Dating is hard. Dating in middle-age is even harder. Youโre balancing kids, work, and all the newfound surprises of aging. In a culture that increasingly values youth over the wisdom that comes with aging, how is anyone over 40 supposed to feel great while dating?
Joe Devito can feel your pain. Heโs a comedian who just turned 50, and he is on the dating scene. He recently performed a comedy show just about this, and while he doesnโt have many flattering things to say about dating in middle age, his thoughts are guaranteed to make you laugh with recognition.
Joe is tired of his bills, so he just ignores them.
Which is why, when he recently got a โfinal noticeโ bill from his local library, he was overjoyed! โFinal noticeโ means theyโll leave him alone after this one right?
Not so much, but the crowd loved the joke, laughing along as they recalled also wanting to just be left alone. With that killer intro, Joe forged ahead to talk about all sorts of other things no one tells you about being an adult.
Online dating breeds a lot of lying.
For those of us who grew up without smartphones, dating via an app can feel hard to navigate. It gets harder especially with the rise of catfishing: the habit of lying about yourself on your online dating profile to seem like a different person. In fact, according to Kapersky, 57% of people lie to each other when they are using a dating app. With so many fakes out there, how are you supposed to find the right one?
Fortunately, Joe Devito can understand, and heโs got jokes for that too. He doesnโt understand how someone can lie about their appearance when the goal is to meet in person. He jokes:
โHow do you show up eight inches shorter than you said you were?!โ
Mostly though, aging means that our bodies are just not what they used to be.
This is a hard truth to swallow. By your 40s, your body is rapidly shifting away from the spry energy you had back in the day. Injuries crop up out of nowhere and we canโt just walk off the pain. Joe recently turned 50, and he has an funny opinion about it all. He says:
โSaying โyou look good for 50 is like saying โyou look like a lousy 45! How do you feel about that? Ya know, you look like a 38 in some kind of sleep deprivation experiment!โ
Joeโs dentist said he should consider braces.
And Joe is not having it. He says:
โTwice in a lifetime?โฆ I refuse to be balding and have a retainer at the same time!โ
You see, Joe already had bracesโas a teenager. He had no idea he would need them as an adult. Although transitioning into a middle aged body can sometimes remind us on the growing pains of adolescence, Joe is not going back there. He questions what any woman he takes home would say about that.
And trying to hold on to our youth by dating younger doesnโt help the cause either.
Aging and dating at the same time presents us with a whole new list of conundrums to navigate. Thatโs why itโs preferable to date someone who can at least understand what youโre going through. Joe imagines going out to dinner with a younger woman, only to pull out his vitamins before the meal!
Younger people just donโt understand what is happening to an middle aged persons body. It can be embarrassing to show your age during these moments that could be seen as social faux pas. Fortunately, about one-third of American middle-aged adults are single, so you have some options within an age group that gets you.
Both men and women experience some drastic changes.
Balding, hair thinning or graying, throwing your back out when you were just standing there, itโs all part of being middle aged. And it definitely makes looking for love, or even a fun fling, a little bit harder because of all the insecurities it might bring.
While the physical aspects of aging may not exactly be the sexiest thing, at least everyone in middle age can relate. And at least Joe Devito is speaking the truth about it and bring us all laughs onstage.
If you want to laugh along to more jokes about dating as you age, watch the video below.
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