10 Reasons Why Dating Is Harder For Older Women Part 7

why dating is harder for older women part 7

trigger warning

Reason # 4 

Too Preoccupied with Chemistry

Chemistry is important.  Attraction is important. 
There is no disputing that.
 
However, the question is HOW important is chemistry?  Important enough that if the chemistry is not there, but everything else is, you would walk away?  In that case; have you ever considered that chemistry might be too important for you?
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Is your emotional need for chemistry so important that it gets in the way of being fulfilled? Is it a way for you to escape having to be vulnerable in dating, and helps you hide behind your secret fear of intimacy? Only you can answer that for yourself.
 

When that feeling of butterflies in your tummy becomes more important that how a man treats you, a woman is more likely to make regrettable choices when it comes to dating and relationships.


Older women that I have coached sometimes make the mistake of confusing LUST with LOVE.

Here is a perspective; think of instant chemistry as lust. Lust is a place some couples start, and sometimes it can grow into love over time, or sometimes if fizzles out.
 
However, if you seek something other than lust at first sight, and learn how to create the feeling of lust with people that you do get along with better, perhaps that might be something that changes it for you.
 
It does take work to ignite chemistry where there is none, but if it is worthwhile for you, then it is worth the work.
 
In any relationship, after the “Honeymoon” phase is over, and the two of you get down to building a future and face the grind of real life, a solid friendship as a foundation for your relationship, may be exactly what is necessary to carry you both through a life time commitment.  Notice, I said friendship, not chemistry.

​Chemistry will not carry you through anything,
other than maybe
make you stick around in a bad situation
until the next sexual encounter.
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Does the chemistry have to be instant, or do you take the time to explore creating chemistry? If chemistry has to be instant for you, and you are refusing to put in the time to let love develop, as an older woman, you could be doing yourself a great disservice.

Love is something worthwhile.
All things worthwhile require effort. That is part of what makes them worthwhile.

Do not confuse getting attention with finding love.

Getting attention can be easier, and finding love is not.
 
One of the biggest struggles that older women have when they seek out coaching is trying to work out the paradox that the type of person that they are most turned on by, is actually not the kind of person they would be able to be in a relationship with. 

from artist Ricky Whitney

Coaching Workbook For Women

In fact, depending on what a person values and wants for their future, the kinds of people they are hot for, are actually not the kinds of people they would trust with their bank accounts.

When romance and lust take priority over compatible values and desired lifestyle, the results simply have the poorest chances of succeeding as a long-term relationship.
 
The issue of course is that romance and lust tend to be time limited. What turns you on today may not be what turns you on tomorrow. What drives us to feel attraction is not solely based on what we were born to feel attraction for.
 
What I refer to in my work as our “Internal Attraction Mechanism” can be programmed and re-programmed throughout our lives by life experience.

Through life experience, we learn to associate feelings of attraction with certain stimuli, and feelings of repulsion with other stimuli.


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For example:
Remember that nice guy you rejected because you did not feel an attraction for him? Remember how things changed when you noticed that other women found him attractive enough to date and you started to get jealous?  

Remember how that is around the time you also noticed positive aspects of him that you never noticed because you rejected him too quickly before giving him a chance? 

​That is one example of how chemistry can develop over time.  

For those people who have experience with mental illness, do you remember how you lost interest in anything sexual with anyone, least of all your partner at the time?  It had nothing to do with the other person; it only had to do with what was going on within you. 
 
Again, chemistry is fleeting. It can be there, it can disappear, and it might appear when you least expect it. 

One thing if for sure:

as fun as chemistry is,
chemistry does NOT promise fulfillment,
and it is not what you base the foundation
of a successful long-term relationship on.

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​On that note, if you are currently best friends with an older man, and that older man is a little attracted to you, and even asked you out, then do both of you a favor;

Say yes, and give it a chance.

Yes, it may be a little awkward at first, but most first romantic interactions can be so, with any new partner. Allowing a deep friendship to deepen even more into a loving relationship allows for the foundation of your relationship to also have the benefit of long nourished roots. 

We all have our type. By “type” I am referring to that type of person each of us is madly attracted too. Each of us has our preference of what we like, what turns us on, and what drives us wild. Sometimes, the type of person we are attracted too is the kind of person that we can function well in a relationship with.

But other times, the very type of person we are most attracted to, is exactly the type of person that is simply incompatible as a long-term partner. It can be a certain kind of look a person exhibits, even a skin tone or complexion. It may be a style of clothing, certain accessories that catch the eye,  a body type or even a particular scents like  a cologne that draws us in with one whiff.

Shallowness is not part of any recipe to long-term relationship success. When considered in this context, a lot of what a person prefers in terms of attraction, may actually have very little to do with having any sense of security to establish a solid base foundation that long-term relationships require to stand the test of time.
 
Just for the record; if you are an older woman that refuses to put in effort to date an older man because he was not your first choice (chemistry wise), but yet complain that older men are shallow for only dating good looking younger women, you must at least be willing to face that you are exhibiting the same level of shallowness that you are raging against.

Lying to yourself will keep you single.

Does this mean that
the only way to have a successful long-term relationship
is to seek someone that that you are not actually interested in?

No actually.

However, it does suggest that you may want to find ways to strike a balance between what turns you on, and what is in your best long-term interest.

There Are Couples

​In some cases, there are couples that simply do without. They pair up with someone that makes them happy and they are attracted to, but is not their ideal fantasy attractor. In those cases, a couple may have traded in wanton lust, for a happier and more stable life.

(Remember when I talked about
fun vs. fulfillment
earlier in the article?)
 
In other cases, there are couples that on the surface do without, but behind closed doors have affairs to satisfy needs that are not being addressed by their main partner. This leaves the couple very vulnerable when secrets become exposed.
 
Finally, there are people who refuse to cheat and attempt to structure a consensual non-monogamous relationship with their partner in order to be open and honest about their needs being unmet, and work on having them met outside of the primary relationship. (This is currently estimated as roughly 21% of the population by two different studies).
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Teaching The Rules of Monogamy and Consensual Non-Monogamy

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​However for the record, most people practicing consensual non-monogamy do so because they are simply not wired to be monogamous, regardless of how good or how bad their primary relationship is.  
 
Whether doing without, or structuring a consensual non-monogamous relationship is the answer to this challenge is basically up to the individuals and the couples involved.

What I can tell you for sure from my experience is that the consequences of cheating, and or being cheated on, are always more severe than trying to find a better solution.
 

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You may not control whom you are attracted to,
but you do control your behaviors as to what you do with that attraction.

It is simply a process of learning about yourself
and how to manage your relational expectations.

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Reason # 5
Too Preoccupied with Friends Opinions
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Reason # 5 Too Preoccupied with Friends Opinions

Desperate!

If there is one thing I hear over and over again from older women is that they do not want to appear, or come across as desperate. So these women hold back from asking men out, and making their interests known.

When older women get together with their friends (also older and single women) some start acting like they are too good for dating and don’t need a man in their lives.

Right.