Over 60, and Looking for Love

The bar at the Nest restaurant in Indian Wells is a sea of gray hair--hair that has been styled to dramatic heights and coiffed into thin comb-overs. Hair that has been immaculately groomed for maximum effect--that is, to attract the opposite sex.

Fifty is considered young at this desert watering hole, reputed to be something of a meat market for retirees, widowers, divorcees and the occasional stray husband or wife. Located in the heart of golf country, along Highway 111, the Nest is one of the only bars in town, and the drinks flow freely here as couples, many of whom have met for the first time that night, glide across the dance floor to Cole Porter and Elvis covers, hoping to make a friend, find a lover or meet their soul mate.

“A byproduct of a retirement community is that people are becoming single by natural causes,” says Nest owner Ted Hane. “We’re talking about people that have lost a loved one and then would like to reconnect with society after they’ve come through the mourning and the suffering.”

Seniors re-entering the dating pool after losing a decades-long spouse through death or divorce have more options for meeting people these days. But they also face a range of physical issues, including the risk, like those in other age groups, of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

There are emotional issues too, from trying to live up to memories of a new partner’s past love to the woe that knows no age limit--heartbreak.

Holding its own against all that: the timeless, ageless lure of romance.

It used to be that churches were the main place a suddenly single senior could be on the lookout for love. But today, a growing number of active adult retirement communities, special interest social clubs and matchmaking Web sites are available, bringing together people of similar ages and increasing the odds of finding someone. Still, such hunting grounds aren’t without their pitfalls.

Susan, a 70-year-old retired Bullocks saleswoman from L.A., has placed personal ads on five Web sites. She didn’t know how to post pictures, so she enlisted her grandson for help. Hers is one of the few ads for women over 65 that have accompanying photos. Married 30 years and widowed for seven, her descriptor on the matchmaking Web site Match.com reads, “Looking for soul mate.”

More than 30 men have responded to her mating call in the six months she’s been placing ads, but none has swept her off her feet. The few who are her age “look like they should be in the grave” and the rest “have got a mother complex.” Many of the men she’s heard from are 25 to 45 years old.

“I just tell them they flatter me. Too bad you’re not 20 years older,” she said. To one particularly pesky suitor, she quipped, “I’ve got a son that’s a couple years younger than you!”

Susan says she doesn’t look or act her age, but she’s hoping she’ll hear from someone whose birth predates the Korean War--someone who shares her desire for “an all-around relationship, sex and everything.”

An increasing number of seniors are finding camaraderie in adult communities. Sun City, an over-55 community in Palm Desert, is home to more than 53 social groups and a wide variety of sports, from golf to ballroom dance, bocce ball to fishing, aerobics to swimming.

The Solos, a Sun City singles club, meets in a local restaurant across the hall from a wide-screen TV and around the corner from a bank of pool tables. The crowd is overwhelmingly female. Sipping white wine and nibbling salads, few of the women are overt in their attempts to mingle with the opposite sex, preferring, instead, to talk among themselves about travel plans and their families.

One 88-year-old man who has just attended a Solos meeting said he doesn’t feel there should be any “age bracket for sex.” Until his partner died of cancer a few years ago, the man said he and his wife, who was 80, enjoyed a “very active” sex life. “The desire is still there. I just don’t have a partner,” he said. “The opportunity for finding the right partner should be in a place like this, where there are so many things to stay active.”

Even those who happily live here sometimes look farther afield to find romance.

Don, a 66-year-old retired hotelier, has been living at Sun City for two years. He says he is sexually active but prefers to go to nearby Palm Springs to meet women at Gold’s Gym and various restaurants and nightclubs.

But almost every afternoon, you can find him poolside, roasting his skin to a tawny brown in his green Speedo swimsuit. Few men, even half his age, would dare to wear such a thing, but Don not only wears one--he looks good in it. With a full head of gray-blond hair and a megawatt smile, Don is, understandably, a catch.

“He’s a hot one--and he can drive at night,” said a woman seated nearby under a pool umbrella.

Sexual drive lasting into the later decades of life is no myth--and certainly not rare.

Declining health may prevent some men and women from being sexually active, but many in the over-60 category say their sexuality remains an important part of their lives. A 1999 survey conducted by the American Assn. of Retired Persons found that among those with partners, one in four people age 75 and older engages in sexual intercourse at least once a week.

Frequency of intercourse often declines with age, but more than 70% of people 60 and older who have regular partners have sex at least once a month, according to Dorree Lynn, 60, a Washington, D.C., psychologist who specializes in sex and aging issues.

“While the raging hormones of one’s youth do not overtake a mature individual,” Lynn said, “they still are sexual.” She says society in general isn’t comfortable with senior sexuality “because we don’t have role models for this. People have never lived this long vitally.”

Medical advances are at least partly responsible for more enduring sex lives. People are healthier longer. And, since its introduction in 1998, Viagra has given a boost to many men, just as hormone replacement therapy has eased the physical discomfort some post-menopausal women have during intercourse.

Since Viagra first came on the market, annual sales of the blue wonder pill have topped the $1-billion mark. Despite its widespread use, none of the men interviewed for this article admitted to using the drug--or needing it.

And many say they don’t believe they are in danger of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. But trends in the over-65 age group mirror those in the general population, even though the number of reported cases is often much lower.

For example, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that since peaking in 1993, AIDS cases in the United States have fallen overall, including in the over-65 category--down more than 20% between 1996 and 2000. Chlamydia cases, which are increasing generally, are also increasing in the over-65 category--up more than 70% between 1996 and 2000.

For older people, long past the age where pregnancy prevention is an issue, asking a partner to use a condom may be perceived as an accusation that the partner is promiscuous, or, even more damning, that the questioner is. Unlike many who came of sexual maturity in the age of AIDS, seniors are often not used to quizzing potential partners about their sexual history.

“We were brought up in a generation where sex was not talked about, just like cancer was not talked about,” said Lynn, the sex psychologist.

Jane Fowler heads the National Assn. on HIV Over Fifty, a Kansas City, Kan.-based nonprofit working to call attention to the problem of HIV infection in older adults. Fowler said she often hears stories from older women saying, “‘I’ve just met this wonderful man. He was just widowed a year ago, and I’m the first woman he’s dated, and I don’t have anything to worry about because he was married all those years,’” says Fowler, 66. “Well, that’s no guarantee. We don’t know what he was doing all those years.”

The importance of practicing safe sex spans all ages--”You are never too old to be at risk,” the National Institute on Aging cautions on its Web site. Still, the assumption is common among seniors that, because they or their partner are new to dating following long marriages, they are not at risk.

Susan, the 70-year-old woman who is looking for love online, has slept with one man since her husband died. She met him at the Elks Lodge over the summer. Eventually the two became intimate, but they did not use condoms.

“We didn’t feel we had to,” said Susan. “When you’re that age, you don’t usually have any sexual diseases.”

Don, the 66-year-old who finds many of his partners in Palm Springs, says most of his relationships “are affairs more than relationships.” They usually don’t last very long because the women “want a commitment. I don’t.”

These days, he practices safe sex, though he hasn’t always. About a dozen years ago, he lost a close woman friend to AIDS, which woke him up to the reality that anyone who has sex, regardless of age, is at risk.

Some people know the risks but figure they’ll take their chances, such as the 67-year-old retired executive from the Valley who has been single and dating for 10 years. Married and monogamous for 40 years, he now has multiple partners.

He says he uses condoms--”sometimes.” Every six months he visits his doctor for an STD check. So far, he’s been in the clear.

He suspects that many of his sexually active friends also do not protect themselves.

“A lot I’ve spoken with, we have an attitude: We didn’t expect to get this far. ... I think a lot of men 65-plus do not protect themselves only because, ‘Hey, I’m 65. I’m pushing 70. What’s going to happen to me? If it happens, it happens.’”

Late on a Thursday at the Nest, Dixie Lee VonLohoff, a 71-year-old retiree, is enjoying a night out. Dressed in a strappy black-and-white dress that makes the most of her trim figure, she swirls around the dance floor with a variety of partners.

A man with a Grecian Formula ‘do and silver lame shirt spins her around to a Sinatra song, a white-haired gentleman pulls her close for a Tony Bennett tune, and a handful of hopeful suitors looks on--the promise of romance glimmering in their eyes.

“I like to dance with them, but that’s about all,” VonLohoff said of her numerous suitors, many of whom she’s had dinner with but nothing more. Still, she hasn’t found anyone there whom she’s serious about.

“Many, many marriages have happened” following meetings at the Nest, according to Hane, its owner, but companionship, not necessarily marriage, is the name of the game here.

“I’m not a loner. I like people,” said VonLohoff, who moved to Palm Desert after losing her husband of 28 years in 1999.

She goes dancing about three times a week. “I’m not one that can just sit down and read a book. I like to read, but I’d rather be dancing. I worked too hard not to have fun now.”