If you want to find someone to have fun with, who is passionate for life, how do you go about it?
With Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com
Cathy: What advice can you give someone who is a senior person wanting to meet a person to enjoy life with?
Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com .
Cathy: And Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com .
Reid: Ha ha, well, we have been seniors, it was like in high school or college.
Cathy: Yes.
Reid: We are not technically seniors nor do we play seniors on television. However, as relationship geeks and people who talk to lots and lots of people and coach lots of people on relationship dynamics, I have thoughts.
Cathy: What are your thoughts?
Reid: Well, do you want to go first?
Cathy: Well, I recommend getting out there because I know that there is a different group of people in seniors, in the senior area, but at 40 I wasn’t dating a lot because I wasn’t getting out there and just getting my profile out there. I did have to pick through some people, I had to … Reid, you helped me a lot with that finding the questions that I wanted to ask, but asking the questions helped me identify the people that were passionate about the things that I was passionate about. Just being outside my house and doing a lot of things and letting people know I was available helped me find a lot of dates.
If you’re not out there with a profile, preferably, I think that really is a good way to reach people. Letting people know you want someone who’s very vital and active in life if that’s what you’re looking for. Because I went out with people that were in their 50’s and 60’s and some of them I was like, “Wow, I can’t keep up with you,” and others I was like, “Wow, let me get you a rocking chair.” You get to decide what you want to create but there are people out there. The more you share of yourself and ask for what you want, the more likely you are to find people.
Reid: I’m going to first start off by saying we’ve never had a world filled with this many people, period. Now we’ve never had a world filled with this many people who were above a certain age so the senior population, the baby boomers, all these… There’s a group of people who are single now in a way that’s never really happened before in history. Gender dynamics and the reasons we stay in relationships versus get out of relationships, those things have shifted.
Part of what’s happening in the dating world for seniors, for people in their golden years or the next platinum phase of their life, however you want to look at it. There’s a good chance that the old advice… The old advice doesn’t work for people younger, it is probably not working for anyone right now because relationships are changing.
Cathy: Yeah, we never had Internet before. We didn’t have access to a million people at a time.
Reid: Sure. The reasons why you would want a relationship versus a group of friends, the reasons you would want to stay in a relationship versus hang out with a group of friends, the reasons why you would want to stay in a mediocre bad relationship or even start one that was mediocre versus hang out with a bunch of friends, you see a theme here.
What I am going to ask people to think about on top of Cathy’s advice, if you want, if you’re looking for a relationship, expand your idea of relationship, not just romantic relationships. But get your needs met as a human being socially from a collective of people. Live the life doing the things that you’ve always dreamt of or the things that are left on your bucket list and as somebody who’s adventuring and doing those things that are important and thrill you, the people that you meet you will kind of be more thrilling to them because you’re doing the things that make you happy. That will usually make you… Introverts and shy people it’s a little bit different, people on the spectrum…
Everyone’s different but for the most part you’ll be living your life so you will have a certain vibrancy. You may need to get therapy or work with somebody on issues of scarcities and fears as they come up because, I mean even for me, I’m in my 40’s now, my late 40’s. I could imagine 20 years, 30 years from now I will have thoughts of I’m at the… I’m coming in for a landing kind of a thing. That’s going to change how I look at the world. I can’t speak for you, but living the life that you want will put you usually in the spheres of people who are enjoying the same things you’re enjoying. As you put yourself out there you will then be living a life that you love even though you’re single, surrounded by ideally community and friends who love you and love the things that you do. In that mix, the people who come in and out of your life or the people that you meet online, those are the people that you’re auditioning for potential relationships that are romantic.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: It’s crazy and its weird advice because we haven’t had to give advice like this before around relationships. But I think that approach, I think will actually add more to your years no matter how many more you have left than waiting and trying to be somebody you’re not to find somebody who will like you so that you can live the rest of your life.
Cathy: Yeah and Reid talks about setting your intentions, determining your intentions for having a relationship. I think that really can help you narrow down the field quickly so if you know why you want to be in a relationship and what you want to create out of your relationship you can say, “Oh, that person’s really nice but they’re not going to be a good fit for me,” and it can save a lot of wasted time and frustration.
Reid: Leave us your comments. Let us know your thoughts and then for the person who wrote in, thank you so much for writing that in. We hope that this information was useful for you.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: Bye.