Is it really possible to start a new relationship in your 40s?

relationships_after_40

There are two events that made me want to write this post: 1) Tina Turner was on Oprah not long ago and Queen Oprah declared that at 68 Tina had been in a happy relationship for the past 20 years (which would mean that she stated dating her current man at 48) 2) The “Sex and the City” movie features Carrie Bradshaw who finally finds love and gets married after 40.

It occurred to me that when you end a relationship in your mid-to-late 30s and you’ve been on a bad string of dates and you’ve had to endure a few bad medium-length relationships, you start wondering if you will ever be able to find a meaningful relationship again.

I think it really doesn’t matter how incredible you look, when you hit your late 30s and you’re still single or you’re are newly single, you have that little voice in your head that whispers: “Am I going to be single forever?” or “Will anyone want to date me after 40″ and (my personal favourite) “Can you find guys at this point in your life that don’t carry too much baggage?”

I know “Sex and the City” is a movie (hence fantasy), but Tina Turner’s story is real … she did find love well after 40. As part of the laws of beauty at any age, a happy and healthy relationship is an important factor in helping us stay younger.

Many studies have shown and proven that as you age, you need to have that kind of high quality relationship in your life because it adds richness to your existence when compared to navigating life solo.

I think where I’m trying to go with this banter is simply remind us (and myself) that it’s very much possible to find true love after your 40^th birthday and since with each passing year we should have collected a few baskets of wisdom, the idea is to choose the next guy wisely.

Will looking for love in your late 30s and 40s be a LOT harder than in your 20s or early 30s? I have no doubt about that, but so many women around us do it every day. And hey, when in doubt we can take a cue from all these Hollywood celebrities who are over 40 and dating men who are younger than they are and a lot of them seem to be happier than ever before.

Photo by Hamed Masoumi Hamed Masoumi