‘I was Bridget Jones then and I’m Bridget now’: The brutal truth about being single and dating in your fifties

As it’s revealed One Day’s Leo Woodall will join Renee Zellweger and Hugh Grant for Bridget Jones 4, which looks at being single in your older years, Bibi Lynch and Lucy Cavendish debate the pros and cons of being on the dating scene after 50...

Total drag: if you think the dating scene is hard to navigate in your thirties, try doing it two decades later (Alamy)

So Bridget Jones is back – number four. This new film is based on author Helen Fielding’s 2013 novel Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy and will see single (again) 51-year-old BJ (divorced? Widowed? I get confused) enter the brutal world of midlife dating.

Uh oh. I feel sorry for her – because, let me tell you/her, dating in your fifties is nothing like when Jones was last in the dating pool. Believe me, I should know. (In a nutshell, in case Fielding reads this and needs inspiration for a tragedy: I’m almost 58 and my only long-term relationship – between 27 and 31 – ended the day after Diana died.)

In my thirties, dating – like people – was sometimes nerve-racking, sometimes disappointing, sometimes a waste of time, but it was always hopeful and had potential.

Now? As a friend recently described it, it is a s*** show. A cruel show that is the hell of the sweet-shop mentality of dating apps. A few pointers to get the details right. Here goes...

Then: Twelve cigarettes, five chardonnays. No Food.

Now: Three Lucky Saints (sober-curious), two shots of Kombucha (because, you know, gut health).

How to get date-ready

Then: St Tropez tan and Mac Viva Glam and combats.

Now: Mainlining hyaluronic acid, plenty of plumping water, the “big mirror/big hair” search, and taking all my vitamins. Especially B12. A recent deficiency left me dizzy and I fainted in the road outside my local Co-op. Hot.

Where you meet people

Then: Everywhere! Friends, friends of friends, enemies of friends of friends. Parties. On the way to work. At work. During work cigarette breaks at work. During a one-for-the-road round after work.

Dear diary, midlife dating is a nightmare – and I have to listen to men talking about beer and fishing (Alamy)

Now: Manifesting. Because God knows you can’t find anyone IRL (Google it, Grandma). Back in the day we’d look around the pub and do the eye-contact/look away/eye-contact thing.

Now we’re looking down at our phones, maybe while swiping for a date because the “where” now is apps. And if, like me, you put your real age, the main interest is from boys who want you to toy with them.

That might sound like an ego boost, but being fetishised is weird – and being dismissed as a genuine long-term relationship because they want to have kids and you’re too old for all of that is painful.

The dates

Then: People who – on the whole – were interested in having an actual relationship; people who seemed happy with – because we were too young to question – the “linear” life of love/marriage/kids/crisis. Dates who’d meet up with a beautiful open heart. (As Sex and the City’s Miranda said: “Men are like cabs; when they’re available, their light goes on.”)

Now: The lights are not only off, but the bulbs are smashed.

There are the men who get the ego/childhood-fixing boost of making as many women as they can fall in love with them at the same time. (Apps and social media facilitate this, of course.) The younger men who think it would be fun to date someone older than their mum. (Oh hi, family Christmas.)

Or the other blokes who like the one who, after our first date, text me on the way home to ask, “Please tell me you have pubic hair”.

There are older married men who think I’m “safe” to flirt with. (Attached men seem to see single older women as “unserious” and “fun” to lead on.)

Bibi Lynch says navigating dating in your fifties is tough (Gemma Day)

Or the date my mate’s mate had… She’d been messaging for months and thought they had a connection. They planned to meet and she, so excited, got herself dolled up and waited for him outside the cinema. A car approached, slowed down, then the window wound down and her beau-to-be put his head out. “You wear too much makeup,” he said – and then drove off.

I told you, Bridget: brutal.

The venue

Then: Anywhere. I was once hit on by a gorgeous man in a Sainsbury’s. (I was super-tanned and wearing a white bodysuit and looked 2000s-fabulous.) We spent the day together in the in-store cafe. When you’re young you can do any lighting.

Now: Daytime cafes are still good – easier to politely leave after a disappointing decaf than if you’re two courses into a meal/an hour into a gig. Also, the “meh” of meeting someone you didn’t click with seems less crushing during daylight hours.

I don’t want to depress Bridget, but I’m not sure I can think of any upsides to dating in your fifties. I guess at least we’re not in our sixties?

Lucy Cavendish says dating in your fifties isn’t all bad (Supplied)

‘It’s beyond ick for our children to think of us being physically involved with someone’

Like many of us, I didn’t think I’d be single in my sixth decade on the planet. But, for an increasing number of us, becoming a 50-something Bridget Jones has become a reality.

This means we have ex-partners, older children who are dating themselves and so much emotional baggage I’m amazed we are still standing.

But we are more than standing. We are actively looking for love. So, for me, this is the good news. In the last few years post my divorce, I have met many good and interesting men aged 50-plus – mostly online. Most men are kind and decent and looking for love and I have learned to hone my dating antenna so that I avoid the baddies.

But when you have teenage children it’s not that easy. When I first came “back on the market”, I was living in a big house and people came in and out all the time; neighbours, friends, friends of friends etc.

So if a new man appeared, I don’t think my children thought about it very much. No teenage child who is dating wants to think about their mother getting romantically and physically involved with anybody. There is ick and beyond ick.

But then I had to downsize and now I live pretty much cheek-by-jowl with the younger three of my four children, Leonard, 21, Jerry, 19, and my daughter Ottoline, 17. There is absolutely no privacy in this house really and it feels absolutely verboten for me to bring anyone back.

‘It suddenly hit me that I’ve been single for seven years’: you don’t have to be like the perpetually single Bridget (Universal)

Fortunately, the men I meet also have older children who have either left home or live with their mothers. However, lots of people my age also have lodgers which means it’s quite difficult to find privacy with a “flatmate” snoring in the bedroom next door.

The biggest difference now of course is online dating. Every woman will tell you the story of the man holding the fish or clutching a pint of beer or running or cycling, so unless you’re passionate about all these pastimes you’re a bit stuck.

The really awkward moments are when someone looks nothing like their profile picture or spends half an hour telling you their commute or, worse, their ex-wife. However, I believe the adage that there is always something interesting to learn from someone even if it is about the trials and tribulations of the Elizabeth line.

As a love coach, I’m incredibly good at helping people find their one. I often know I need to take my own advice and what I tell people is just enjoy it. The upside is it gets you out of your routine which is a good thing and opens us up to new opportunities and new experiences.

The downside is that you sometimes need to have the skin of a rhinoceros to survive the breadcrumbing, the airing, the ghosting. But if you can grow that extra layer of resilience, being a Bridget in your fifties – without the baggage of looking for a man to have a family with – can be a lot more fun than being a Bridget in your thirties.