Meet scoot: the delights and drama of dating in midlife

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When the first person in my building died, I decided I would go on a date. It was March 2021 and COVID-19’s deadly Delta wave was beginning its rampage in Delhi-NCR. My long-term partner and I had had a falling out a few months prior, and when it began to feel like the world itself was ending, I decided I’d rather go out guns blazing than heartbroken and moping in a corner of my house. I matched with this person online and we decided to meet at an open-air restaurant near my house.

My date was on time, we found a table, and immediately we realised there was a thousand things we could talk about. We were there for some four hours and we’d barely scratched the surface of the things we had in common. It was splendid, and I recognised that it was special. It seemed too good to risk a romantic misadventure, and so the perfect date became one of my best friends. I was ill these last couple of weeks and it was the date who was taking me to doctor’s appointments, bringing me medicines and checking on me every evening. We speak often, we meet less often, we discuss his dating life endlessly. Our children are friends, we are always planning a holiday. But not everyone is so lucky.

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Mind the red flags

Dating is never easy, a process fraught with deception and doubt, and dating in your midlife is even worse. Anyone who has got thus far is a veteran of previous relationships and a survivor of at least one nasty break-up. Added to this often is the existence of children, yours and theirs, the disapproval of friends and family, and a general sense of world weariness. And I have not even begun to talk about the creeps and weirdos out there.

In the five years that she dated, Mini Hinduja (name changed) found herself in so many strange situations that she has documented them so as not to forget. At 43, when a serious long-term relationship ended, Hinduja, who is a senior corporate professional, decided to dip her toe in the online dating world. Her modus operandi was to arrange the first meeting at a bar she was familiar with, where the staff knew her and so she considered it a safe space.

One of the first dates she went on, the guy immediately launched into a long description of a strange fantasy of his to dress up his dates in elaborate silver jewellery. “He kept talking about the jangle of the bangles, even the barman burst out laughing,” Hinduja says, “and I decided if I wrote a book about this, the chapter would be called ‘The Jangle of Bangles’.” But her biggest pet peeve was men who would meet her on dates and then use that in order to seek help to further their careers. “Once they knew who I was, they’d send me their résumés, or ask if I could help connect them to this senior executive or the other. I mean, we met on a date, for god’s sake, my job is not to further your career prospects after that.”

Past life is the problem in midlife dating. Scrolling through her dating notes, Hinduja finds another candidate for the worst date hall of fame. “This person kept asking me what my vision was. Like in a job interview. And then he went on to berate his former girlfriend for not having a vision. She wanted to be a fashion designer, he told me, but did not have the vision for it, so she was just a tailor. He gave me a series of situations she got into and asked me what my response under similar circumstances would have been. It was so bizarre, and in retrospect, very comical,” she says.

Since Hinduja does not have kids, she was at least spared the complexities of dating as a single parent. In Gurugram, 48-year-old Mani Singh is raising two daughters. Initially he was reluctant to date seriously because his girls were young, and he didn’t want to complicate their lives. A friend of his had “made the mistake” of introducing his girlfriend to his daughter, and the two of them got along very well. So, eventually, when the relationship didn’t work, his daughter was devastated a second time around. But now that Singh’s daughters are older, he is interested in finding someone for the longer term.

There is no refined way to say this, so let’s put it crudely. Singh is a wealthy man, and so it is inevitable that some women who meet him are keen on locking it down. “I am a patient man,” he says, “and for me it is very important to find someone who shares my interests”. Singh makes music, he is well travelled and enjoys dining out. These are areas he’d like his prospective partners to connect to him with. A lot of women in their 40s, however, are keen on finding someone and settling down. So that itself is a disconnect. “But for me the real red flag is when a woman brings gifts for my children. Even before they have gotten to know me, they are interested in wooing my kids!”

If women want to woo Singh’s kids, most men prefer to ignore the existence of women’s kids. In Bengaluru, Gayathri Menon (name changed) was dating as a single mother to two children under 10. “I noticed that any reference to my children would make the men uncomfortable. And these are men who have children themselves!” she says. Menon did not introduce any of her dates to her kids, barring the odd man who eventually became a friend.

She had spent her life having high standards, and so when she embarked on her dating adventures, Menon told herself she wouldn’t have any. As long as the man did not sound unsafe, she was game. Of all the people I spoke to, Menon had the best worst date stories. She does not regret any of her experiences, she told me, but it taught her a few things about herself. The primary lesson was that…she was a person who had standards! “The other thing I learned is that Indian men do not know how to date casually. They just don’t know how to talk, how to be respectful,” she says.

Curious case of the online date

Married men are the scourge of all dating apps. Even homosexual men complain that the people they most encounter on their app are married Indian men. Menon recounts meeting a guy on a date that involved a nine kilometre walk, during which he told her about his bad marriage and his separation from his wife. Finally, they went to his home. Outside, the nameplate had his name as well as his wife’s. He’d not gotten around to taking it down, he said.

A few weeks later, Menon was having a meal with a friend and walking right outside the restaurant was this guy and another woman. She walked over and exchanged pleasantries and then stared, smilingly, at the woman. The man squirmed and eventually introduced the woman as his wife. “I smiled meaningfully, wished them a great evening and left,” she says. Sometimes, this cuts both ways. A popular Delhi anecdote revolves around a husband and wife in a very “Instagram happy” marriage who encountered each other on their secret dating profiles!

In Delhi, Ani Chatterjee, who identifies as queer, says that things are no better in her world. “I met a woman and she kept asking me the details of my house, how big it was, how many rooms it had. Over the next few weeks, I noticed that she’d insist on coming home and every time she did, she left behind a ton of her things — clothes, shoes, books, guitar. Finally, she came with her cat in a carrier and I was like what is going on here. Turned out, she was getting evicted from her house and so she was essentially looking for a place to live.”

Visits home turned out to be Puneet Malhotra’s nightmare dates, too. “There was one woman who, out of nowhere, started to behave like she was possessed. Another started weeping in the middle of the night, but wouldn’t tell me why. That was scary,” he says. In the two years he has been dating, Malhotra has set up a number of filters. For him, the ability to have a free and easy conversation is paramount. But, in the time he has been dating, he says a lot has changed both in the way he approaches dates, as well as what he wants from it. “I was certain initially that I didn’t want a committed relationship. But now I am open to the idea of finding someone for the long term,” he says. “One of the problems with online dating is that you are always thinking there is someone more suitable around the corner,” he confesses.

Everyone’s truth is different

A key difference between how millennials or the younger generations use the apps and how midlifers use them is in the context of what they want from it. For youngsters, hook-up culture is normal, there is no judgement in it. But that tarnishes the experiences of midlife daters, especially women, who carry the cultural burden placed on their body and their choices.

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Malhotra says that he has met women who on their profiles were clear that they were looking for something long-term. “But once they meet you and feel safe, quite a few of them are OK with exploring things for a shorter term.” Often, women use the apps when they are travelling. This way, the likelihood of them seeing someone they know is reduced. It is usually only once they get comfortable with the platform that they use it while at their home base.

Everyone’s truth is different and everyone’s experiences vary. But the one thing that was true to all the people I spoke to was that through this process of meeting other people, they had all learned a little bit about themselves. Hinduja realised she tended to take people at face value and has now trained herself to be more circumspect. Chatterjee is on the verge of giving up romantic aspirations in favour of building a life amidst friends. Malhotra is starting to see the frivolity of online dating. Quite a few of the people I spoke to eventually found a partner. But for a large majority of them, that process was not online. It came from being set up by friends and family. The existence of a feedback mechanism is crucial for midlife dating, something that is impossible from a stranger online.

While a lot of them are exhausted from the dating process, all of them think of the experience as a valuable exercise in self-discovery. As for me, my former partner and I resolved our differences and we are back together. That, too, is a common outcome of dating in your midlife. Seeing what’s out there makes you cherish what you have.