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Gray Love tells stories about the most common of themes: seeking and sometimes finding love. Forty-five men and women, 60 and 94, from diverse backgrounds write about dating, building a relationship or fashioning a life alone. The longing for connection in old age is palpable, with more senior singles than ever searching online and elsewhere.
List of contents
Introduction
Prelude
Looking at Sixty by Cynthia McVay
Part I. To Be or Not To Be In A Relationship: Tales of Humor, Disappointment, Rewards, and Personal Insight
1. Not Jane Eyre’s Story by Susan Ostrov Weisser
2. Discovery through Online Dating Sites: A Woman’s Perspective by Phyllis Carito
3. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind by Nan Bauer-Maglin
4. Confessions of an Online Dater by Neil Stein
5. Advertisement for Myself by Jonathan Ned Katz
6. What Would I Wear? by Laura Broadwell
7. Something from Everyone by Stephanie M. Brown
8. A (Mostly) Amusing Exercise in Futility by Elizabeth Locke
9. Rick Redux by Candida B. Korman
10. You Say Potato by Amy Rogers
11. Three Dates by Margie Kaplan
12. Dreams and Matches in an Unsure Virtual World by Alice F. Freed
13. In Transition, Not Seeking for Now by Hedva Lewittes
14. “Do You Get It Yet?” by Rett Zabriskie
15. On the Road by Irvin Peckham
16. Dark Clouds and Silver Linings by William Wiesner
17. An Octogenarian’s Adventures in Online Dating by Natasha Josefowitz
18. Coping with COVID-19 by Phyllis Bogen
19. It’s Valentine’s Day. So What! by Erica Manfred
20. What’s Sex Got To Do With It? by Judith Ugelow Blak
21. Gray Love en Noir: African American Women Flying Solo by Choice and by Chance by Linda Wright Moore
22. Passion and Prejudice by Jean Y. Leung
Part II. The Complications and Pleasures of Elder Relationships
23. Checking a Different Box by Jan Jacobson
24. Weume by Stephanie Speer and David Levy
25. Begin Again? by Sandi Goldie and Jim Bronson
26. The Wizard of Algo by Vincent Valenti
27. Date, Marry, Repeat by Stacey Parkins Millett
28. Late in the Dating Game: Walked, Homered, Fouled Out by Eugene Roth
29. Matchmaker, Matchmaker! by Isabel Hill
30. A Cozy, Crowded Bed by Nan Bauer-Maglin
31. Our Bench and Other Late Life Wonders by Doris Friedensohn and Paul Lauter
32. Love after Seventy and Eighty by Susan O’Malley
33. Where Is This Going? by Barbara Abercrombie
34. Pleasures and Complications: Living Apart Together by Susan Bickley
35. Parallel Matches by Anonymous
36. Reflections on “Old Love” by Sarah Dunn
37. A Vine of Roses by Mimi Schwartz
38. From Texas to Ohio by Bonnie Fails
39. Till Illness Do Us Part? by Angela Page
40. What Remains Has Just Begun by Tierl Thompson and Idris Walters
41. At Once by Dustin Beall Smith
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
About the author
NAN BAUER-MAGLINis Professor Emerita at the City University of New York. She has published eight collections (six with coeditors) on topics such as step-families, retirement, feminism, death, dying and choice, and older parenting. Her latest book is Widows’ Words: Women Write on the Experience of Grief, The First Year, The Long Haul, and Everything In Between.
DANIEL E. HOOD is a retired professor of sociology. He taught at several New York Metro area schools for four decades. His latest book is Redemption and Recovery: Parallels of Religion and Science in Addiction Treatment. His memoir essay, “Better Late Than Never,” was recently published in Tick Tock: Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40.
Summary
Gray Love tells stories about the most common of themes: seeking and sometimes finding love. Forty-five men and women, 60 and 94, from diverse backgrounds write about dating, building a relationship or fashioning a life alone. The longing for connection in old age is palpable, with more senior singles than ever searching online and elsewhere.
