How and Why You Can Enjoy Golden Dating

I went to Amazon to buy black pants. The Golden Bachelor stared at me from the ad banner at the top of the page. I thought this handsome man might be the star of a movie about a lonely guy who jogs across his suburban lawn to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

By now, if you’re reading this post, you probably know what Golden Bachelor is and how I wasn’t completely wrong in guessing what this show is about.

Followers of the Bachelor series on TV, which has been sustained by popular demand for 21 years, call themselves part of Bachelor Nation. I didn’t have a visa to get in until I gave Amazon Prime $2.99 to see Episode One of the senior citizen edition.

You only get the rose if you show respect.

Source: Mature Romance/Photosvit

In 2017, Golden Bachelor Gerry lost his wife, his high school sweetheart. He is vulnerable and grieving. Let’s start there: If you have suffered the loss of your loved one, you must put the guardrails up on the road to your heart. In Bachelor Nation terms, you must give the rose to people who respect you and your feelings of loss. You also need sound reasons to respect them.

If the person who looks like Barbie or Ken turns you on, that doesn’t mean that Barbie or Ken is a bad choice. But if their plastic cracks when you cry on their shoulder, dump them.

Earlier posts of mine have covered broken heart syndrome, profoundly explored in Finding Love After Loss, by Marti Benedetti and Mary A. Dempsey, and Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book. People who grieve deeply at the loss of a partner may die of a broken heart. Yet some people recover from a broken heart and if we want to give Golden Bachelor a good review on any point, it would be that the show offers promise of that for Gerry, the 72-year-old man on center stage.

Author Mary Dempsey offers the following insight:

"The Golden Bachelor's experience is not, of course, typical. But it turns a spotlight on some of the complexities of dating late in life after the loss of a life partner. Grief can hang like a shadow over widows and widowers. The quest to find love again acknowledges the very real fact that life goes on. An amazing optimism about life and love shines through the conversations in the Golden Bachelor."

"It is no easy thing to step back into the dating world and make yourself vulnerable. Gerry is lucky. When he decided to date, he had the support of his daughters. In interviewing widows and widowers for our book, we learned how valuable it can be when family and friends step forward to validate the search for new romance."

If you are golden and dating, here are some parting thoughts:

1. Get some friends and family in your corner. Let them know when you are excited, anxious, disappointed, and/or hopeful.
2. Your heart may race and, when that happens, you may babble like a teenager. That’s an honest response—better than faking composure.
3. At the end of the date, ask yourself, “Do I feel respected?” If you hesitate for one second, move on.

Postscript: My dear friend, Harry (U.S. Army Colonel Harry Bailey), married lovely Dorothy when he was 84 and she was just shy of 80. They had known each other and had been best friends with their spouses—deceased for several years—throughout many tours of duty overseas and in the U.S. Harry’s daughters had worried that their dad would fall apart after the loss of his trail-blazing, funny, rock-solid Louise. But he started talking to Dorothy. The combined families—and I was generously included in this clan—honeymooned with them after a traditional wedding in a Roman Catholic Church. Harry made it clear at breakfast after their wedding night that he was a happy man. The families celebrated this relationship from the start. The couple chatted like teenagers on the phone before they got married (she was in Florida and he was in Virginia before he moved south) and I heard their chats several times.

If you’re in love, or just have a crush, go ahead and feel the hormonal rush of being a teenager again. See where that takes you as a couple.