Where are all the nice 50-something, single males?

[MysticalChipmunk]

Are they hiding? I can’t find one. OLD is dire and not for me. What can I do?

Do you know I was going to say in the supermarket ? On saturday or sunday morning, or walking their dog in tbe prk between 7 & 8am. But I have been married for 20 years and have never online dated so I know nothing.

More dismissal of a woman's relevant points.

I used to have two male colleagues in their 50s who divorced. You could see them looking at every woman they came into contact with as a potential romantic interest. They were very normal guys, not particularly attractive or amazing personalities, but they are now engaged to or married to women in their early 30s. I look at them and can’t see the attraction for these 50s and I am the same age as them! Why waste your life on someone who has 20 years on you. I mean it’s okay now but in 20 years time they will be in their mid 70s. I also think when a young woman marries an older guy it ages the women. They get subsumed by the man’s life. They take up his interests. Maybe men their own age are immature selfish gamers etc so it makes a solvent but boring 50s guy seem attractive. All I know is that if my relationship ended I would not be interested in finding another man, younger, my age, or older. I would like some more friends so open to building that type of relationship with men and women but zero interest in finding romance.

I agree totally - most of those women are just after a bloke with cash, house and car , don’t notice them going after 55 year old binmen etc

Oh, they do. As I said earlier up in my thread it’s all relative from when you’re 18 somebody earning 30 grand a year probably seems like a fortune to some poor girls.
And the bin men are more than happy to take advantage of that wrong perception

Well, most relationships ARE ended by women. It's a statistical fact. Marriage (and I guess that by extention that must also mean unmarried relationships) benefit men more than women. The male loneliness epidemic, married men out living single men, but single women being the longest lived group of all.

And the phrase 'helps keep people single' seems a bit disengenuous too. Most older women are single through choice. Whether that be because they prefer being single as a concept, or because they've been married and did not want to have to care for a man in the same way they had to care for children. So ultimately the only thing keeping women single is CHOICE. Which strikes me as a very good thing. And something that would not have been the case 50 years ago.

If men are single through choice, fantasic. If they're single because they think women are narrow minded and don't like men, maybe they should consider how to be better men? Because despite most older women choosing to be single, there are still some women who actually want a relationship. I suspect they just don't want a relationship with a dysfunctional man.

My only single male friends in their 40s/50s are people who are recently divorced (and prob not at a point where they are ready to date again), recently bereaved (similar) or have never had a long-term relationship (and would therefore probably struggle to have one at this point). I do know people who have met new partners in their 50s and are happy together so it definitely happens. I don't think any of them had much luck with dating apps though - friendship networks seem more likely.

I do know one older guy dating a much younger woman (met through one of those weird transactional sugar daddy websites) and another who married someone 15 years younger (it did not work out well for him). But it's not something I see regularly. My impression is that a lot of older single guys aren't keen to have another family so it often works better for them meeting someone similar to their own age and/or who has decided they definitely don't want children.

There is no way I’d have been interested in a man in his 50’s when I was in my 30’s. My ex-husband was 10 years my senior and that age gap became too much for me in the end.

Hello 🤭💐

Ah, do we have a live one?

A flat belly is good, certainly. Do you also have a personality and an ability to listen to women without getting all defensive?

Asking for a friend.

Very much a live one for a while yet , 😉(hopefully) I am in perfect health, , been around MN for 15 years now since an unexpected divorce .
Sadly I don’t fit the 50+ bill for your friend as I have been on this Earth since 1947. I very much respect honest women opinions on the whole aspect of life & women’s equality. I was lucky to have been brought up in a family of seven by a widowed mum who brought me up to respect other's especially women.

They contacted you because they fell within your age range filters.

I have had the same happen to me (plus younger ones). I've adjusted those filters now, and tumbleweed. But I am probably a bit scary to approach, so all the men looking for a nurse with a purse are self-selecting themselves out. I am left with hopeful hobosexuals contacting me, and I know what to look for so I screen them out, so we all do our bit to keep unwanted pairings between me and unsuitable men from happening ;-)

Hello.

Not on OLD but a huge amount of friends & acquaintances have met partners that way.

I know it's the way nowadays, but it just seems so odd & false to me.

I will probably have to relent at some stage, using pics being bare chested holding a fish seems to be absolutely the way to go from MN advice lolz!

I think there are lots of stereotypes around dating over 50 and I'm not sure all are true.

1. One is there are no nice men. This is not true. Many men end up divorced or single after a long partnership ends, some are widowed (although at 50 plus this is not likely to happen til mid-sixties onwards in significant numbers). Some of these men are nice.
2. You can't just go on online dating and find nice men by looking at their pictures. Use Burned Haystacks online dating method, it's free on FB and Tiktok (I think), new book out if you want to have a book of advice. You need to weed out the not very nice men on OLD of which there are a large number, far larger than the nice men. I won't go into the method here, just join the FB group. Any woman dating over 50 who doesn't do this is missing a trick.
3. Saying 'I won't bother with OLD, I'll just try to meet people in the wild' is a dating strategy, but not a very good one IMO. Most nice men are coupled up and so going to events hoping to meet them, or wandering round parks hoping to bump into them may eventually pay off, but it's probably low odds IMO. I did both online dating and real-life dating, and what I got 'in the wild' if you start conversations with men in coffee shops or walking groups was lots of men who were married or in ltr flirting and having fun and hardly any available nice single men. I don't date at work so that ruled out another bunch. It's better to go where people are explicitly single and looking for a relationship, whether online or real-life (like singles groups).
4. Nice men couple up again very quickly. My fantastic male friend who was divorced met someone within a couple of weeks of being on Bumble, had a couple of flings, then found someone. That's why it's worth doing both online and r/l, as it means when people suddenly come back into view, there you are...if you go on Bumble for two weeks, you will not find someone amazing immediately, and you will find a lot of men who are not that great who have been sitting there for ages.
5. Ignore everyone else's advice who is not single, over 50, has dated recently, and has found a partner themselves by doing so. They simply don't get it and spend all their time making out you aren't trying hard enough or declaring they are over men or women. I think it's fine to be over men or women, but it doesn't necessitate everyone else being over them. I love being in a partnership again, and I don't see that as a moral failing.

The final myth is that nice men want women 20 years younger. Nice men tend not to want younger women unless they want a family, as that's what most 30 somethings will want. Most have had families and want to move on from that stage. I know several couples who have met after bereavement and divorce, and all are with similar people- so similar ages, life stages, types of jobs and so on.

A few will go younger, and then have families quickly, and then get divorced and end up late fifties doing all this again. Avoid those ones.

Lots of younger men like women in their fifties, I have a lot of opinions on why this might be the case, but it is not true men always date 20 years younger IMO. My Bumble experience tells me otherwise.

I would not rule out a short man. I dont like very tall men. But Im 64 and looming for someone my own age.
Not everybody likes giants. I prefer fair haired men no taller than 5.8 or 5.9.

You could try Classic FM Romance or Natural Friends if you like the outdoors. I know two couples who met on the latter.

ND men may be single in their 50s. I'm sure DH would be if we hadn't randomly met at a party 25 years ago (he doesn't go to parties but accepted in a moment of weakness).

His natural habitat: groups for mountain biking; classic cars; steam railways; other science/heritage/engineering based activities. Photography, astronomy, wine tasting.

I think the issue is not men in their 50s wanting women 20 years younger, it is that they want them 5-10 years younger, seemingly. I agree that the nice men still wild prefer someone their own age. On a related note I do not understand what the benefits are of going out with someone so much younger. There is no shared history of youth (bands, events, tv, culture), plus you end up feeling old!

An acquaintance met her partner when they were both training to be Blue Badge guides.

But Im 64 and looming

I misread that as 6ft4 and thought looming made sense.

This is all good advice.
when it comes to the apps, it’s a bit like house-hunting. When you first go on Rightmove you might be overwhelmed by choice but you soon realise a lot of houses have been on the market for a long time for a good reason. You might be lucky but often the best houses get snapped up quickly. You may have to keep looking for a while.
I agree Burned Haystack is a good way of narrowing down the options. (Men not houses)! Definitely don’t go for a man who is a “fixer-upper” though!

??? I don't think so, my age ranges were five years younger or older, so THIRTY plus is definitely nowhere near my age ranges.

Tbf I have a lot of friends in different age groups and my younger women friends are actively chasing the older guys, for multiple reasons, it’s not just men being creeps, and really if the younger women are making all the moves, a lot of men will choose them.
not saying it’s nice or right but it’s often a two way thing, these younger women have agency too and a lot are purposely setting out to meet older men.
i also notice that women my age who’ve had a lot of aesthetic work done and are into firm etc don’t seem to have any problem attracting decent men.
i don’t do aesthetic/ cosmetic treatment because I can’t afford it and don’t have the time and I have disability so struggle to keep on top of my weight, and just my general appearance.
i used to be far better groomed and fit when I was well and had no trouble attracting men.
i honestly think that a lot of men are very superficial and a younger or very maintained woman is the prize, obviously before any mansplainers arrive, i will caveat #notallmen …
idk ive dated a few men in this age group, even married one, and without fail every single one at some point during or after the relationship showed a preference for far younger women.

not all men in their fifties are boring. Don’t forget people of that generation came of age in the brand new rave and ecstasy era and britpop when living it large was all the rage.

most single (and many married) men I know in that age group have not grown up at all an are stil living life to the max, with or without children, adult children and young kids from their new relationships with younger women.

a lot of men in this group are still party central, raving , festivals, hardcore drinking, recreational drug use etc, this is not the minority so many younger women are not only getting a man with a decent job and possibly even their own home and some life experience and wisdom but also able to have fun and party hard, whereas the original wives and mothers of their older kids had no choice but to grow up and take responsibility because a lot of the dads were still chasing their youth.
hence a lot of women getting to this age, seeing their kids leave home and deciding they are entitled to a second wind too, just not with their Peter Pan husbands, who end up on the date sites, having learned nothing from the failure of their marriage and looking for a new mummy wife.