Looking for love in all the right places

Many of life's tasks become easier as we get older. Dating, however, is not one of them.

For women thrust back into the dating scene because of divorce or widowhood after decades of marriage, the experience often comes as a shock. "It's the men who now have all the choices," says Alice Solomon, author of "Find the Love of Your Life After Fifty!"

Solomon knows firsthand how difficult dating can be for a newly single older woman. Like many women who hit college age in the 1950s, Solomon didn't get her degree because she dropped out to get married. Ironically, it was her dropping back into school that led to the end of her marriage. Her husband was not happy with her decision to return to Wellesley College in 1979.

"I was changing and he wasn't, and he wanted me to be the girl he married, not the women I wanted to become," Solomon says. She and her husband divorced in 1981, after 25 years of marriage. Solomon graduated from Wellesley cum laude in 1984 at the age of 50.

As for dating, Solomon says one mistake women make is reverting to attitudes they had when they were teens. "I'm from the generation where a woman sat back and waited for the phone to ring," she says. "But today, women have to be more assertive."

She says perhaps the biggest mistake an older woman makes is asking her married friends for dating advice. "Married girlfriends don't know," Solomon says. "They were single 25 or 30 years ago." Solomon, who says she "hated being single," ultimately met a new love, and the two have been together for 14 years.

Solomon advises single women to get out of the house and go where they have a better chance to meet like-minded single men. Good places to meet mature men are at bookstore events, art and theater groups or by taking continuing education courses, Solomon says. She is also a big believer in Internet dating. "When you're single, you have to go where the men are," she says. "And that's where the men are today."

Solomon offers an array of tips, including links to Internet dating sites, on her website, gorgeousgrandma.com.