In my experience
Keep your heart ready
Looking for love in midlife has been a liberating experience for journalist Anna Murphy, who shares her experiences of using dating apps
In a long-term relationship. Disentangling myself from said relationship. Single. Dating. In a new relationship. That I have found myself in all five of these situations at different points over the last decade is, at my stage in life, a revolution.
I am 51. A generation ago I would have been an outlier, and judged accordingly. Now, my recent experiences represent a new normal. And that’s something for which I am immensely grateful. Because we don’t have to stay in relationships that don’t serve us any more. And because being not-single, then single, then not-single again as a fully fledged adult has taught me so much about myself, and the world. I have also had a lot of fun.
Would I have been sounding quite so positive about all this when I was scrolling through the Bumble dating app, say, on a dark Thursday evening in December three years ago? Possibly not. However, a couple of nights later, on a date with someone dashingly inappropriate, I would have. And I would have, too, on all those occasions of singledom when I’ve felt so entirely me, so entirely free, so entirely and directly connected to the world without anyone else getting in the way.
Positive is what I am today, too, now that I’m with someone I met on (of all the unlikely platforms) Tinder, someone who suits the woman I have become. However, at least as important to me is my awareness that, if I were to become single again, I would have the wherewithal to flourish on my own; to embrace the many upsides of being toute seule once more.
When I found myself single at 34, after 14 years with my college sweetheart, I remember many of the people around me being as confused by my new status as I was. I had been one thing. Now I was another. What I had done, I now understand, was to allow my identity to meld into another’s. Who was I as only half of that whole we’d created together?
These days, I have learned how to be complete in and of myself. The people who know and love me couldn’t give a damn what is or isn’t happening in my romantic life. (Although in the recent past they have loved to live vicariously when things got exciting.) And my other half loves me precisely because I – like him – am complete in and of myself. He augments me, and I augment him. There is no completing going on.
He is, to sum it up, my match. Which is why I’m an advocate for dating apps, the latest incarnation of online dating. It’s certainly a loss that real-world flirtation has become so rare, yet I’ve learned from experience that the apps can work.
ROMANTIC ASSIGNMENTS
I know how counterintuitive it can be for many women to put themselves out there in thi
