What Is Everyone So Afraid Of?

Broken hearts, missed connections, revealing ourselves

It was so much easier to jump in with two feet when we were young. You saw someone you liked, you moved closer, started a conversation that maybe led to a date. It was easy to laugh and have fun together. The end game was fairly clear. You wanted to get to know each other well enough to see if you could be compatible for some sort of long haul whether it was marriage or just a long term relationship. We had yet to be scarred by failure or loss in the game of love.

So many baby boomers easily followed this progression after the examples set by their parents. We got married in our twenties, started families before our biological clocks timed out, and often got divorced or separated when things got difficult. That was the part of the path that was in stark contrast to our parent’s. While less than 20% of couples who married in 1950 ended up divorced, about 50% of couples who married in 1970 did.

With the rise in divorce came a boom in dating sites and services geared toward helping middle aged people couple up. Anyone who has tried this will tell you the process is fraught with scams, liars, and a general difficulty in finding genuine connections.

The process can and does work sometimes. For myself, I get the sense that almost…