An in-depth guide with lots of tips
You might wake up one day, older, wiser, and single. You look at yourself in the mirror and ask the very important (all of a sudden; all-consuming) question: How to find love after 40?
How to Find Love After 40 – The crash course
Be honest with the fact that you are indeed looking for love.
Don’t be negative towards the idea of dating; this point includes not being negative towards yourself or towards men in general.
The logistics will be more difficult when you are 40 and looking for love, don’t let this stop you.
Make dating a priority, and you will find love.
Finding love is possible at any age
The first thing you need to know is that finding love after 40 is not all that different from finding love at any age.
You are still the same person you have always been, just with more life experiences, a dash of grey hair and hopefully better fashion sense.
However, there are a couple of things worth considering when you are 40 and looking for love.
You have a healthy dose of self-knowledge
First of all, don’t see your age as an obstacle to finding love.
Sure, some things make finding love after 40 more difficult than at other stages in your life. But you also have a hell of a lot more life experience to draw from than in all earlier stages of your life. Take advantage of this vast ocean of experience.
Feel proud of the fact that you know what you want, and you definitely know what you don’t want.
Don’t consider your age a problem when dating
Whatever you do, don’t feel bad about your age.
Now when you are over 40, you are a more complex and interesting person than ever before.
You are better at understanding different people, more empathic, but also better at spotting toxic behavior and ruthlessly getting rid of those relationships.
In conclusion, don’t look at your age as a hindrance, but something you will use to your advantage now when you are 40 and looking for love.
1. Look for Love
The first step on how to find love after 40 is being honest with the fact that you are indeed looking for love. Don’t trust all those people who say that love happens when you stop searching. Has that been your experience so far?
Probably not.
Dating is a bit different
That saying might work when you are 20 and looking for love.
When you are younger, you go to university, start at new workplaces, and move around the world. At that age, almost everyone is single or one year away from being single.
You meet lots of potential partners, and since you are not as picky, the choices are endless.
Enjoy the journey
Being 40 and finding love is going to be slightly different. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It’s like taking off in the wilderness in search of gold.
It’s going to be a long wild journey. Full of trolls along the way. In the end, you might find the holy grail; an amazing man, or you might accept that your life is great just the way things are.
Check out our article Accepting you will never find love, for a more positive spin on being alone.
2. Don’t be Negative
The second step of how to find love after 40 is not to be negative.
All forms of negativity have a way of sucking the enjoyment out of life.
This is particularly true of the negativity you impose on your age. If you consider your age a misfortune, other people will do the same.
Don’t moan over the difficulties of finding love when you are over 40; enjoy them. Challenges are part of life. Challenges can even be fun.
You are wise
Sure, you will run into all sorts of men, and you will have to deal with your fair share of disappointments. But you are better equipped for whatever life and destiny throw at you.
You know how to handle things, including yourself and your own hopeful heart.
It’s perfectly normal to be in your 40s and looking for love
A lot of people become more negative as they get older. Instead of becoming wiser, they become judgmental and narrow-minded.
With this mind frame, a lot of women roll their eyes and give up on dating in their 40s.
They claim that finding someone is impossible and joke around that everyone over 40 and single is damaged goods.
Be brave
When you catch yourself in this kind of mind frame, remember that you are over 40 and single, and you are great in your own way. You are a catch.
To be negative towards your possibilities of finding love is a decision based on fear. Don’t let fear dictate your life.
3. Move past your previous experiences
On a more serious note, your negativity is important to acknowledge. You have probably been hurt before; we all have. But we have to move past those experiences and appreciate every new human that enters our life as just that; a new human. Someone interesting and exciting we still don’t know.
Don’t let bitterness consume you. The only victim is going to be yourself and your dating life.
The preconceived notion of what men are, for example, idiots or cheaters, is not attractive.
Negativity is not sexy
Just think about what you feel when you meet a man who is negative and hostile against women.
It’s not exactly sexy, is it? And it’s definitely not fair.
Instead of letting negativity get to you, approach life and your own baggage with a healthy dose of humor. The best way to dismantle disappointments is to laugh about them and treat them with warmth and tenderness.
How to date
This brave new world of ours comes with a lot of advantages. Don’t think you are too old to use those advantages to your benefit. If you haven’t already done it, I strongly recommend that you try internet dating. Here is a fun article about a woman in her 40s doing internet dating.
When you do internet dating, you put yourself in the mind frame that you are out there searching for someone. You become available, and that’s not a bad thing.
Taking a break from online dating is totally ok
Don’t look at terrible dates as something frustrating. Try and enjoy every turn of the dating game. At least you will enjoy telling your friends how the date went. When you have had enough of internet dating, just take a break.
Participate in the world
Don’t limit your search for love to dating apps. Go out in the world and have fun. I’m sure there are a lot of passions you haven’t had time to pursue. Now is the time.
Sign up for classes or groups, or both. The Internet makes finding like-minded people very easy. Whatever you are into, out there are other people engaging in the same passion.
Make new friends
To be able to do this, you might have to find new friends. If all your friends are married or in long-term relationships, you need to broaden your circle.
We need people who understand us. A shared struggle is just so much more fun. Maybe you don’t need a new man (right now). Maybe you need a new best friend?
I don’t have time to date
If you feel that you don’t have time to date, ask yourself one simple question; if you already were in a relationship with an amazing man, would you have time for him?
If the answer is yes, you do have time to date.
What you don’t have time for is the emotional roller coaster of dating. The hope and the crushing of that hope.
Or spending your only free evening with an incredibly boring date. (We have all been there.) When you want to find love after 40, you have to make love a priority.
Effort is your friend
To obtain something worth having, you have to put in time and effort. Sure, it might seem like everyone else just magically met someone without effort.
But if this hasn’t happened to you so far, it’s time to put in the effort. The less you can regard it as an effort and the more you can regard it as just pure fun, the more successful you will be.
The logistics will be more difficult
There are many false beliefs we tell ourselves about finding love after 40. I hope I have helped debunk some of those beliefs.
But one of those beliefs is indeed true; When you are older, it is more difficult to find someone who fits into your life. This is especially true if you have children. You might catch yourself on a date thinking about how your kids will get along.
When you are over 40, you already have a lot settled. You have a routine. You probably have a career and a lot of charming friends. You have a place where you live. And you might not be prepared to change any of these things.
You might have to compromise
The men you meet will be in a similar place. They will also have a lot of their lives already figured out. For both of you to move forward together, you will have to compromise.
The good news is that with the right man uniting your lives will feel easier. Don’t spend too much time thinking about the logistics of a potential relationship. Face the obstacles one at a time when they show up. Be aware of the problem but don’t let them stop you from searching for someone special.
Be open to being surprised
When you want to find love after 40, you have to be a bit flexible with your schedule and with exactly what you wish for. Be prepared for a man to come along and be absolutely nothing like what you expected him to be. Think outside the box rather than having a fixed idea of what you are looking for.
Lower your Standards
This is not a recommendation you get very often, but I’m going to go there. To find love after 40, you need to lower your standard.
There are several different reasons for this. First of all, feelings can develop over time. Even if someone doesn’t sweep you off your feet over a coffee date, they can still be someone special. But for that to happen, you have to give them a chance.
We are less inclined to fall in love with someone when we are older, we are just more skeptical and better at protecting ourselves and because of this, you can’t compare the feelings you had in your 20s with the feelings you have now.
Not feeling it, is a form of protection
When you protect yourself from being hurt, it is easy to be too dismissive of the men you do meet. If you reject them first, they never get the possibility to reject you. Ask yourself if the man in question is a nice human being? And if he would make a good friend?
If the answer is yes, try to push yourself a bit more. Sometimes a kiss (or sex) is needed to awaken a slumbering feeling.
Take him for a ride
You also need to have a bit of fun to let loose. In this spirit, enjoy being single and try out men you wouldn’t normally go for. Men who you, for one reason or another, don’t see a future with. We wrote an article about the subject: Should you lower your standards to get laid?
Being single n your 40s is your chance to take a bit from every corner of the big smorgasbord that is life. Don’t be too goal-oriented. Enjoy the process by lowering your standards.
Be vulnerable
When you are over 40 and looking for love, it is easy to have too high walls around yourself and your life. You are protective of your children (if you have children) and everything you have built.
You might have a perfectly nice evening with someone, but don’t be afraid to be personal and to talk about your struggles. Try to be vulnerable without being negative.
Share who you are
To allow someone to fall for you, you have to let them in, even with the risk of being rejected.
To be vulnerable in the right way is attractive. When you tell someone deep things about yourself, you allow them to get to know you. In this process, you also allow yourself to like them. Basically, when we tell someone things about ourselves, we end up liking them.
Being personal is part of the process
As humans, we want to understand each other, and we want to get to know each other and the intimacy that originates from this process is what makes humans connect and care about each other. Because of this, you have to be vulnerable to be able to fall in love.
To prepare yourself for how to find love after 40, do some future reading on the subject of love and dating. I recommend our article How do you know if you are dating the right person? and How to make someone fall in love with you.
A Final Note
Like everything in life worth having, finding the right man, finding love after 40 takes time and effort. Just because something is not easy doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Being rejected sucks, but challenges are part of life.
Don’t regard dating or the time you spend as single as wasted time. This time can be some of the most fruitful times in your whole life. This is the time when you can discover what you like, what turns you on and what is important to you.
A relationship takes up a lot of time and energy, and the wrong relationship makes us stale and afraid. So take advantage of your freedom and discover yourself and other humans.
Don’t think too much about the future. Because the future always arrives, regardless of the amount of attention you give to it.
