Internet Dating Goes Gray

Jack Luizzi guesses he’s dated 50 women since his wife died five years ago -- and the retired Sears Roebuck manager considers that a slack pace.

Beckoned by a lavish buffet of Internet dating sites, Luizzi, 75, can sound like a teenage boy who has crept into the girls’ locker room.

“I specify women between 58 and 75, and they’ll come up with 25 pages of women. Ten to a page!” says Luizzi, a slight man with a roguish smile and a head of snow-white hair. “That’s a lot of choice and a lot of possibility.”

Luizzi may be more energetic than others, but he’s hardly an aberration.

More than a million U.S. men and women over age 65 are testing the promise of computer-assisted love, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings, an Internet tracking service.

Living longer than ever, and armed with Viagra and high-speed modems, American seniors are the new hot market for Internet dating services. Registrations by singles 65 and older grew 122% last year on Match.com, one of the largest dating sites.

While friends, relatives and work are still the best way for older Americans to find a date, singles groups and online matchmaking services are starting to compete with church, a survey by AARP The Magazine found last fall.

By the time Americans qualify for Social Security, about a third have been widowed. Meanwhile, the number of older divorcees is on the rise. Census figures show that 7.4% of the senior population was divorced in 2002, up from 5% in 1990.

The singles trend is expected to explode after 2011, as the baby boom generation enters its golden years with liberalized attitudes about sex, cohabitation and personal satisfaction. At their peak, boomers will drive the over-65 population up to 25% from just under 13% today.

Taking note, AARP, the nation’s largest retiree organization, last year added an advice column called “Modern Love” to its magazine. On the magazine’s website, aarpmagazine.org, readers can find tips on how to safely use online services and post their own dating stories.

On one message board, a woman recounted agreeing to meet a suitor for coffee and the shock of discovering it was her ex-husband. Another poster, who goes by the handle “Gidget1949,” said the man she met looked at least 20 years older than his picture.

“He had a car that looked as though he lived in it and a stash of books in the back seat to ‘prove’ his own personal Kennedy assassination theory,” she wrote. “It was just a nightmare, except I did get a great barbecue lunch out of it.”

Despite the occasional horror story, the Internet can be an attractive way for seniors to find companionship, said Trish McDermott, vice president of romance for Match.com.

Whether motivated by lust or loneliness, older adults like the convenience of online dating and the ability to tailor their search by age, geographic area and common interests, McDermott said.

“Seniors are the most likely of our customers to say that hard work, compromise and perseverance, rather than magic, lead to lasting romance,” McDermott said. “So it makes sense to them.”

Most commercial services allow anyone to see short profiles of their members for free. But to make contact, you have to pay a monthly fee ranging from $25 to $50 and post your own profile.

Some websites monitor the courtship, at least in the initial phases, booting out members who have caused problems and screening for foul language.

But veteran daters say it’s pretty much buyer beware. Internet daters notoriously shade the truth about weight, age and income, or lie outright.

“They all lie about their age, by three to five years,” said Luizzi, who lives in Woodland Hills. “So I knock off five years just to get even.”

Luizzi turned to Internet matchmaking after he lost his third wife -- “the best of the bunch” -- to ovarian cancer.

Of the dozens of women he has dated, only a couple have turned into long-term romances, Luizzi said. One woman moved from Colorado to live with him for a few months, but it didn’t work out.

His current “lady friend” lives in Studio City. She is in her 80s and has been widowed three times, but is “very well preserved,” he said.

“You wouldn’t believe it if you saw her,” he said. “She really passes for 60.”

Luizzi has tried newspaper personals, but he prefers the online version because he can more easily find women who fit his type [petite blonds] and share his love of big-band music.

Older daters tend to look for partners who share interests and will be good companions. AARP’s survey showed that older Americans are more active than ever and want someone who can share in outdoor and social activities, said Ron Geraci, an editor at AARP The Magazine.

And they don’t necessarily see marriage as a goal, Geraci said.

“They are very interested in maintaining independence,” he said. “It’s a ‘come-hither, but give me space’ attitude about relationships.”

With new drugs for impotence, sex remains a viable and sometimes complicating factor. While many seniors, especially men, are still interested in sexual relations, the degree of interest varies widely, said Dr. Robert Butler, founder of the International Longevity Center in New York and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Why Survive? Being Old in America.”

“There has been this notion that as people get older they no longer have love affairs and sex,” he said. “Well, that is just not true. I do think Viagra is a real lift for men and women, assuming the desire is there and there’s a decent relationship.”

Luizzi said: “With older seniors, the girls are not on fire exactly. I happen to be on fire, but that is not necessarily shared. So you just go along with it.”

Other complications arise when adult children object to Mom or Dad finding a new mate late in life, Butler said. Children might fret about being replaced in a parent’s affections, or possibly losing their inheritance, he said.

Roland and Dannah Taylor of Beaverton, Ore., had to deal with questions from Taylor’s two daughters when they announced their marriage.

“One still hoped I would get back with my ex-wife,” said Roland, 69, a retired computer analyst. “My other daughter was concerned at first. But that has all changed.”

The couple met online after both of their long-term marriages ended in divorce. They were using a service, Eharmony.com, that guides participants through an extensive questionnaire before matching them based on 29 areas of compatibility.

Roland went through a series of unsatisfying dates with women who seemed “too anxious,” he said.

Then he was matched with Dannah, 59. They met for a coffee date in Portland and “closed down the restaurant,” Dannah said.

Devout Christians, they followed up their first date by attending church the next day. They married within a year.

Roland said it was important to him that he could narrow his search to women who shared his values.

“It’s not like you both like skiing and you both like tofu,” he said. “It goes much deeper than that.”

Though the number of men looking for love online outstrips women, the numbers begin to reverse with advancing age, said Marylyn Warren, spokeswoman for Eharmony.com.

Because of their longevity, elderly females must compete for a shrinking pool of males, Warren said.

Reba Johnson, 66, has run into that problem in her Fresno community.

“If you meet them at church, the four 60- or 70-year-old men are swamped with women in their 50s. There’s just too many single women at my age,” said Johnson, a tax preparer.

Johnson, a widow, said she tried Internet dating without much success, enduring a number of dud dates in the last year.

The guys who responded were in “their mid-70s or older,” she said. “I found they were just too old. One could barely walk. The guys my age just wouldn’t give me a chance.”

Match.com’s McDermott said the old saw about older men seeking younger women remains true. Surveys show that women have compensated to some extent by dating men younger than them.

Charles King, 82, is a good example of the late-in-life gender imbalance. He had lost his wife of 51 years to cancer and was getting lonely rattling around his home in the foothills of Boulder, Colo.

In three months online, he received more than 80 potential matches, King said. The retired Spanish literature professor dated just two women, one 64, the other much closer to his age.

Once he began conversing with Margaret Yoder, 80, an Albuquerque artist, there was no question he was interested, King said.

Yoder had gotten her degree from the University of Colorado, where King had taught. King grew up in Albuquerque, where Yoder lived.

Both admired the works of Christian educator Henrietta Mears. And both understood what it meant to live through the Great Depression.

“She was my soul mate right from the start,” said King, sounding both startled and delighted to find that the heart beats just as loudly at 82.

The pair married in January at their Calvary Chapel in a service officiated by former rock star Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield fame, now a Christian minister. King calls his bride “the best companion I could ever have.”

The newlyweds hike together and attend Bible study. She works on her watercolors and he writes letters to the editor. But most important, King said, age has taught them to “roll with the punches.”

“As we get older, we all have our foibles,” he said. “She has hers and I have mine. And we are able to laugh about them rather than get irritated.”