This is pod Populi Podcast for the People, the Great Love Debate. It's
the Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debase.
Hi again everyone, It's Brian Howie. Welcome to the Great Love Debate,
the world's number one dating and relationship podcasts. It's twenty fifteen. I
am back here in the very fine studios of pod Populi Podcast for the People.
Got Cam and Barrie on the controls. Give a shout out a little
louder if I'll see that was terrible, given much, I gonna mic come
up. I'm the one in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is no longer surface
of the Sun. Hot. I think we got through another season here.
It's always lovely in the Scots Dazzle anyway. Uh. We talk a lot
on this podcast over the last you know, eight nine years about the dating
Pool and the size of the dating pool. And some people want to say
that the dating pool is six inches wide and one hundred feet deep, and
some people say it's one hundred feet wide and six inches deep. And it's
a very rare thing that it is the only body of water that is both
deep and shallow at the same time. The dating pool. I think that
the dating pool is getting bigger now. It's not in the way that that
we've talked about on the shell. I think the traditional dating pool, the
people in their twenties and thirties and whatever, I think that has gotten smaller.
I think that is shrunk. I think a lot of people dropped out.
I think a lot of people are like, I don't need the ship,
I don't like the the dating apps. I just want to be complete,
one hundred scent introvert with my dog and my wine and my video games
and my porn and and I just don't want a part of it. A
lot of people dropped that out of COVID, and they never came back.
Where the growth is happening, for lack of a better term, is in
the pool over fifty. And not only is it happening because people are living
longer, it is happening because a lot of people, especially women, are
realizing I can have a second act in my life. I still am very
vibrant. There's a whole lot of i'll just say, medications out there that
allow the men to have certain capabilities that they might not have had twenty thirty
years ago. And so that has brought a bunch of people back into either
both the shallow end or the deep end of the dating pool. That being
said, the group of will say over fifty, they have a unique set
of advantages and there's also a unique set of challenges. So I want to
get in all that I brought in somebody, not that she's over fifty.
I'm not even gonna say how old she is, but she also has a
particular interest in this demographic. She is a writer, speaker, comedian,
she may tell jokes, bon vivant and host of the Geezer Proofer podcast.
And I'll let her explain what that is later on. Nancy Shanker, how
are you, Brian? Thank you for having me on your show. Do
you agree that that you know, maybe we didn't pay any attention to it
back when we were twenty, But if I go to Florida or any place
like Arizona and there's a lot of retirees, there's a lot of sixty plus
dating, sexing, texting, all that going on that I'm not sure happened
before. Absolutely. And the other thing that I think is going on is
that people over sixty, over sixty five are not necessarily retirees. So I
fall into that pool, and I have my own marketing company, I've got
as speaking and writing practice. I'll soon have a podcast. And there still
is this archaic assumption and it's not unfounded that a lot of people over sixty
five just want a wait to die and play pickleball. Until that happened,
that's a really good point. People are working longer, they're second careers,
they're entrepreneurs, they're doing longer, which people are like, oh, that
means they don't have time to date. No, what that does is it
puts them in contact with a lot more people all the time. They're in
business environments, they're networking environments, they're in social environments, and that also
leads them not to get stagnant either physically or psychologically. That their brain is
still turned on in a lot of ways because they're working. Yeah, and
I do think that that is one of the differences between men and women in
today's dating world. That a lot of men have had corporate careers. You
talked about the second act, and when they retire from their jobs, they
want to kick back, they want to hang with their grandkids, they want
to play pickleball or golf, and the women who have spent a lot of
years raising kids, being married, taking care of household chores. We view
that as a time of liberation. So there's a very big disconnect between active
women over sixty five and, for lack of a better term, passive men
over sixty five. So I I think also the women of the eighties were
a generation that has economic independence. We've got smarts, a lot of us
have been married previously, and the statistics actually show that a lot of what
it's called gray divorces are initiated by the women and the men are then kind
of gobsmacked and they fall into a few different categories. They're the kids in
the candy store who maybe haven't had sex for two years and are just out
there. They think the dating apps are like the door dash of vaginas.
Yeah, I believe that's their new slogan. You do really well with vaginas.
That's true. And so in a town like this Scott's d Arizona,
if you go out at after eleven o'clock and you see a lot of young
people, But if you go out in that sort of happy hour to nine
pm zone, you're going to see a ton of women together and not nearly
as many men. The men like golf all day, They did something else
all day, and they are pooped out by eight o'clock. That is the
single biggest challenge of the women over fifty that we have heard since the day
we started this show is I want to date somebody my age, and the
guys my age don't want to do this. They want to hang they want
to sit home. And I had my twenty five years of raising my children
or whatever. It's my time and I want to go out and the guys
don't want to do that, so I have to go chasing around young guys.
That's who's out there. And then I get this, you know,
sort of cougar reputation going on. But really it's like I can't find men
that are sixty five years old who want to go out till ten thirty.
And the ones who do want to go out, and I see them a
lot out at Eddiv's or any other steakhouse in the valley. They want the
young stuff. And I was in a bar a couple of months ago and
there was a guy who had to have been close to eighty with a woman
who was in her twenties, and she was like wriggling to get out from
under his grip. Well, here's why they want the young stuff. They
don't about the young stuff because the young stuff is hotter. They want the
young stuff. That's a good way to put that. The young stuff.
They want the young stuff because it is easier for them to get their confidence
back and play hero with the young stuff. Somebody takes you out to dinner
and buys your dinner. You've done this a lot of times, and you
could probably buy your own dinner. Okay, take a twenty five year old
out, no offense, sto our twenty five year listener and buy our two
glasses of chardonnay, and you are appreciated. You feel good about yourself.
So they're going young to try and feel better about themselves. It's really hard
for the men over fifty to impress a women over fifty, and that is
the challenge of the rise of the independent woman, which is creeped into the
dating pool of all ages. Is you're just harder to You don't need us
that much anymore, especially at that age. Well, we need men for
different things, and it's not necessarily the things that men of that age want
to do. So what do you need a man for who's sixty two?
I would love a traveling companion, get a dog. He's not sign it
up for that. Like, that's the thing we hear that, you know,
the old Jackie Onassis line, as you marry the first time for love
and the second time for money and the third time for companionship. That guy
doesn't want to be a companion. He wants to be more than that.
He doesn't want to be that. You know, that's essentially your You can
have your hairdresser go with you, you can have your girlfriend go with you.
He wants to be the one who took you around the world on a
trip and gave you an adventure of a lifetime and you're not really looking for
that. Well, but I would be fine with that. If a man
said to me, I'm going I've always wanted to go to Sicily, would
you like to come with me? And it would be a traveling friend with
benefits. Yeah, there has to be the benefits. Oh, and that's
that's totally fine. You know, it depends on the guy, but I
would be down with that. The problem is that a lot of the men
of that age, who maybe have the means to travel they've traveled for work,
they've traveled with their late wife, they've traveled with the first turn and
there, and they're well, you know, widow widow hoo is a thing.
It is a thing. This year's Golden Bachelor is a widower who was
married for forty years. I know, and it's it's those people are usually
a lot of people because those that that's a challenging demo that comes to a
lot of our shows. And the widow and the widowers, they're like,
I'm ready to date, and a lot of people who I want to date
don't want to deal with the ghost is what they call it. It's hard
for them to compete with a memory, and so a lot of people are
like, I don't want to get into that. And the Golden Batch you
brought that up. When I heard his story, I was like, Oh,
that's so sad because he was married a long time, love his life,
and I'm like, if I'm competing for this, I don't. And
again, this is my weird issue. And I think a lot of people
have second and third spouses of after somebody passed, and it's just different.
It's not better or worse. But you're right, I the the end.
Again, if you're twenty two and listening to this year, like what the
man worked and the woman stayed at home and all like for a big generation,
this is what happened. And he did travel for work, and he
had his adventures, and now he just wants to stay in one place with
the same tea time and the same group of buddies. And she's like,
it's my time. So Howard Stern got divorced. He worked and he went
home and he want to sit in his basement. And his first wife is
like, I need a life. So she got divorced, and his new
wife, it's the same rumbling. Now he's like, I don't want COVID,
I want to stay home, and she's like, I want to have
this. That's not unusual, No, absolutely not. So I think that
the population of men over sixty, over sixty five, who really have that
energy level and who view you know, I often say that I have another
thirty three years left in my life. That's an entire lifetime, and I
want to do things very precise number well, I will later reveal how old
I actually am. I know, but you might have fifty years, you
might have five. I mean, I don't know I'm being optimistic. But
however, however many it is, there are things that I still would like
to do in my lifetime, and I'm very clear with the people I meet
that those things are on my wish list. And I don't think my bar
is particularly high for what it is that I'm looking for. But I know
also what I don't want. I don't want to be Netflix and chilling seven
nights a week, or have to go out with my girlfriends five out of
seven nights a week because my significant other is too tired. I mean,
my ideal would actually be to have a long distance relationship so that we both
have our lives, we have our work, we have our kids. It's
special exactly. Yeah, that's not about it. Have you taken dance classes?
I have two left feet, I know, but the men who go
to the dance classes of all ages have a little extra figure. I will
little energy. I will have to keep that in mind. Arthur Murray's or
whatever. Shout out to Arthur Murray's. Are you on the dating apps?
I am on the dating apps and off the dating apps. What is your
age parameters? My parameters are forty eight to seventy two so it's a pretty
wide range. That's well, no, it's a wide range on the low
side. Again, not to give away your age, but you're there's a
lot more below you than above you in that range. I say it's a
mixed bag. I do think, as you said earlier, there are more
and more men over the age of fifty who've discovered the apps. The apps
have done a really good job of broad mass advertising, and their ads are
oh you know this guy's like, oh, somebody liked me, and so
the men are flocking saying, oh, maybe that's how I'll meet somebody,
or there's guy peer pressure. Yeah. The sad thing is a lot of
them don't know how to take selfies. There's like the classic bathroom picture where
like you have a nice face and I can see your toilet right or are
they holding the fish right again? Or they still believe the Tinder is exclusively
a hook up app, so they lead with the sexting. Well, I
don't know if they believe it's for that, but if they lead with the
sexting, it's got as good a chance to work as anything else. Now
we've talked about that to death on this podcast. The women aren't answering anything,
So you might as well just lead with that and see who gets interest,
especially if you're like, I'm not looking this is This is the other
both benefit and challenge. In your twenties and your thirties, you are trying
to date most of the time, to have a relationship and a partnership that's
going to last forever, and you're going to raise a family and all that.
That is usually the goal of people. Once you've gotten through that and
for either your spouse is no longer with us or you got divorced or whatever,
that little fairy tale of the next fifty years together is gone. Take
some of the pressure and some of the idea out of it. It's also
like, I know very specifically what I need in my life. I need
these time. I need, you know, the fun, the companionship,
the laughs, that travel or whatever. And then so then you're like,
it's a little bit easier resume to search for. But when you are not
driven by that impetus of I want to find deep and lasting love, that
makes it hard too. So it's both easier on one side and it's harder
on the other. I think the motivation comes from I want to fall in
love and spend happily ever afterwards somebody and when you take that away, which
you do over fifty six year whatever, because either you're jaded or those reasons
I just brought about, it's not quite as motivating. Yeah. I also
think that you know my generation. Again, without revealing my age, we're
gonna have a drum roll at the end. There are a lot of men
who either grew up in sexually repressed times, they got married young, they've
only been with one woman, yep, they never really allowed themselves that what
I call the wilding stage, where like right after you get divorced, you
can have fun for a year, get it out of your system. And
maybe these guys will never get it out of their system. And you know,
we talked about the Golden Bachelor. I've seen pictures of his late wife.
Yeah, and you know, she looks like a really sweet, solid
person. But the women who they cast on as his potential dates, yeah,
look nothing like her. They're all hotties. So I'm sure he misses
his late wife. Forty years is a long time, but I also think
there's probably something now what it was forty years agogether, Yeah, which is
such a rarity most marriages don't last forty years. But I do think there's
probably a small part of his brain that's like, yeeha, Now I finally
get to go to the fantasy suites with these hot women who look nothing like
my late wife, and yeah, we have a you know, we have
a good relationship with the bachelor community, the show, the producers and all
that. And back in the day, I pitched a version of that to
them. I'm like, I, you should try it with an old guy,
and they're like, nobody wants to see that. But now this is
that was probably six seven years ago the data because dating now is an interesting
thing to older people, and older people look better than they do. There
are ways at sixty five to look forty five, and they're ways at eighty
five looks sixty five. That the pool it seems like, oh my god,
these are not geriatric people. These are people who look good and they
seem like they should be dating and the idea of them hooking up is not
disgusting to people and all that stuff, and so I gotta take a quick
break. We're you know, I'm gonna pay for botox and things around here
for us aging seniors. I with Nancy Shankar. We're talking about dating over
fifty and a whole lot more. We will be back right after this,
and we are back. So if somebody says to you, is it easier
to date at sixty than twenty or is it harder? I think it's different.
I wouldn't say easier or harder. I think you summed it up when
you said, when you're in your twenties or thirties, you are looking for
that happily ever after, And women's biological clocks are still kind of ticking.
They have to decide do I want a child with a spouse. Do I
want to have a child by myself, which is now an option. But
there is this mortgage, marriage, mortgage kid thing that's happening in the twenties
and thirties. When you're at my age, it should theoretically be easier because
I'm economically independent, I have the flexibility to travel. Why would that make
it easier. I think that makes it harder. Well, you don't have
to have tough conversations about money, you know, when you're young and you're
But if you're sixteen and you're broke, and he's like, I want to
take you on a trip. You're like, yeah, I can't do that
myself. Let's go. Like it takes the safety net away of I don't
need him to do that gets back to the need and the want thing again,
like if you if you can be excited by an adventure that you could
not do on your own, I think that opens up possibilities for the man
to get into your world. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I
think that the apps themselves are agist. I think the fact that in most
of the apps you're forced to report a number right off the bat. I
don't look my age. So I just came back from a three day trade
show in Vegas. People were talking to me left and right when even between
the time I was sixty and now and now for the big reveal, one
hundred and forty seven years old. Now, how are you? I'm sixty
seven, okay, so I'm closer to seventy than I am to sixty.
And I refused to lie about my age on the apps. And I found
that my pool of suitors has dropped precipitously because when men set their age range,
sadly, they still have an ord. No better, you just said
you said it from forty eight to seventy two, So you set eighty five
percent of the possibilities younger than you. So they're doing the same thing.
Maybe true my motivation, my motivations are different though I work in tech and
I still work. So what I found is when I and there are exceptions
to every rule. If somebody who was seventy five, seventy seven, eighty
five messaged me Alan Patrickoff, who may or may not still be single,
is in his eighties and he just started a VC fund for Age Tech,
and he did say that he was on bumble. I haven't been able to
find him yet, So again I'm not going to limit myself based on a
number on a birth certificate. But I do find that the fact that on
the apps, that's what you're leading with as opposed to interests. And then
in fact, last night I did matches speed dating and one of the guys
within the first three questions he asked, said how old are you? He
didn't say what do you like to do? Are you involved in? Do
you still work? I think though a little bit of the asking that and
some of the sexual nature of the early dialogue, I think they want to
know not only does shit still work. I think they want to know is
this something you're still interested in? Right? And that would be an appropriate
question for me. If some and I do sometimes get that, someone will
say is intimacy still important to you? Which is a gentlemanly way of asking.
Yeah, I say do you yeah? You want? I see intimacy
sounds dirty to me? I know it reminds reminds me of that scene in
Tutsi where Jessica Lyn says to Dustin Hoffman, I wish a man would come
up to me at a party and say blah blah blah. And he goes
up to her and he says it and she immediately slaps him across the face.
Right. So I think it's a hard question to ask. It is
because some people want to be want to get asked very pg. Thirteen,
and some people want the X version that. Maybe my next infographic is,
yeah, ten ways to ask if somebody is is sexually interested? I'll say
that or it does it still work? Yeah? I think that's tough.
A lot of these guys want companionship, which is a lot times why they
go younger. A lot of times the way they go younger is the girl
sex is not even on the table for her with him, which is almost
a relief because he can't do it anyway, so he'd rather just be around
the pretty thing. You know. The women at sixty they probably want to
get laid, you know, and so he feels like it might work once
in a while. You know. You know what's the Toby Keith song,
not as good as I once was, as good once as I ever was.
Yeah, I mean one of the one of the lines. And you
know when I give dispense dating advice is ready to date medicate, like if
in doubt, you know, if you think it's not going to work,
then get it and you still have a desire to be intimate again using that
that word that's up there with like moist an ointment because it does just sound
like an icky words. Well, I've been I've been shocked. I always
say to the women, I'm like, if a guy had to use viagraph
for me, I would be so offended. Most women are like, I
don't give a shit what he has to that's his problem. Yeah, they're
like I don't know. They're like we don't care. I don't care.
I know I would care, that's my ego. Women are like I don't
fucking care. Who cares A ready, I heard that men are starting to
take drugs as early as like forty forty five. Oh no, they're starting
to take them as early as twenty and twenty five. They take it recreationally,
so by the time they get to forty and forty five, the body's
dependent on it and it's all messed up. You know. It's like the
people who took the adderall recreationally, like now they're all screwed up. And
yeah, same thing. So that has though, brought a generation of daters
back who previously probably would have to drop out at sixty something, I guess.
And so then it is more on the table, which has shifted the
dating thing too, that this is going to be a you know, I
remember my grandmother got a boyfriend at like eighty eight. I didn't think they
were having sex, but they wanted to spend time together. And the one
not to gross you out, but they might might have been Yeah, you
rest in peace, Grandma, Jesus. I know the you know, the
the old line about the biggest population of sexually transmitted diseases is like over seventy
in Florida. They're carrying around ship from the war and Sun City I last.
But also they're not worried about getting pregnant, and they're not worried about
anything. So it's really just a I think the age of over sixty means.
And a good side of it is we are just having fun here and
we really want to share the best parts of our existence with you, and
we really are. And the pressures and the stresses and are we going to
do this? And how a we're going to save for college and are gone,
which should be liberating. And if you're liberated from the bad stuff and
you could just focus on the good, I think that's a good way to
date. I totally agree with you, Brian. And you know, I've
also just encountered a lot of sad men, you know, because they are
depressed about getting older. They're confused because maybe their wife was the one who
asked for the divorce. You know. I get a lot of that.
I think I give off like a therapist vibe. And I've been at with
men who then spend twenty minutes telling me about how their wife dropped them and
how they're kind of lost and they don't know what to do and they don't
process it and they don't deal with it, and they don't have a circle
of the women are usually like, fuck him, let's go out, we're
gonna have fun. And the guys that aren't doing that, and so he's
left to process this and the kids everyone wanted, Like you ever hear from
mom like it's awful, like But there's a lot of men sad who,
like I said earlier, completely had their confidence shattered because she woke up one
day and she's like, this isn't for me. I have fifty years to
go. The kids are going on in a new life and it doesn't involve
you. That is a pretty common thing now. I don't understand why he
can't take that opportunity then and been like, you know what, I was
in this at least from her perspective, relative of an unhappy situation, and
I'm going to make a new life for myself. They don't do that as
much the men. No, they don't, And I think women, you
know, are just used to because of the way we live, are used
to reinvention. We change our hairstyles, we if we have kids, we
have to go through this stage where we go from single woman to married woman
to mother to housekeeper, so we're kind of used to flexing and bobbing and
weaving, whereas a lot of men have been the providers, especially men of
a certain generation. I meet a lot of men around my age who have
never really been with a woman who worked before their woman was home. Their
wife was their woman, their wife was home taking care of And you know,
there is something to be said for that lifestyle. It was much simpler.
It was everybody knew what their roles were. Yeah, and a lot
of women say this, and they're right to say this, that men tend
to get stuck in their ways. I don't believe though, that that as
a permanent stuck. I think the right woman, with the right message and
the right proposition can get us to change anything at any age. And a
lot of time the women are like, I don't want to have to change
him. Is too much work. He's not going to be open to it.
But if you present him with a scenario like this was you up till
age sixty, and now I'm going to take you in a different world,
I think there are men that are open to that. If you sort of
shake the snow globe up there, I totally agree. And if any of
you are listening. I'm still single, so you know we're gonna follow me
twelve thirty. But yeah, I think that when you said, you know
that we don't necessarily want to be a nurse or a purse ort to be
a fixer. You know, I'm not looking to fix somebody who's deeply,
deeply damaged or bitter. But if somebody has at least the training wheels and
says, yeah, what I was doing before isn't working for me, I'm
open to going to Sicily. You could tell I'm like obsessed with Sicily.
Also, I've never been to a concert that starts at nine o'clock. I'm
there, like, no, I've never eaten a gummy, But if I
can, I want to go to concerts in a place like Santa Barbara where
they have a hard curfew of like NPM because of the neighbors and so there's
no chance it's going late. They literally pull the plug on it. I'm
like, take me to that concert, give me there. But I agree
with you. Now, would you or have you run across guys that are
sixty two or whatever and have never been married? Yes, and I am
probably in that. I think at the beginning of my dating journey, I
was more of a hard liner about men who've never been married or never had
kids. And in fact, I'll do a little pre selling here, Brian,
You're going to be a guest on my podcast for a segment called what
the hell is wrong with You? Yeah, I've never been married and I've
never had kids, and I think there is something wrong with me or has
been not. Now now I'm fine, but I think that the woman or
the man, if you get over forty five and you have not been married,
I think the other person has every right to want to know why.
And the why is not I was too busy, I haven't found the right
person yet. I think that's bullshit. I think either you were not capable,
not emotionally vulnerable, didn't do the work, or you did not recognize
the person that were. I think there really is, and I was in
that category for a long time of somebody who was just not capable. So
if somebody said to me, oh, I've never been married, I'm fifty
eight years old, I would think it's a giant red flag, even though
I'm not fifty eight. But I would have had that too, Like I
think that you have a right to ask. So if somebody's on there and
you just say like, how can we in every marry and they give some
flipping answer like I would be like, it's only four o'clock. Yeah,
you know, I think you want to know if they've done the work and
have a real answer exactly. I totally totally agree. And even though I've
only been single for three years since I got out of my last relationship,
welcome back, well, thank you. People will say to me, why
haven't you been scooped up already, as if I'm rocky road rather than a
human being, and I say, well, I don't. My goal is
not to be scooped up. But that's a compliment. They don't ask that
to people who shouldn't be scooped up. They know why you're not scooped up.
So if somebody says that or they say why are you still single?
And then we get an argument about this on this show all the time,
it's a huge compliment. They do not ask that to people who are unappealing,
because you know why that person is still single. This is true,
and you just hit on at Brian. The real question is, you know,
if you're going to ask the question, why are you still single.
The implication shouldn't be you must be flawed in some way. It should be
what ho And again, this is a psychology major in me talking, because
I could have just as easily been single at sixty seven. I just got
to a point in my life where I really wanted kids in a family,
and I loved my ex husband, and my friends were all starting to couple
up. But if I hadn't met him, there's probably a better than even
chance that I would still be single, right, because you know, I'm
not sure somebody getting married at twenty two for a year and a half makes
any difference in their life at fifty two. You know, I'm like,
so that was then, Like, I don't think anything anybody does in their
twenties and thirties has much relevance at all in terms of doing the work,
in terms of things like kids, in finance and something. Because a lot
of women I thought, like, oh, but when you're rather day to
dad because they have some sense of sponsibility or whatever, And a lot of
women are like, no, they're fucking worse, or they could be in
a responsible pair, could be responsible, or you want to be a There's
a lot of people on both sides of it that are people are like,
don't use sides when you talk about men and women. I mean, have
you seen our logo that they were locked in this mom dad phase for twenty
years and then once they divorce or whatever the reason is why they separate,
they turned back into whatever they were when they went into prison, so to
speak, Like they basically like, Okay, I'm twenty three again and she's
running out and getting a terrible tattoo, and he's out there, you know,
hitting a waitresses and the whole thing goes bad. I don't think somebody
who hasn't been married goes through that because they're just normal. Yeah. And
as I said, you know, as long as to me, the most
important question and I wouldn't ask it on a first date necessarily, but like
maybe third date or beyond and is And you hit the nail on the head
when you said, you know, have you done the work? Like have
you looked internally? So when people ask me why, you know, whether
I take responsibility for my divorce, I say, yeah, I take fifty
percent responsibility and they'll say, well, you should only take forty nine,
as if there's like some prize that I would get but I think that you
know, in the ten years that I've been single again or not married,
I really have done more work on myself than I did the entire you know,
first three quarters of You're right. I think that's a very very valuable
question. Not for the first date. The most important question you can ask
on a first date is would you like to see a dessert menu? That's
it. And then every the harder stuff goes when a little bit of the
walls have come down and you're like, I really want to get to know
you beyond this, like what have you work? Like? How are you
different now than ten years ago? Good or bad? Like? I don't
think anybody's going to be opposed to that question. And if they have an
answer kind of ready to go, I could tell they've done the work.
And if they don't know, they haven't done anywhere. Or if they say,
my spouse started drinking, And then my follow up question is always when
did they start drinking? Why did they start drinking? Did you drink together?
Yeah? And if they don't know the answer to that question, that
to me is a pink flag. Is it hard to date somebody who has
been was married for a long long time? Whether they got divorced or widowed
or widow or it was like, I was married for forty three years and
now I'm back out there. You know, that seems like somebody really has
not been in a lot of social dynamic situations. Maybe, but I don't
know. People been married forty three years and they lead separate lives. So
I don't think you can judge that either. Yeah, I mean you can.
I can usually tell pretty early on if someone was married for a long
time and then divorced. You know, there's usually a conversation about what point
did the marriage And I hate using judgmental words like the marriage fell apart,
the marriage failed. I just say, you know, you parted ways.
Here's here's the question that you should ask. And I asked this, and
we asked people on this podcast a lot too. When they're divorced. It's
not why did you get divorced? Is when did you know it wasn't going
to be forever? And so many people say when he asked me the wedding
day, and I'm like, well, you were married twenty three years,
and they're like, well, we had kids, And I'm doing the math
in my head all the time. I got four more years, I got
six more years or whatever. Back to me, just sounds awful, but
it's also normal. Lots of people are like, when the youngest is eighteen,
we're going to get divorced. Because keep this in mind, Brian marriage
is an institution that was invented when people got married at seventeen. They married
somebody in their town and then farmed for ten years. They had a bunch
of kids, and then somebody got the plague and it was over. And
so if plane went down fifty percent of the time or seventy percent of the
time, you would never fly anywhere. But marriage as an institution now has
a fail rate of, depending on what city you're living in, between fifty
and seventy percent. So nobody, I mean, people are trying, doesn't
That doesn't even include the people who should be divorced and stay together unhappily exactly.
And so now people are creating these alternative lifestyles like open marriages, polyamory,
and I'm not judging, I'm just saying they're all of these options out
there now, but you know, nobody's really yet having the conversation you have
two girlfriends is because you don't have one does that make sense, because if
you like the first one enough, you wouldn't need the second one. I
have never heard of guys say that before, but thank you for that,
bro that warms my cockles. Well, I think that if you love the
first one, you don't need the second one. Or men will say I'm
confused, I have stuff I'm still working out to which my response Mormon and
have four wives. Yeah, work it out, but just not with me,
like I don't want to be. I went on a date with a
guy who was an open relationship. I did it mainly out of curiosity.
He had a wife of thirty three years, he had a girlfriend he saw
on Tuesdays. And I said, well, what am I like? The
out of town hook up? And he said, well, that's very pejorative.
I said, well, what is it? Do I get a T
shirt? Do I get a prize? Like? But you just said you
might be open to something like that this occasional, you know, isn't that
sort of same? I'll just be the Thursday night person. No, because
I would like to ideally be in a relationship that just because it's a long
distance doesn't mean that in between we're seeing other people. Oh yeah, that's
odd. Details. Yeah, So I do think it's possible to have a
monogamous long distance relationship, and it's a little easier at sixty because you don't
have to do it for sixty years. You could do like you doing it
for like twenty five, you're doing less time maybe exactly, and also being
respectful of the other person. Like there are things that I like to do
that I do do with my girlfriends that I wouldn't necessarily expect the man in
my life to come along for that, Like if I want to watch reality
TV on Tuesday nights, you know, I'm fine doing that alone. I
don't have to do it with a companion. So I think there's also this
thing that we've been raised with, especially as women, that you're going to
In fact, that's my first dating blog was the BGS let us astray because
they said, I just want to be your everything, and nobody could be
your everything. You've got to have a little entourage around you. Is a
sixty five year old fast to introduce a date to their kids or grandkids than
a forty five year old. It really depends on the person. You know.
I have friends who are in their forties who really wait until they're sure
something is serious before they bring a significant other around. My kids, even
though I'm they're grown and I'm grown, have only met one person that I
was seeing in ten years, because I think they think it would be cool,
like, oh, look, Grandma's eighty two, she's dating. Like
I think it would be more positive that they're finding at least some degree of
happiness or pleasure. Yeah, my kids know that I'm dating. I think
they probably are thinking what's wrong? What the hell is wrong with her?
She's been single for three years and can't seem to you settle on somebody.
But you know, at this stage of my life, I'd rather do it
right, even if it's for six months or a year. I would rather
have six great months or a year. Like I don't think it's you know,
anything is forever. And as you just pointed out so so optimistically,
it could be like I could drop dead as soon as we're done with this
podcast, play play as my mother would say, we all could. All
right, I'm gonna let you plug whatever you want to plug, but in
the interest of time, this is your first time on this podcast. We
play something called worst date or first date, which means you have to give
us either the absolute worst date you ever went on or the greatest first date
you went on, your choice. Oooh, probably the worst date, just
because it was a major, major your time and energy suck. As I
drove about an hour to meet somebody to discover that he was twenty years older
than the age he had reported on his profile, and I didn't want to.
I mean, if it had been five minutes away, the date would
have lasted fifteen minutes and I would have left. But instead, because I
felt sorry for him, I stayed the entire hour, had dinner with him,
listened to him talk about the good old days, and well, but
if you knew how old he was, would you have gone that far?
You wouldn't have gone. He basically had to lie on his resume to get
the job interview, and he lied by a lot, you know if somebody
lies, Yeah, by like did he admit when you confronted him? Like?
What did he say? Like I wanted you to come, you wouldn't
have come? Like how did he get out of that it's twenties a lot?
Like what did he say when I when I realized how old he was?
Yeah? Did you confront him or You're just like, this guy's lying
about his age and didn't bring it up. Yeah, I didn't confront him.
I mean, well, maybe he just looked bad or was he like
back in the twenties issues. Yeah, he was talking about like back in
the nineteen forties. I got out of the war, the big one,
and it really becomes more of a you know, in that Ven diagram of
relationships, which is a phrase I use a lot. You just have to
have enough in the magic middle. You know, the age is almost secondary.
If somebody's interested in the same stuff that I'm interested in, they can
match my energy level or come close. They have the same sense of humor.
The age almost becomes irrelevant the magic middle. I like that. That's
good. All right, Plug whatever you want to plug. All right.
So my podcast is officially launching on October seventh, which is Ageism Awareness Day.
As Brian said, the title of it is The Geezer Proofer How to
be a Badass after fifty And what I'm trying to do is combat all of
the women's comedy and women's rhetoric out there that aging is a bad thing and
that we have to have our boobs lifted and our faces botoxed and I've had
no work done. I'm sixty seven. I plan to live another thirty years
minimum till I hit one hundred. My mother, God bless her, was
ninety five when she died. My grandmother was ninety nine, So the statistics
are on my side. And I really want to create a spirit of positive
and fun aging so that young women don't dread getting older. But I am
also going to address some of the serious issues around agesm and employment, perceptions
of older people. So it's going to be everything aging, sex, tech,
and lifestyle. You know, that's the fine line that's going on as
we record this, and you might be listening in twenty twenty seven and who
knows what happened. But you know, the Joe Biden issue, is it
the age or is it the you know, mental faculty or like you're kind
of because I don't ever want to draw because they're like, nobody should run
for office if they're this age. I don't think you can ever be hard
and fast on that or make the rules or laws around that, because who
knows, there's always exceptions. There's people that are sixty one and they see
a thousand. Yeah, and I just listened to Mick Jagger's new single,
and nobody was he shouldn't be recording views that. That's a very good point.
Mick Jagger would be a fine British prime minister. That's good. This
is fun. It was all right. Go out and go date. As
far as us like, share, follow, please review this podcast. Your
reviews to this day mean a lot in the podcasting ecosystem. Shoot us in
email. Great Love Debate at gmail dot com. If you've got thoughts,
questions, or you want to date somebody in their late eighties, we'll pass
it along. We'll match it up for you the Magic Middle. Go to
Great Love Debate dot com. I believe there are some live shows on again.
Every time I say this, I'm like, oh, I don't,
don't go back on the road again. But people are calling from fancy venues
around the country. We're probably doing a show at Citywinery, New York,
and that may or may not be on sale by the time you do this.
Betwime, you listen to this because, as always at the Great Love
Debate, we never stop making love. See you next time, the Greatest
Love Debate. It's the Greatest Love Debate, The Greatest Love Debate it's the
greatest love debate.