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The divorce rate for people over 50 doubled and it has remained at record levels until 2020. What does that mean? That means more singles. Not all of them looking for a partner, but many of them looking for a partner. So for those of you who say there's nobody out there, you are wrong. There are all these people divorcing even as we speak and sooner or later looking for love. That was francine russo. Speaking about the enormous potential there is to find love for those past. The age of 50. Finding love after 50 is our focus on this episode. Episode # 69 of Looking forward. Welcome to looking forward where we speak with experts about marketplace and societal trends and most importantly how they might affect you. I'm Jeff Ostrow, the host of looking forward. If you're like me, you're fascinated by trends in the future. In fact, several years ago, that was one of the things I focused on in a book I wrote. Hi everyone, the number of people aged 50 and older has been skyrocketing over the past several decades. In addition, the number of single older adults is also growing in leaps and bounds. So today we'll be discussing something, millions of people around the world are looking to find love After the age of 50. If you're not among this group of love seekers, chances are good that one of your friends or family members is in part one of this two part series, we're going to learn about such things is how the dating scene in romantic relationships have changed for those over 50 in recent years. What's become a very popular kind of relationship For those over 50, how COVID-19 has affected this group And some of the challenges those over 50 face when looking for love to help us with all this. We're going to speak with an expert on this topic. She's francine russo, francine Russo is the author of Love after 50 and they're your parents to armed with a PhD in english literature. She became a journalist focusing on psychology, relationships and social trends. Having cut her teeth at the late lamented village voice. She's gone on right for virtually every publication from the atlantic to the new york times. She covered the boomer Beat a Time magazine for over a decade and her cover stories have appeared on parade, scientific american and new york magazine. A dynamic and polished presenter, francine is in great demand as a keynote speaker, Francine lives in new york with her partner. Hi francine, Welcome to looking forward. It is my pleasure. Well, it's my pleasure because you're speaking about a topic that I can personally relate to and a lot of other people can too, I guess to get us started francine. I want to ask you, you've been a journalist for many years And you've really written for a lot of prestigious publications, so many of them. I'm wondering if you can tell our listeners a little bit about what inspired you to write a book about love after 50, was it due to your life experience francine. I know you've covered the boomer beat for many years of Time magazine or maybe it was something else. I am one of the oldest boomers. I was born in 1946. That makes 4:44. I'm 74. And so that means if there's a trend in my generation, I experience it first as do my friends. So I get my ideas for what to write about from my own life and from what my friends are going through. Which means when I introduced it to a magazine or a publisher, it's new. They haven't heard about it yet. And in this case I experienced it in my own life. I was fortunately married twice and unfortunately widowed twice. And in the in the 10 years between my first marriage and my second marriage, I dated a lot. I had relationships. I learned online dating inside out and I became the go to person for my friends And for the friends of friends. My girlfriend can my girlfriend talk to you and you know, I thought there is a book in here to guide people to find what I have found. And by the way the first that those 10 years I made a lot of mistakes. I had a lot of personal growth to do All of which I talked about in love after 50. Chapter one is called do the head work, which means making yourself stronger, making sure you're okay, even if you're lonely, not being desperate and getting over the bitterness or anger of a divorce or the grief of being widowed. And so I go deep, I have to say every once in a while I look at my reviews on Amazon and they're up to 65 and most of them are five stars and the others are four stars. And people are saying things like I've read a lot of books on this subject and yours is the best written, goes to the deepest and it's the most helpful that makes me feel great. That's what I intended to do. And apparently that's what I've done. Well, that's fantastic to get such great reviews. And I think what lends itself to the great reviews is a I'm sure you're a great writer. I haven't yet read the book, but I'm sure you're a great writer and also you're speaking from the heart, you had this personal experience and I found it fascinating because I used to focus on marketing the people over 50 when I was in my thirties, okay, and wrote a book about it, right, And I have to laugh about that as you're doing right now, but I never thought about the fact that here you are at the leading edge of the baby boomers and that puts you kind of in a position to see what's coming along trend wise, I thought that was really neat. That's exactly right. Because as a freelance writer, what I live on is my ideas. If I come up with a great idea that's new, I get that assignment. That's a great way to do things that you really have an enjoyment about passionate about, because they're your ideas and you're digging into them deeper. Yes, exactly. I've got a quick question for you. That's a follow up to what you said, and that is roughly speaking, how old were you when you first became widowed and you had to learn online dating and then how old were you when you had to go back at it again? And was there much of a difference between how you dealt with it. It meaning going out and dating again the second time versus the first, An excellent question. I was widowed at 46 I married at 55. So I I was in my fifties when I met my second husband and we had an incredible relationship. But it was during those 10 years that I made all those mistakes. I dated too soon. I was trying to run away from my grief. I was afraid to be alone. I was needy. I was desperate. I picked the wrong people. You name it. I did it. But I got better. And then after my second husband chris died, I was I was I was devastated both times, but this time I did not date for four years. Part of that was I had gotten my first book contract and I threw myself into my work, which was incredibly sustaining and helped me deal with my grief. But when I did decide finally that I wanted to meet someone again, it was actually very easy. I'm an online dater. I know exactly who to avoid. I know who to pick. I know certainly on a first state, yes or no, and I I think I met my my partner of five years, Michael, 5.5 years now. I think he was like the second person I had more than one date with and it was really fast because I knew exactly what I was looking for. I knew what to avoid. I knew not to waste time and I knew how to use online dating. I in my book Love after 50 I have a whole chapter on how to make online dating work for you and also going deeper and thinking about what you're selecting for. Like how important is it whether somebody lives across a bridge, geographically undesirable, forget about it. You know, you want somebody who will love you and adore you and make tell you how great you are when you're down on yourself or hold you close when life rains blows on you. And if you find that it doesn't matter usually what kind of job they have, how much money they have, whether they have kids or don't have kids. So I help people understand what's essential for your happiness. Yes. And a little spoiler alert everybody, we're going to make sure that francine speaks later on about more things. That will help you if you're trying to find romance and love after 50. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as they say. And when you speak about online dating, that's a perfect segue francine into something I want to ask you here. I'm looking forward. We focus on trends and we look to the future. But to do that, we first like to look a little backwards. So I wonder if you could share with our listeners how the world of dating romantic relationships and love for those over 50 has changed over say the past three or so decades. But before Covid, we'll get the Covid. Okay, well actually the past three decades is very important because we have statistics starting in 1990, the divorce rate for people over 50 doubled And it has remained at record levels until 2020. What does that mean? That means more singles. Not all of them looking for a partner, but many of them looking for a partner. So for those of you who say there's nobody out there, you are wrong. There are all these people divorcing even as we speak and sooner or later looking for love, They could be in their 50s and the 60s, even in their 70s, they're out there. The other thing is people over 50 have more choices about how to be a couple. So that the rates of remarriage have remained steady for people over 50. But the rates of cohabitation have quadrupled in those three decades, quadrupled. Yes. So there are more and more people living together but not being married. And that works for many, many people for many reasons. And finally, people don't have to live together. There there's a new term called lattes living apart together. People, people who have long term committed for the rest of their lives, relationships, but they do not share a home. And all of these things work for people because they bring not just themselves to the relationship, but their whole lives, all the people in their lives, all of their their Children, their activities. And very often it works better not still live in the same household. And so the choices you get love, you get emotional support, you get long term stable relationship, but you pick what works for you. Excellent. I wonder francine, if you could elaborate a little bit on a couple of things there. The first thing is your thoughts As to why the 90s seemed to be a watershed moment when divorces amongst people over 50 really spiked and I realized it didn't just happen at that moment. It continued. And the other is something that relates to both of us personally. The profound change in how you meet people that happened over those 30 years. Okay, well first of all the people who started divorcing in the nineties were baby boomers. Okay, so that's baby boomers had different attitudes about their wish for self satisfaction and not to live in an empty marriage. Also. They were at the point in their lives where they, Their Children have left home. And suddenly because of the Longevity Revolution, they were confronting another 30 years with this person that they were living with unhappily and a lot of people said the next 30 years with this person, no, I want something different, some of them wanted to be single, some of them wanted to be single and then decided to partner and others said I want a better relationship, I want to really fulfilling relationship. And online dating was starting up around then. And before that when I first started dating in my late 40s, there were the personal ads in certain magazines and newspapers and I met some people that way. Of course it's always a good idea to ask your friends if they know anyone to fix you up with. But you know, I think I had two blind dates out of asking 100 friends and acquaintances who they knew their acquaintance was mostly married people in a very small community. But when I went online I found there were hundreds of people who were available who lived near me, I might have stood behind them in the grocery store line, but we never would have met if I hadn't gone online. Boy, If that isn't the truth. It really has opened up so many windows for younger people and older people trying to meet somebody Francine. There seems to be a plethora of articles, books and discussions about dating and romantic relationships after 50 these days. And your book is certainly attracted as you pointed out earlier. Accolades and attention. Articles being written just about you and your book, Do you have any idea how many people might be looking for romance after 50 these days and how common is it for them to find romance after? I don't have statistics on this. But I know that many, many, many, many, many people have found it, but again, it's hard to measure Because living apart together, people don't get picked up in most surveys. But the fact that the number of people over 50 cohabiting quadrupling well that tells you something at the same time that the same number of people are getting married. So there are huge numbers of people doing it and it's a really happening thing. And many people usually women, I have decided they don't want to be partnered again. They have felt they felt stifled in their marriages. They felt they couldn't be themselves and want to just not worry about anybody else's needs except their own and those people are not in the dating market. So for women who say, oh there are too many women and not enough methods really not not true. Something else that I wanted to ask you and you kind of alluded to it earlier, francine is one of the benefits for many of us as we get older is we get wiser. Okay. And I'm wondering because of having lived longer and hopefully learn from our mistakes Which you alluded to the first time you were looking to meet somebody. Do these relationships after 50 as far as we know, tend to have a better success rate whether you're living alone but with that person, the L.A.T. Relationship, that relationship or whether you're married or not do these relationships tend to be of greater quality and duration because of the experience. Yes, the answer is yes. Scholars are studying this even as we speak, they say that very rarely do these relationships and in divorce or breakups are generally till death. Do us part now there are a lot of reasons for this. People first of all arrange their lives so that the potential sources of conflict like that might come about by different styles of living. You don't have to live in the same house or things that that come about because you don't want to combine your finances and you want your Children to inherit. That can happen or you want to keep your alimony or your spouse's social security. All of these things can be done by cohabitation and even if you're married, people go to lawyers, There's a big market here for lawyers and accountants because people have to get their financial lives in order create documents that ensure that if they want to leave their money to their Children, that it goes to their Children, that if there's their partner is living in their house that their partner gets to stay there for the rest of his life. So there's, there's a huge market for accounting and, and marketing. Also, these couples are not couples who were joined at the hip, the way our parents were or even many younger couples. The most different thing is we're not having kids together and we're not building our fortune together. So often couples don't do the same things all the time, they have different interests, they have different hobbies. Often they don't travel together. They often don't visit each other's families together. So things you don't want to do, you negotiate it with your partner. You don't have to do it. It avoids so much stress and conflict. It really does. Excellent points. I want to ask you about the rest of the world right now. We're probably thinking a little bit more about the United States, but maybe not necessarily. And we have about 30% of our listeners francine who don't live in the United States. So if you think about The trends that you were talking about the changes over the last 30 years or they applicable to other parts of the world, maybe they were ahead of us. Maybe they're behind us and I know the rest of the world is a big place, so you can't speak for every country. No, I can't. Western europe, especially Scandinavia has been way ahead of us for a long time. There have been a number of studies that were done on people who are partnered, often cohabiting and often a big growth in lattes, People who live apart together and those relationships have been studied by scholars. There was one study in Sweden where people in their 60s and after different kinds of relationships, but love relationships were studied and they felt the time really affected them. They felt that on the one hand, they had a lot of time together every day, which increased their intimacy. On the other hand, they were aware that their, their years together were limited and that made them cherish their relationships. Be thoughtful of each other and they were incredibly grateful to have found each other. Wow, that's interesting. Another thing I'd like you to comment on which you've talked about a few times now and I know you're really up on this and until I first connected with you, I really wasn't thinking about it in these terms and that is speaking of terms living apart together, What you're calling lattes, the acronym lattes. When did that really start to explode? Was that in the 90s to or is that a more recent phenomenon France and Western Europe. I believe it started in the 90s. That's when they first started seeing it. Especially in Scandinavia, which is, you know, far ahead of us in many social trends. I also saw a study in Israel, which is a more traditional society and discolor studied people in all days who made second marriages and they found a very similar thing. Although they were all married, they weren't living together or lattes. They felt the same sense of gratitude and that their second marriage was either completely different from the first marriage or it was better and they felt the same sense of greater intimacy, but also a greater sense that there were two equal individuals being intimate with each other rather than one having more power than another and equality in general and being individuals in the relationship is characteristic of all these relationships I've mentioned here and abroad. Okay, I'm wondering before we get into Covid, do you find in the work that you've done and all the people that you Speak to, whether they're your friends or associates network, whatever. There is a difference between people who are trying to find love and romance as a result of a divorce versus those who are trying to find it after 50 because they were like you widowed. there are some differences I think. But if the widowed person had a really good marriage, the challenges to grieve and move on. But there's no bitterness or anger or cynicism for divorced people, They have to go through a similar process of grieving that the relationship is gone, but also they may be left with rage or bitterness or feelings of rejection. And so That requires the head work I talk about in Chapter one of love after 50, there's some people who are depressed and need to find their anger and once they find it, they feel much, much better. But I also talk about making anger anger your friend and then letting it go because people who don't get past their anger really never form a good relationship after. Yeah, it leaves you with scars that are just going to get in the way of of having a successful new relationship. I just wanted to comment. You may want to come out of my comment on something you said, which has to do with generations before the baby boomers. I certainly know of many people who Either have passed or maybe they're still alive, who are of earlier generations who either were married for 50 or 60 years or still are not happy marriages, but nobody's going to do anything about it at this point. And that is the sea change from what you've described has happened with the baby boomers. Yes. When I was in graduate school, my roommate sister came to see us and she was getting divorced. It was the first divorce and and an italian american family. She said, Aunt Gertrude came to me and she said, what you're doing is a disgrace to our family. I was married to your uncle Eddie for 50 years and I was miserable every day of those 50 years and I didn't get divorced. And that was the attitude, divorce was shameful. It was and I'm just going to throw in a personal short anecdote. My parents francine got divorced officially When I was 17 and it was an embarrassment back in the day. I felt, I felt embarrassed about it. My mother took it terribly and it just was a whole different attitude about it. I didn't want anybody to know my parents were divorced. Of course that's the way it was. Yeah. So that's been a big change. We know that COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on most of our lives, some far worse than others. What impact do you think it's had francine on those who are seeking love after 50 during this time and on those who have found it. What impacts are you saying? I think some people just stopped looking for a while. It seemed too dangerous. Eventually people started doing a lot of video chatting online, which was not totally a bad thing. I think people became more selective. You weren't going to meet As I, as I would do like 25 people for a coffee date. You know, you would have a chat on the phone and if that seemed promising then you'd have some video chats. it's not the same as being in person, you can get a pretty good sense of the other person. If you video chat and you really seem to be connecting and you want to do it again and you want to do it again. And there are many safe ways to meet their, certainly in the warm weather, their outdoor cafes where people don't have to be masked, you can meet on a park bench, you go for a walk in the park, there are a lot of ways to do it and some people have met some great people and they didn't date this widely, but they focused, Is it creating problems for those living apart together? I think people handled that in different ways. I think some people that I spoke to moved in together for the duration for the bad times because they didn't want to be apart all that time. It was a little, they were a little on top of each other, but they preferred that to not seeing each other at all. Other people were just super careful and they arranged their meetings. I mean they were in a pod or they were already in a pod and they were each careful in their way and they saw they kept seeing each other the way they had been okay. I had a guest expert on the program last year julie Spira who is an expert on online dating and I remember we talked about this video chatting thing and I have to tell you, I think it's fantastic. It can save you so much time and maybe money if you can actually see somebody and have a conversation. And I always am struck by and I don't know if it's changed because of Covid how the younger people don't even have phone conversations, right? It's texting. I think that's such a great thing to be able to video chat. It's even better than a phone call like we used to have. Yes, absolutely. And I didn't do any of that because I was in a different time. But yeah, now appoint from Covid, What would you say francine or some of the particular challenges that those looking to enter into romantic relationships, romantic loving relationships face after they turn 50. I think that the challenges tend to be practical People have their these big lives that they can't entirely combined and often don't want to. So the one of the biggest challenges is dealing with the kids, my kids, his kids, both of our kids. So I have a whole chapter in love after 50 called deal with the kids or work around them. So there are many ways to handle it. The most important is to be sensitive to your kid's feelings. Don't say listen you're 45 years old. Get over it actually listen to your kid's feelings because you are a parent and child forever. And those feelings are important to acknowledge and validate doesn't mean you're not going to get get married or live with your partner. But if you listen to your kids, what are, what are your feelings? What are your fears? And also make a point of saying, look, I'm going to keep spending some one on one time with you because that's crucial to maintaining good relationships with your kids. Very good point. Are there any other challenges that might be unique? For example, one thing I think I read in an article of yours had to do with caregiving. There was some concern that maybe More typically women over 50 might have that they don't want to become a caregiver for an older man. This typically happens for women in their 70s and 80s. They've often been caregivers in a way for their Children, for their parents or siblings possibly and offer their late spouse and they don't want to do that again. The way that some older people handle it is they don't live together. And they also discussed early on in the relationship as soon as they see that they're falling in love, they say, okay, listen, these are the arrangements I've made. If I need care my kids are gonna take care of me or I have long term care insurance. What are your resources if you need care? Very important things to consider, especially the older we get. This concludes part one of our two part series on finding love after 50 with our guest expert francine russo in Part two, we'll cover such things as What the future might look like for those. Looking for love after 50, What opportunities that might present. And we'll get some tips on how you or someone you care about. Might go about finding a romantic loving relationship after 50. Please join us next time for part two of this series. Okay, thanks for listening to this episode of Looking forward. I hope you've enjoyed it and learned something. I also hope that you'll tell others about our show. If you have any comments or ideas for future episodes, please contact me at my website, Geoff dash Ostrov dot com. That's J E f f dash Mastrov. O s t R O f f dot com. This is Jeff Ostrow inviting you to join us again next time on looking forward. Mm hmm.