Some people simply never get round to getting married. Years ago it seemed to be the thing to do and most of your friends may have duly obliged. Predictions of a lonely life by not getting married were rarely worth a second thought by you if you were single and were enjoying life. On the one hand, you may have found that your friends who paired up were not around so much, but there were always other people to meet.
The theory was; as singles grew older there would be fewer other singles around, and with married friends having a young family, your life might begin to be fairly solitary. The increasing ease with which people could divorce was one thing that changed the singles landscape and the numbers of people now living alone have grown as a consequence.
An article in The Telegraph claims that the number of middle-aged people living alone has gone up 50% since the 1990s based on data from the Office of National Statistics. By middle-aged the statisticians mean between 45 and 65. There are nearly 2.5 million in that age group in their own homes without a spouse, partner, or another family member. Even if there was widespread fraud for benefit reasons, it is still a truly astonishing figure and in part, it reflects the number of ‘baby boomers’, the increase in births just after World War II.
The point above about the singles being in a minority is actually reflected in the fact that around 80% of the ‘baby boomers’ were married twenty years ago and that has dropped by 10% in the latest data.
The figures are part of a survey done on the Labour market by the ONS and are very interesting aside.
The growth in the number of people living alone means that those who never bothered to marry have an increased pool of potential friends who are not tied up in family matters, but even so it is still sometimes difficult to meet singles of a like mind.
One solution is to think about using the facilities of a dating service concentrating purely on people within the middle-aged band and there are such facilities for anyone who wants to look on the Internet. It may not be something that many people have even considered, but it is not as difficult as it might seem to begin to meet new people.
The contact can be purely by email and go no further if that is the decision of either party. Anyone registering with an agency can be certain that their personal details will be completely confidential even if they have begun to regularly correspond.
The stage beyond email correspondence may never happen, but this service could also be the beginning of singles getting together in person, even those who have never married before. Who knows, they may actually take the plunge after living alone for years.
There is really nothing to fear about dating for seniors because each individual can decide whether to go beyond emails or not. Some don’t, but many do. It costs nothing to give the idea a try.