THE CASE FOR DATING MEN IN THEIR ’60S
Dating men of any age presents its own unique set of challenges: In high school you get fumbling boys, confused about where to put their body parts in relation to yours, despite their over-eagerness for the proximity. In their twenties men want to have as much sex with as many different women as possible. Sometimes that will be you. Sometimes it won’t be. If you manage to settle down with one in their thirties you’ll still spend time tinkering with their training wheels, coaching them through their careers, mothering them, and turning them into the men they want to be. Of course in their forties and fifties all of that hard work will be undone in a blazing crisis of self that returns them squarely to stage one, armed this time with enough Viagra to pre-empt their premature excitement.
For these reasons and others, my friend Megan O’Brien, a successful woman in her own right as the founder of the marketing agency Beauty Brander, almost exclusively dates men in their sixties and older.
We recently attended a wedding in Palm Springs together, a fancy affair with pool parties, fireworks, and a ceremony at the Empire Polo Club where they host the Coachella music festival. I’m 33, Megan is 37, and the majority of the guests who were not relatives of the bride or groom fell somewhere squarely in between.
Recently recovering from a relationship with a 65-year-old celebrity plastic surgeon in Los Angeles, Megan arrived to the wedding weekend licking her wounds, only to immediately be courted by the 72-year old uncle of the groom.
Pierce Brosnan will be 61 this May; Photo: Getty Images
“They can smell me a mile away,” she told me after she chatted with him about restaurants, real estate, his children, and his grandchildren, while the rest of us kids enjoyed a game of floating beer pong in the pool.
Alas, it wasn’t to be for Megan and Uncle Jack. Mrs. Uncle Jack was away somewhere in France, but the mother of the groom put the kibosh on the whole thing. “I don’t want you to get hurt, dear,” she whispered with reserved aplomb. “He is married, you know.”
Megan isn’t a homewrecker and by the time we made it back to Los Angeles, with the help of Tinder we found her another suitable match, Gary, 68, an accomplished businessman who lives in San Francisco, vacations in Palm Springs, and loves golf. Gary was smitten over message and they met up in between Los Angeles and Palm Springs a few days later. She thinks he might be her next husband.
Throughout the weekend, as I explained Megan’s preferences to my college girlfriends in their early thirties, they made a face like they had swallowed sour milk and erupted in a chorus of, “That’s gross,” “ewwwww,” and my personal favorite, “he’s like my grandpa.” To be fair, Uncle Jack wasactually someone’s grandpa.
Megan’s quick-witted retort is to rattle off the names of male celebrities who are sexagenarians, septuagenarians, and even octogenarians who you would probably sleep with: Harrison Ford, 71, Clint Eastwood, 83, Jack Nicholson, 76, Robert Redford, 77.
Old guys aren’t my thing, but every time I ask my 30-something boyfriend to talk seriously about our future or shuffle through his apartment that has empty pizza boxes stacked on the dining room table, I can see the advantages of having had someone else remove the training wheels.
