Speaker: How does age really impact dating?

Gloria MacDonald: Age is such a big issue with people today. We live in a society that's all about youth. All kinds of studies have been done where the new 50 is 38-years-old, so people who are 50, think that they look and act and feel like they are 38-years-old. Virtually, 98% of people, who I speak to in my dating service and again, I am dealing with that, say 37, 38 plus market. Virtually, 90% of people or 98% of people that I have speak to, when I talked to them on the phone, they will say, well I am 55-years-old, but I don't look at today over 45. You know what; we were fooling ourselves, frankly. I think what we are doing is we are comparing ourselves to our appearance or what our appearance look like, when they were 55, 60, whatever; but the fact and the matter is if we look around 55-year-olds pretty much look like 55-year-olds. I can tell you an all honesty, in the five years that I have interviewing people, and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of people that I have met through my business, there have only been five times, five people that I have met who have really thrown me off.

; who have really, really looked younger than they were. Only five people out of hundreds and hundreds, and I am a pretty good judge of age now because this is what I do fulltime for a living. So it's great that we think we are younger and we are feeling vivacious and full of energy and we are healthy, that's wonderful, but don't fool yourself into believing that if you are 55-year-old woman, you are going to meet and have a significant meaningful relationship with a 45-year-old man. Chances of that really happening are pretty slim and it's the same for men and women. Men tell me that they look and feel and act so much younger than they are. So maybe they are 65 and they feel like they are 55, so they want to meet a 45-year-old because they want to meet someone who is ten years younger than the way they feel that they looking at. Give yourself the reality check. It's great again that we all feel so healthy, but we are the age we are.