago, for example, a complete stranger sent me a message on social media. He said that he had graduated from Oxford, had worked in international finance and now ran a publishing house. He wondered if I could collaborate with him on a book on an interesting topic, so I met him for a drink at a London wine bar.
The moment he walked in it became clear that, while I had taken care of myself and my money, he had not.
Dressed in old jeans and a scruffy jacket, in his 70s, within minutes of our meeting, he asked me if I would ever consider getting married again. The ‘date’, if that was what it was, didn’t last much longer. I later discovered that this international financier and publisher lived in a dormitory on the coast. After two divorces, he barely had any money left.
Others have been equally brazen. There was a seventy-something who took me out to lunch after following me on Facebook, only to tell me when we spoke on the phone that he hadn’t worked since he was 50.
We didn’t click and we didn’t meet, but that didn’t stop him from sending messages afterwards saying he was “lonely” and drinking a bottle of wine alone. Another man tried to pick me up on a bus, like he was a teenager! Since Christmas, there have been two more approaches from probably real men, rather than fake fishermen, asking me on dates.
Nadine Dorries wrote in her Tuesday column about men who suddenly started propositioning her, at the age of 66.
It used to be thought that older men targeted younger women, but it seems (perhaps thanks to the cost of living) that those days are long gone.
Karen Mooney, who has run Sara Eden Introductions since 1988, says: ‘The objectives have completely changed. When I started the agency I was 30 years old and 60 seemed old to me. I am now sixty years old and have many older male clients looking for a partner of the same age. Women take care of themselves much better; They have had careers, they have led their own lives, they have their own homes, they are completely independent and can get by without men.
‘Although single older men may look for a partner their own age without any ulterior motive, it is also true that many hope to find a rich widow.
“If you’re rich, you’ll be attacked no matter your age,” Karen adds. ‘Every time a man sees the word ‘widow’ on an online dating site, he thinks she will be loaded. Men can be vulnerable too, of course, and widowers also tend to attract gold diggers. Overall, since the pandemic, we’ve seen a huge increase in customers in their 60s, 70s and 80s.’
Sometimes women are severely burned because of this imbalance in their financial influence.
A friend who had been single her entire life and had recently retired from her job as a private school principal, struck up a whirlwind romance with a boy she had met briefly as a student, and they soon got married. The union was a disaster.
After three years, she filed for divorce. During the marriage, she had put her property into their joint names and the result of her costly and acrimonious separation was that her husband of a few years was allowed to buy it and keep her house.
With his finances very depleted, he had no choice but to move to a retirement apartment. It wasn’t a classic scam, but he certainly did very well with it.
That’s not as unusual as it seems. Another friend married a younger man believing she had finally found true love after two divorces, but when that marriage also failed, he got her house too, this time solely for financial reasons. I fear that some solvent older women will always fall prey to soft-spoken men who convince them that they are in love.
Regardless, I hope I haven’t discouraged Nadine from dating again. She doesn’t miss a thing by turning a new page “brave and bold,” as she says, and throwing herself back into the world that awakens with spring.
But you should definitely know that there are wolves out there too. The good news is that they probably won’t bother dressing up because they really don’t think it’s necessary (oh, for the confidence of a mediocre man, as the saying goes), but she should be careful anyway.
So would you ever consider another intimate relationship? Yes, but very firmly on my terms. First, they would have to match me financially, and second, I would have to be attracted to them. None of those things seem like a lot to ask for, right? Good luck, Nadine!