Aside from dating apps, have you met anyone in 40's?

[SweetLatte]

I've tried the apps and just had no luck.

Married for 20 years so I know about commitment and the highs and lows of a relationship.

I had a brief relationship with a man and I fell so deeply in love with him I don't think I'll ever truly get over it. He was separated at the time but went back to his 75 year old wife.

I have so much love to give.

I know I need to be happy with myself first, I KNOW this but I crave a happy, fulfilling relationship and really really miss having a companion in life.

I've 2 children so am very lucky but 😣 I still feel so very lonely.

Any words of wisdom 🙏🏼

In real life you mean?

Hi, I'm not really sure what I mean!

How did we do it before apps.

Before apps was also known as Friday and Saturday nights on the town! Remember those days? Smoky dancefloors, a cheeky grope, cheesy chat up lines and do you come here often, exchanging phone numbers! In many ways it was better back then, at least you saw what you were getting and didnt have weeks of texting only to get ghosted.

I wasn’t looking and he just appeared. Almost 3 years together now.

Yes, on nights out with girlfriends. Wear your best smile and meet people. Flirt and it will happen.
I also have positive experience with OLD. Dating someone for 4 months now. No idea where it will take me but hey ho. Life is short and it’s nice to have experiences

Yes, through a hobby group

Were people really doing this in their 40s?

Sending lots of virtual hugs! No luck meeting anyone for a relationship in the last 10 years in real life or on OLD (bar a few short lived situationships from OLD). Like my single friends in their late 30s/40s we have given up and are focusing our energy elsewhere. But you might be lucky meeting someone through your kids!
@SooKafatone - I don’t think this really happens any longer. I have been out quite a few times with girlfriends and the only men we have met in the wild have been either in their 20s or 10 or more years older.

Funnily through an app at 42.. together for 4 years so far. I found him when I was ready to give up on the apps tbh! I get what you mean about the loneliness. Take a month off the apps and maybe look at joining a club if you have time or look at speed dating events?

My wife and I got together in our 40's. Ten years on now and married. We met at a hobby club too.

Yes, I did. And I wasn’t in my early 40s’s, either.

I was on the apps and you can imagine how that was going.
I was in a good place, though, personally, and I think getting attention from the apps did boost my confidence a bit.

A friend asked me to go to a boozy book launch with him. I did, and now-DP and I had a chat near the end and he walked me to the tube station.

I’m sure you’ll get lots of these stories. It really can and does happen.

Met my partner aged 46 (he's 3 years older) dancing at a house music event. Neither of us wanted a relationship and we live 3.5 hours apart but 2.5 years later we are going strong

I remember a relative (my parent generation) in the 80’s when to over 25’s nightclub. They claimed it was like “grab a granny night”

At a festival earlier in the year, a gorgeous guy approached me and introduced himself as he wanted to chat 😍

@MiddleagedBeachbum - would love to hear which festivals attract 40 year olds!

All of them!

After a horrible divorce, I certainly wasn’t looking. We met through mutual friends.

I met someone at 50, married him at 52. Similar happened to a few of my female friends. The common thread that they were all people we had known/liked platonically years previously, mostly through work, who we bumped into when both our circumstances had changed. I think it helps if they have a sense of who you were when you were younger. It helps even more if they fancied the pants of you then too but never acted on it.

@Applesonthelawn - when you say circumstances had changed were those significant others also getting divorced? How does one bump into someone you fancied 20 years earlier? I am just asking because I haven’t bumped into anyone I remotely fancied that is now single - they are all still married 20 years later (and lots of them have even more appeal than before now that they are Kings Counsel or managing directors).

I re-met dh when he was speaker at a conference I attended. We hadn’t met for about six years as I had moved to a different company. We had both become single in the meantime. My closest school friend re-met her dh at a uni reunion. Another friend reconnected over Facebook.

but honestly it can happen anywhere. My previous partner I met at 40, together four years, one child, I met him walking down the road.