Dating in your 50s: Sharon Horgan is wrong. It’s not all freaks and weirdos

And you’re on. I’m live already? I asked. Live, my eldest daughter said. I’d handed her over my phone so she could have a final read of the dating profile I had been tinkering with for the previous few weeks. Quiet evenings, lolling on the sofa, the app had asked me: “What three qualities do you like in a man?” I’d perused the adjectives offered, and decided on kindness, curiosity, confidence.READ MOREI’d answered more questions. “Age?” Fifty five. “Do you drink?” Eh, sometimes. “Exercise?” Yes. “Politics/children/star sign?” I left these blank – those were for conversations to have in real life (except star sign).It asked for photos. Should I put up one of me in graduation gown from my master’s last winter, and the one in a swimsuit under a dazzling blue November sky? “Definitely,” my daughters said. The eldest swapped a picture where I was wearing a black jumper (“boring”) to one she had of me on a hike, back turned, surveying Djouce mountain.Both daughters approved of the bio I’d written. The app also liked it. It gave me a thumbs up and said, “Great answer! This has the spark that gets people talking.” I was flattered.“What are you looking for?” it asked me. “A long-term relationship? Or are you open to see where things go?” What a thing to have to decide there and then. There wasn’t really a description for what I wanted – which was to sit in the sun, have a glass of wine and a chat with a man that wasn’t my brother, an old buddy, or the husband half of one of my many lovely couple friends. I missed – to paraphrase Mark Zuckerberg – male energy. The good kind.After four years I was ready to date again.Ann-Marie Power. Photograph: Tony Kinlan My beloved boyfriend died in spring of 2022 after a shock cancer diagnosis. His rapid decline from good health and wellbeing in just 14 months tilted the world off its familiar axis and broke my heart. My grief was very physical. I got sick a lot – throat of broken glass, painful rashes, a swollen ear cartilage. I lay in bed with Covid for a month, feeling like there was a tiny clawed creature sitting on my chest. Until, in the dark, rainy January of this year, I felt a change, and on the fifth spring, my dating profile complete, my eldest pressed upload.The profiles of men came in. Divorcees, dads, the never-marrieds. Men who liked reading, and movies, and travelling. I went on dates. I talked. They talked. About their daughters in London, their sons in America. Respectful (mostly) mentions of their former wives and partners. Their gym routines, their fathers, the upcoming Leaving Cert. Their business plans, camper vans, football games. Their dogs, their mothers, their bosses. The books they’d read and gigs they had tickets for. I realised men wanted something similar to me; to sit in the sun sometimes, and enjoy a woman’s company.I like Sharon Horgan. She is my age, so I take note of her. After she got divorced, she was snapped in the tabloids having a great, big, dirty snog on the side of a busy London road with Tim Burgess from The Charlatans. It made me laugh out loud and I thought, fair play to you Sharon. My admiration increased further when I read that she was in a relationship with Barry Ward, a very handsome Irish actor 10 years her junior. She was an inspiration to me.When I saw the headline on her recent interview ahead of her new series Youth in The Irish Times – “Sharon Horgan on suddenly being single in your 50s: ‘Will I just attract weirdos and freaks?” – oh dear, was my first thought, have Sharon and Barry broken up? I opened the article and began reading.“If you are in your mid-50s and you haven’t found your person to get old with, then you’re kind of f**ked.”Sharon Horgan. Photograph: Michelle Watt/HBO I was, ironically enough, away at a 60th birthday, and was having breakfast in the hotel with a group of 50-somethings – some married, some single, many dating. “Would you think of going on Bumble?” I’d asked a woman I’d met at the party the night before whose marriage had broken up. “Fumble, more like,” she said, but yeah, sometime, she would. We drank our coffee, a bit hungover, and I read some more of the article out loud.“To suddenly find yourself single and thinking, well, what now? … At a certain age, who will be left? Will it just be the weirdos and freaks?”It didn’t seem very fair to men either.Horgan asked: “How do you put yourself out there as a sexual person when you’re a pensioner nearly?”In the final paragraph of the interview, it was revealed that Horgan was still with the lovely Ward.“F**k you, Sharon,” we joked.It all reminds me of a new iteration of the cliched myth I’d hated for years (long before I turned 50 myself) that women become invisible in mid-life. It simply isn’t true, in my experience. [ Youth: This might be the best art-imitates-life show Sharon Horgan has attemptedOpens in new window ]I believe people want someone to go out for dinner with, or see a movie, go dancing, grab a pizza and a beer, or share a bottle of wine with. To take a sauna and a sea swim, a hike, a bike ride, a gig, or a walk after coffee and cake, to grab a break from the routines of adult life – filling out health insurance forms, shopping lists, filing taxes, caring for elderly parents, completing work reports, giving lifts to grown-up kids. To cultivate a bit of adventure and magic with. Most people are well meaning, I’ve found.So why am I not seeing this represented more in the media? Why does Sharon, cool Sharon Horgan, who kisses gorgeous men in public, who probably has oodles of her own money, who has shiny, bouncy hair, who wears vampy see-through black dresses to awards events, has toned arms and a fabulously high arse, who had the balls to leave her “proper” job at the age of 31 to write freelance comedy sketches and went on to become a hugely successful actor, director, writer – why does the noise around her new TV series tell me that dating in your 50s is scary?One of the very best things for me about being in my 50s – besides the thrilling company of my two brilliant, beautiful grown up daughters – is that I do not want to get married, and I will not be having more babies. I have wonderful friends. I like to spend lots of time with them, and my sister and brothers, and my parents. I travel, go to gigs, parties, festivals. I write, read, garden, lift weights, box, swim, cycle. I like my own company. I know the difference between solitude and loneliness.In your 50s, when it comes to romance, there is far less pressure than before, and none of the intimidating milestones of 25, 35, even 45, the obligations, the tedious routines. Dating in your mid-50s is about the craic, desire, distraction, friendship, amusement, admiration, affection, attention.“One of the great things,” I said to the lovely man I’m seeing, “is that I never have to go shopping in Tesco with you.”[ In your 50s it feels like time is rapidly running out. Time for what though?Opens in new window ]It’s sort of like being a teenager again. The best parts. With the hard-earned knowledge that, at the end of the day, your life deep down is about what you want – not what society or culture tells you to want. Or any man. Or your mother. Or a journalist. Or a famous actor. Life. It can overwhelm and sadden, but it also has a mysterious, regenerative quality, and this year, I have been reminded of this, of our creative capacity to begin again, and for new understandings. At any age. Youth or no youth.Ann-Marie Power worked in media for 25 years. She recently completed an MFA in fiction at UCD. She lives in Dublin.