Boomer Women Mortified By Dating Market
Today on Based Camp we break down a Washington Post article on boomer women returning to dating after divorce. As it happens, dating markets aren’t just broken for young people!Through the article, we examine high divorce rates among seniors, common challenges like ghosting and mismatched expectations, and real stories from women navigating the modern scene. The discussion covers age gaps, political differences, scammers targeting older daters, and broader patterns in the relationship market for this generation. Show NotesThen this gem appeared in The Washington Post yesterday, October 27, 2026:“Boomer women are dating after divorce. Men don’t always meet their standards.” (Archive) by Shane O’Neill. Its subtitle is: “In the 1990s, baby boomer women set records for divorce. Thirty years later, how’s their love life?”The piece interviews older divorced women about returning to dating, including disappointments with men’s maturity, ghosting and flaking, political incompatibility, and men who are separated but haven’t actually divorced. One woman, Kristyne Haver, 69, describes 18 years of dating after her divorce. It isn’t uniformly bleak—there are successful connections, too—but underwhelmed by their dating experiences” is the overarching theme.Choice Quotes“High divorce rates among boomer women have continued after the 1990s. According to an analysis of U.S. Census data conducted by Bowling Green State University, the annual divorce rate among Americans 65 and older more than tripled between 1990 and 2023. Today, nearly 1 in 6 seniors is divorced.”“Kristyne Haver, 69, dated for 18 solid years after she got divorced. “I was dating or semi-dating that whole time,” Haver said from her office in Reading, Pennsylvania, where she works as a controller. “I’ve had some interesting situations.”For several years, she dated a dad in California who was separated from his wife but dragging his feet on getting divorced. On Facebook, she met another separated man in Missouri, but their online courtship ended when his wife started harassing her and her friends. She reconnected with a college boyfriend on LinkedIn who lived in Tampa, but ultimately decided that long-distance love wasn’t for her.“And of course, you get the younger guys looking for — what, a sugar mama or whatever?”Not that Haver was opposed to age gaps. Over the years, she dated several younger men, including a Russian 25 years her junior whom she met in the parking lot of a grocery store, where she found him admiring her Porsche Boxster. A month into the relationship, he casually mentioned that the last woman he dated paid him $1,000 a month.That’s when she implemented a new rule: “I said, ‘From now on, they have to have been born when Kennedy was shot.’””On Politics“In 2019, after her 45th high school reunion in Iowa, Haver received an unexpected message from a high school friend. He had missed the reunion, but saw photos of her celebrating and reached out. “He, for some reason, just decided to look me up on Classmates.com of all places,” she said with a shudder. “Horrible, horrible site,” she said.The online user experience was bad, but the conversation was good.“I would get in great political discussions with him, because he was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and I was as far from that as possible, especially now,” Haver said. They married four years ago.For other women we spoke to, political disagreement did not translate to romantic frisson. Pearson Brown, 63, recently ended a 10-year postdivorce relationship with a man over political differences.“I knew his politics were different than mine, and we never really discussed politics very much,” Brown said from her home in Warrenton, Virginia, where she works in pharmaceutical PR and advertising. “But as my primary partner, I’d say ‘Groceries are high’ or ‘Gas is [expensive]’ and it would become a political conversation. ‘Pass the salt’ became a political statement,” she said.In February of this year, it became too much. They went their separate ways.The experience changed the way she now approaches online dating. “Some people say, ‘No MAGA’ and I’m like, ‘Okay, fine,’” Brown said. “Before, I used to say, ‘I don’t like anybody saying “No something.”’ No fat, no smoke, whatever. But now I’m like, ‘Okay, I just saved myself some time.’””On Unwillingness to Change““At this point, I have my house, I have my own space, I have my life,” said Lacey Wootton, who retired from her job as a professor at American University in May 2025.“It sounds small and petty, but I don’t think it is: I have dinner when I want to have dinner, and if I want to watch something on TV, I do, or if I want to sit and read, I do,” Wootton, 66, said. “And I have closet space.”Wootton agreed she sounded a little like Carol Burnett, who once told Joan Rivers, “If I ever got married again, he would have to live next door.”She’s currently dating, and she’s enjoyed some relationships with men that have lasted a few months. But her standards are high for settling down.“If, by chance, I met someone who was really amazing, I would think about that compromise,” she said. “But I’m also not hunting.”Wootton divorced amicably from her husband when she was 50. “I was really scared of being alone,” Wootton said. But gradually, she acclimated to single life. Very well. Now, 16 years later, she’s never been happier. She volunteers, she goes to the theater, she reads voraciously, and she has a circle of friends who share her interests. When we spoke, she was hours away from flying to Scandinavia for a two-week adventure.She’s not interested in a romantic partner who can’t keep up. “Men age more than women, and I don’t want to be a 72-year-old nursemaid,” she said.Wootton has also found that age does not necessarily bring maturity. She’s been ghosted and flaked on more times than she can count. “Some of those habits that older people maybe ascribe to younger people in terms of digital behavior, our age group does it, too,” she said.”ScamsThe article also talks about older women dating online getting scammed: “Part of her coaching involves looking out for red flags like refusing to meet in person or on video, love bombing, and introducing financial discussions early in the relationship. Of course, safety is the most important concern when it comes to dating at any age.”More… Extreme Cases“Some seniors are wilder than others. For some boomers, the counterculture never straightened out and the sexual revolution never stopped revolving.“I can tell you, there are girls in their mid-80s who are still in circulation, right?” said Renée Imperato, 78, from her apartment in Manhattan. “They’re still bumping the hump, you hear me?”When she was in her 20s, Imperato mostly dated older men. That is no longer the case.“Sometimes younger people say, ‘Renée, you’re the queen, you’re our elder, where are all the other people in your age group?’” said the retired Air Force veteran and longtime transgender rights activist. “And you know what my answer is? One word: AIDS.”Imperato has been married four times and has dated people of many genders. These days she “predominantly” identifies as a trans lesbian. She has “T4T” tattooed on her neck, signaling her preference for dating other trans people. And she’s currently dating a couple several decades her junior. When we spoke, she was recovering from a foot injury and shingles. She refuses to let such things slow her down.“Listen, honey, as long as I can do what I can do, I’m going to do it until I can’t,” Imperato said.”Episode TranscriptSimone Collins:Hello, Malcolm. I’m very glad to be speaking with you today because we’re back for another episode of webinar terrible bonus boomer edition. Oh my gosh. So excited.Malcolm Collins:This is on the glamorization of hag... Because I said hag maxing, Simone’s like, I’m a hag. I max it. This isn’t what we’re talking about.Simone Collins:This is an insult to the concept of hags because what we’re going to be talking about today i… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe
