I was single and over 50. This is how I found love again

When Miranda Hart announced she had recently married, the 51-year-old showed that love can strike at any time. The British comedian met her partner when she was 49, showing that racking up more years on the planet is no hindrance to finding “the one”.

Annie Lawson and partner, Dunstan Power, at one of their many Melbourne Airport reunions.

However, regardless of age, this path is strewn with swipes in the wrong direction, unanswered texts, declarations of love followed by silence, and disappointment when someone claims to be 30 and then turns up to a date looking like Dumbledore.

It was in London in 2003 when I tried internet dating for the first, and only, time. I was working as a journalist and had hoped a year abroad from Melbourne would open the pool of prospective husbands. I matched with a man called Doug, who worked in television as a director. His profile picture was blurry and obscured by a camera, but still I hoped this date might end a horror stretch of bad liaisons.

I was wrong. In real life, he looked like a younger Donald Trump. When he said “Hi”, he sounded like a younger Donald Trump.

We ordered drinks and the conversation shifted to films. I told Doug I loved Star Wars. He moved in closer, his brown cords pressed to my jeans, and he twirled a lock of my hair before sniffing it. I flinched. As he retreated, he mumbled something about having never yet met a woman who liked Star Wars.

I went to the bathroom and texted my mate Lizzy. “Help! I’m trapped on a date from hell with a creepy hair sniffer!” A few minutes passed … nothing. I called to ask why she hadn’t responded to my text. “What text?” she said. When I inspected my messages again, I felt as though my organs might shut down. I had texted Doug, not Lizzy. My options were to stay in the bathroom until he left, face the music or fake my own death.

I walked out of the bathroom to see a grim-faced Doug, who said, “I’m off.” At least he was right about that.

After a few years of macheting my way through the dating jungle with some questionable people, I was married with two kids. And after 16 years, it ended.

What breaks up a relationship is not always one big thing, but the unspoken smaller grievances that build up and cause irreparable damage. Failing to collapse boxes in the recycling bin, doomscrolling while you binge-watch a crime series with your partner, leaving lint balls the size of tumbleweeds on the laundry floor … all chip away at the bank of marital goodwill. Isolated incidents may seem harmless and trivial, but an accumulation of them can be destabilising.

I sought solace in Stoic philosophy, which teaches us to worry only about things that are within our control and to not bother with matters outside our control. I even wrote a book, Stoic in Love, to provide some rational perspective to my irrational emotions.

Some say getting over a break-up takes half as long as a relationship – which is bad news for those who have been married for decades. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. One minute you’re wearing a purple dressing gown, gorging on a family bag of salt and vinegar crisps that leaves your tongue feeling like sandpaper, and bingeing on chocolate until you fall into a sugar coma. The next you are suddenly ready to re-enter the jungle of love.

And sometimes, when you least expect it, the planets align. For me, it was a British friend who I had met in the UK at a wedding 22 years earlier. Back then, as we had gathered on the front lawn of a reception centre on an island on the River Thames, I had reflected on my narrowing romantic leads as I watched the other guests mingle, all coupled and all seemingly happy. I was introduced to the bride and groom, neither of whom I knew. They greeted me with a sympathetic head tilt, presumably concerned about my aloneness. I was there to support a distant cousin whose husband was not well at the time and was unable to attend.

When we were shepherded to our seats, next to me sat a man who looked like Sting meets Michael J. Fox with an excellent sense of humour. Fresh from my date with Doug, I felt it important to disclose the toilet-texting incident early in the evening, an anecdote that sealed our friendship.

After I moved back to Australia, we emailed and messaged funny updates on our lives from separate hemispheres. During lockdown, we both bought virtual reality headsets to stave off the boredom of going nowhere by going somewhere in the metaverse. We started playing mini golf in Japan, then progressed to visiting museums about space and the Mars rover. From our respective home towns 17,000 kilometres apart, we used the app Wander to visit tropical islands, and do rugged bush walks in the UK Lake District and Tasmania. Random people from Hawaii and Lucerne would crash our party of two, often stoned, and talking gobbledygook. We eventually discovered the mute and block buttons to make our unwanted guests magically disappear.

The writer and her partner bonding during sessions of virtual fishing.

Then we discovered virtual fishing. We would sit by the banks of various Korean and later US riverbanks, chatting about work, people we found annoying, food we disliked (tripe, tomatoes, squash) and whether we’d rather be eaten by a shark or a crocodile. I told him I regarded singer Simon Le Bon as my husband, despite him being legally wed to Yasmin. He felt the same about British actress Keeley Hawes. We talked until our headsets ran out of power.

The fish changed colour according to the bait we used. Sometimes they were green when we bought worms, meaning they were highly catchable. Yellow meant they were more difficult to catch, and we stayed away from red fish that were impossible to lure. Some fish were labelled angry and fought valiantly as we reeled them in before swimming away.

We fished in rivers at dawn and dusk with fireflies illuminating the sky. But beach fishing was our favourite. Palm trees swayed in the background, a propeller plane flew over just before a giant whale breached metres from the shoreline. We forgot all about lockdown.

My fishing partner eventually switched from float to lure fishing and caught twice as many fish as me. The atmosphere changed from relaxing to competitive. He accumulated so many points that he progressed to levels that I did not have the equipment for.

There were technical glitches along the way. Once, my avatar manifested as a pair of eyes and lips with no arms to fish. Another time, I defaulted to a school principal with short curly hair and a permanent look of disdain. We had to stop the game as it became too disconcerting for my fishing partner. Sometimes, our arms would accidentally skewer each other and impale the other’s stomach. If we stood on the same spot, we could see inside the other avatar’s brain and the other side of their eyeballs.

During these sessions, we shared stories about separation and supported one another as we navigated the tectonic life changes that come with divorce in one’s 50s. I was nesting with my ex-partner, swapping in and out of the family home while he rented a flat and spent as much time with his kids as possible.

Then, one day, my British friend announced he was coming to Australia for business. I wondered whether I would greet him with a handshake, a hug or a peck on the cheek. Would there be any chemistry as there had been online? If not, would the friendship fizzle?

As I waited nervously in the arrivals hall at Melbourne Airport, I realised I’d forgotten how tall he was or anything about how he looked in 3D. Memories of the wedding 22 years ago were blurry. My nerves were so jangled I dropped my handbag – and pens, tissues, phone, a chocolate bar and make-up scattered on the ground. As I scrambled to pick them up, I heard him say, “Hello.” He pulled me up (he was just the right height) and enveloped me in a long-awaited hug. And that was the beginning of our over-50s love story.

Annie Lawson is the author of Stoic in Love and Stoic at Work (Murdoch Books).

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