There's an upside to midlife singledom – at this age, women know what really makes us happy
The midlife crisis has long been regarded as a peculiarly male affliction; a man hits 50, buys something with an engine to be “restored” or amasses an alarming collection of old BMX bikes that he insists are “investments”. A friend of mine has had a splintered old motorboat in his kitchen these last six months which I am convinced, once he has finished restoring it, will be worth exactly what he paid for it, minus his marriage.
That said, having reached middle age myself, I am realising that actually these men are on to something. My house is full of “upcycling” projects. Some I have completed, like two 1950s school desks, and some I have half done like an old bookcase I rescued from a skip and staggered home with, like an ant carrying an apple core. I tried to cover it with gold leaf, but fake gold leaf sheets are very fiddly. Now it just looks like a bunch of fairies had an orgy on its top shelf.
There is something comforting about rescuing an old and decrepit object, sanding it down, coaxing it back to life. It’s not really the bookcase or the canoe we are restoring perhaps, but the idea that age isn’t the end of usefulness. If junk can be renewed, maybe there is hope for our creaking knees and occasionally theatrical blood pressure.
One difference I have noticed amongst my fellow midlifers is that after divorce or separation, men seem remarkably quick to start relationships again and often with women a decade or two younger. The easy joke is that they’ve traded in their wives for a “younger model”, which is sexist nonsense on all counts. Older women date younger men, too. (See Cher/Madonna/me in 2020.) Marriages don’t end because somebody with smoother skin and a flatter stomach flirts with our partner. Human beings are far messier than that. And here we come to another symptom of my own middle-age; I have become far less judgemental. Some might say “insufferably understanding”, but hear me out.
The end of relationships is of course an agony few of us would choose. But in middle age it can feel like a rejection not just of you, but of ageing itself. The smoother skin of your ex’s new partner can feel like a rebuke to your emerging neck wattle, and the time she has for a bikini wax, you’d rather spend finding your reading glasses. Beneath all this perhaps lurks the deeper fear: if this isn’t the person I will grow old with, will I end up on my own?
This is why I am choosing to reframe midlife singledom; men do not leave their older wives, they set them free. While he’s learning paddleboarding with someone who still has the energy to listen to the story of the carburettor he rebuilt in 1998, she’s discovering the unalloyed joy of weekends away with friends who all own sensible waterproofs and for whom being in bed with a good book by 10pm is winning at life.
Don’t get me wrong, I will be in the mosh pit at gigs on occasion, but nowadays I will notice the drunk young bloke who has wandered off to be sick and follow him with a bottle of water. Then, when he is feeling better, tell him that as an under-25 he can get half -price National Trust membership.
We women in middle age become experts in what actually makes us happy. Which brings me to the younger women dating older men. They are often blamed for the pain endured by a “rejected” older woman. But we need to reframe them as the unsung heroes of the feminist movement, taking a bullet for the team. Thank goodness for those brave young sisters bonking Leonardo DiCaprio, who is 53 like me, because if they weren’t he would be knocking on my door and I’d have to say, “No, Leo, I’ve got a doll’s house to upcycle!”
We women in midlife find something far more liberating and exciting than dating someone younger; we discover that we no longer particularly want to be young. We are becoming gloriously unapologetic about pleasure. Not always glamorous pleasure, but comfortable pleasure. And after so many years of navigating the complications of being young women, we deserve this peace.
