Love, Sex and Dating

"We can love forever," said Pepper Schwartz, AARP's new love and relationships expert. "We can be passionate forever."
Schwartz, the author of 16 books and a professor of sociology at the University of Washington, reminded her audience, "This is not a trivial topic." Apparently the AARP members gathered for Vegas@50+ agreed. Both Dr. Schwartz's presentation on sexuality and another workshop, "Midlife Dating: Trends, Technology and Tips for Meeting Your Mate,"—both held, aptly, in the Casanova room at the Sands Expo Center—attracted crowds of several hundred people.

The also aptly-named Dave Singleton, an AARP staffer, who is an online dating expert and the author of several books on dating, pointed out that the over-50 crowd constitutes the fastest-growing segment of the online dating world. Thirty-five percent of the 9 million members of Match.com are older than 46. Singleton and his fellow panelists—AARP editor Jodi Lipson, author Kimberly Dawn Newman, and online Web entrepreneur Alex Frias—presented concrete tips on how to make online dating work for you.

Most important? "Be honest." By now in your life, Newman said, "you know who you are. You know what you like and don't like. And if you're not honest in your online profile, you're setting yourself up for failure later on." Frias added, "You don't want to play games at our age."

Midlife dating can be more challenging than dating in your college years. "Your circle shrinks a little bit; you have to push yourself a little harder," Singleton said.
Singleton offered five tips for dating in midlife:

• First, understand your goals. Are you looking for a lifelong mate or casual companionship? Either is a legitimate goal, but you have to know which is yours.
• Second, make technology your friend—a theme that the other panelists expanded on throughout the session.
• Third, remember the watchword of "truth in advertising." If you use an online dating site, "don't post your high school prom picture."
• Fourth, screen whomever you meet online by talking on the phone before meeting in person. 
• Create a diverse dating portfolio. Just as you shouldn't invest all your money in one place, you shouldn’t limit your dating options to one arena. Look offline, too, and put yourself in a position to meet people in the real world.

Nelson focused her advice on how to create an online profile for a dating site, echoing Singleton on posting a recent picture and adding that your pictures (yes, you should post more than one) should show you *smiling*—and without sunglasses, friends, your pets, or a hat. She urged people to put up at least two pictures, one a close-up and one a full body shot. If you can post a picture of yourself in action, enjoying an activity that helps define who you are, so much the better.

The text should be the beginning of a conversation, not a slick summary that sounds like it was written by a professional ad copywriter. And it should stress what makes you unique. Almost everyone likes, or says she likes, candlelight dinners and long walks on the beach. What's different about you?

Keep it upbeat, and don't write your life story. Prospective dates are more interested in who you are now than what you did 30 years ago (there will be time to talk about that later). Keep your "what I'm looking for list" short. If you compose a long laundry list of requirements, you make it easier for people to find ways to eliminate themselves. That can also make you come across as rigid and inflexible. Finally, once you've written your profile, have a good friend read it and give you an honest assessment.

No dating workshop would be complete without the "awe" moment, when Dan and Roberta Borst shared how they found each other online, dated, and married on what would have been her parents' 50th wedding anniversary in the same Las Vegas chapel where her folks were married.

In her earlier session in the same room named after the legendary Italian lover, Dr. Pepper Schwartz attacked head-on the myths of sex after 50, in a talk that was frank, inspirational, and funny. While acknowledging that "sex gets trickier with age," she said the primary myth is that we outgrow our need for sex as we age. In fact, she countered, "sex is a lifelong gift," and, she warned, "If you don't have sex you're not taking care of your physical and mental health."
She hammered home her point by citing numerous academic studies, at various points throughout the presentation saying:

• We are meant to have sex frequently to keep us bonded.
• Frequent sex adds years to your life.
• Sex makes us live longer and live healthier.

So if sex is so good for us, why don't we have it more often? She blamed what she called an "anti-sex" American culture, which she acknowledged is counterintuitive, given the barrage of sexual material and content in the media. She also urged the audience, especially those without life partners, to abandon any squeamishness about masturbation, reminding them of a slew of scientific studies that extol the physiological and psychological benefits of regular orgasms.

Within a relationship, she said, sexual problems often mask deeper problems—which means that couples might need to fix their relationships before they can heal the sexual issues. She encouraged the audience members who are in relationships to rekindle their sex lives: "Act loving, show desire, lighten up, reserve quality time for one another, and communicate."

She also gave a sneak preview of the 2009 AARP sex survey results, which will be released soon. One of them, she said, "makes me unhappy"—the finding that people aged 45 and older spend less time hugging and kissing than they did in 2004, the last time such a survey was taken. "Let's fix that," she told her laughing audience at the end of her presentation. "Turn to the person next to you, and give him or her a big hug." The crowd, by now warmed up by her hour-long discussion of the importance of touch, needed no more urging.