You Can Only Be After One Thing, Old Man

There has been a lot of discussion about online dating in my circle of friends recently. And one of the questions that came up was whether or not to put your age on your dating profile. While one would never want to lie about one’s age, there is a certain stigma attached to women of a certain age. Specifically, that women in their late 30s are desperately looking to get married as soon as possible so that they can have kids before it’s too late.

Or, as one drunk guy friend of ours slurred so eloquently, women over the age of 35 are “aging out of the system.”

Being under 35 I have noticed a different sort of phenomenon. A lot of much older, single, never married with no kids (if you are to believe their profiles) have been poking and winking and sending me ice breakers even though my profile clearly states I am looking for someone closer to my own age.

At first, I just thought this was another case of older men thinking they are much hotter than they really are and looking for someone much younger than them to play into that delusion. But then I started to really think about it and focus on those words: Single. Never married. No kids.

Huh. Could it be we are seeing a whole crop of male grasshoppers that sang and played all summer and are now scrambling for a home to keep them warm and safe for the long cold winter?

Stay with me here. These guys, some of whom were closer in age to my dad than there were to me, are sending me e-mails, trying to sell themselves as young and fit and fun, but really how much can we possibly have in common when there is close to a 20 year age difference? Why aren’t they trying to find someone closer to their own age that they might have more in common with? Could it be because they have decided that 50 is a good age to settle down and have kids, but unfortunately women their own age can’t give that to them and so they must seek the company of younger women -- in some cases, much younger women?

I was out with Theresa and Marie, both of whom wanted to know how my online dating life was going. I told them about these old guys and added, “Here’s the thing. I’m not sure I want kids. But if I did, I wouldn’t want to have them with a much older man.”

Is that terrible of me to say? Maybe. But I’m just trying to be practical. If I go out with a guy that is 50, today, by the time we have a kid, he’ll be what? 52? 55? Which means, by the time our kid is graduating from high school my husband would be in his 70s.

Not to mention the whole sexual aspect of it. Let’s pretend he is a really hot 50-something (and yes, there are some of you out there). All the erectile dysfunction ads on TV lead me to believe there is a good chance he might not be able to perform without a little help. And what if he has a heart attack while we are, you know, doing it? My mom knows a lot of doctors and nurses in the area and they know me -- not to mention the ones I dated at one time or another. How embarrassing would it be to walk in an emergency room and see Dr. Bill, a guy that I thought I could love my whole life? What would I say? "Oh, hey, Dr. Bill. Yeah, that's my boyfriend. Yeah, he's a lot older. Oh, no, he's not supporting me and before you ask, no he didn't pay for my breasts to be augmented -- it's the new bra from Victoria's Secret. Oh, right, well, we were doing it and he had a heart attack and (reading from the back of the box) I'm suppose to advise you not to use nitroglycerin because he took a little blue pill just before we got to making the beast with two backs.

Yes, this is how my brain works and, yeah, okay, maybe this is why I am still single. But on a going forward basis, I will now assume when a guy, over a certain age, who has never been married tries to pick me up that he is desperate to get married and have kids because he is aging out of the system.