Sami Lukis: ‘I’ve been dating for 30 years’
TELEVISION presenter Sami Lukis reflects on a love life filled with so many mishaps there was enough to fill a book.
Stellar
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SAMI Lukis doesn’t have a type. But she has dated all types. Blond men, dark-haired men, rich men, poor men, creative men — the kind who invent elaborate excuses to avoid paying a bill. Older men, younger men, funny men, smart men. And men whose kissing technique can only be likened to, “Wanna know what it feels like to make out with a lizard?”
Indeed, three decades of dating has afforded the TV presenter and radio star with enough stories about clammy, reptilian-like encounters that hearing even a few of them could make a seasoned dater’s blood run cold.
But Lukis still believes in love.
On a scorching summer day, she is sitting inside a busy cafe, clad in a simple cotton dress and explaining that being single has been a defining theme of her life. “I don’t know why,” she tells Stellar. “Maybe it’s because I refused to settle?” All that alone time “means I’m in a unique position”, she says. “I’m a 47-year-old woman who has never been married, and, other than a handful of long-term relationships, I’ve been single and dating for 30 years. Most people get married at some stage, don’t they?”
Lukis just never reached that stage — even if she tried like hell to get there.
It was not like she struggled to be recognised — she has been a familiar face in Australian lounge rooms for years, co-hosting kids’ show Totally Wild Rescue in the late ’90s and serving as a roving reporter on the much-hyped debut season of Big Brother. She earned reams of tabloid copy when she started dating contestant Peter Timbs; the pair became a temporary It couple, regularly splashed across the social pages for two years before mutually agreeing to go their separate ways.
Lukis moved on to a role as a weather presenter on the Today show and by her mid-30s was in her second high-profile relationship with celebrity accountant Anthony Bell. (Asked about Bell, who was embroiled in a domestic violence court case with wife and TV presenter Kelly Landry last year, in which an AVO against him was subsequently dismissed, her response is polite yet final: “We’re not in contact. That’s all I’ll say about that.”) More recently, she has had stints on Fox Sports News, filled in as a guest host for Studio 10, and does a variety of speaking gigs and ambassadorships. In other words, she keeps herself busy.
Lukis tells Stellar she looks back at her 20s with some regret — namely that she was not more carefree — and can now define her 30s as the time she “found herself”. That was the decade she had her first one-night stand and began travelling solo, while her friends were settling into family life. And she is blunt when asked to describe what dating has been like in her 40s. “Hideous! All the same dramas as dating in your 20s and 30s, but there’s all these adult things to put into the mix: the kid situation and exes and men having midlife crises.”
On one date, she says, “I thought I went into menopause! It was so embarrassing. I thought I had a hot flash. Thankfully, I guess, it was just a flash of nerves.”
The advent of online dating also changed things — in Lukis’s case, not necessarily for the better. Part of the reason is that she refuses to use matchmaking apps and remains sceptical about the motivation of the men who do; offline in the real world, she says, “Men generally don’t come near me. It used to be the odd drunk guy would — they’d make some random approach and it was always wildly inappropriate or entertaining.
“But I noticed when Tinder came out men stopped completely. It’s sad we’ve lost that face-to-face side of dating.”
Still, Lukis is far from bitter. “I’d love to meet someone, to have a companion to grow old with,” she says. “But I also don’t feel like anything is missing from my life. I’m not searching for my other half.”
There was a time when she did feel a noticeable absence — not long after turning 40, Lukis realised she wanted to have a baby. She promptly got her ovarian reserves tested, but was told IVF was unlikely to work; her best bet would be to become pregnant naturally, but it needed to happen soon.
So Lukis set off, meeting three different men with whom she attempted to have a baby. However, the relationships — which had been fast-tracked for the sake of fertility — didn’t survive the pressure, and she never conceived. All of this was detailed in Sami’s Baby, a Foxtel docu-series that lasted one season but still hit a nerve with many viewers — both women who reached out to share similar stories, and men genuinely keen to help Lukis still achieve her goal. Lukis says she is grateful for the experience but has accepted that a child is not meant to be. And it has been liberating.
In 2011, the same year Sami’s Baby aired, she launched Sami Lukis Travel, which organises trips to New York for female travellers over 30 who do not want to travel alone. It is perhaps no coincidence her destination of choice is also the home of Sex And The City, which revolutionised the way society thought about single women in their 30s right at the same time Lukis was joining their age bracket. The show’s message — dating as an older woman does not need to mean doom — is the same one Lukis is also so keen to get across.
“We need to remove the word ‘spinster’ from the English language,” she says. “It has such negative connotations.
“We’re not all sitting at home eating cat food in a dark room. I’m happily single and we need to empower people to be single. I just haven’t met the right guy. Maybe I never will. Maybe I’m not meant to be married. But I’m still meant to enjoy my life.”
Romantically Challenged by Sami Lukis (Penguin, $32.99), is out tomorrow.