Dating Apps and Depression: What I Learned at 63 Starting Over

I recently left a difficult love relationship, moved 2000 miles away, and began a new life by entering a three-year master's program in counseling. At 63 years old, it's the beginning of my "act 3." I'm not planning on an act 4, but remember what President Eisenhower said: planning is imperative, plans are useless.

As part of this new beginning I created profiles on two dating apps and a grand fantasy. My act 3 was going to include a beautiful love story. This is a hallmark of my particular brand of mental illness: my extraordinary ability to create fictional circumstances and then feel that I can believe them into reality. It's what makes me a good actor. And it's what sends me into depressive episodes.

The reality of dating apps

At best, I have an ambivalent relationship to dating apps. They are an effective way to meet people — as long as you can meet certain basic requirements. And the most important requirement of all is that you are visually attractive according to conventional beauty standards. You essentially create an advertisement for yourself, but it's not for your self. It's for what you think will make you desirable to whatever demographic you're attempting to attract.

Dating apps are often based on a primarily white beauty standard which can be distilled in the word “hotness.” Those who have "hotness" are usually between 18 and 40, have low body-mass indices, muscle tone, and faces that might sell skin lotion or fitness centers. I do not have hotness, although some people find me attractive.

Why depression makes dating apps dangerous

My psyche is finely attuned to relational energies. My happiness is stimulated by connection to, inclusion by, and the affirmation of other people. My depression flares through rejection, abandonment, and isolation. So I am a sitting duck for the trials and tribulations of dating apps. Ironically, the people who fare best on dating apps are those who don't care very much about relationships — people who adopt a dispassionate, cynical attitude about sex and intimacy. People who pretend to be invulnerable.

In the six months I have been exploring these apps I have gone on about 10-15 dates. Two of them included sex. None of them lasted. I have ended half of them, and the woman has ended the other half. They all end with a version of, “this isn’t what I’m looking for” - but you can substitute “you’re” for “this” to get a feel for the emotional punch that lands. For someone prone to depression, who is triggered by rejection, these endings can serve as “evidence” that:

• I am ugly.
• I am defective.
• I am not sexually adequate.
• I am fundamentally unlovable and destined for a solitary life.
• . . . you get the idea.

Depression is a spectrum disorder with many flavors. Some of us keep it at bay through medication, talk therapy, or community. Others have it worse — their depression renders them nearly immobile and resists conventional treatments. So rather than say 'if you are in treatment for depression you should stay off the dating apps', I'll say: know your depression intimately before exploring them.

• What are your triggers?
• How does your depression respond to intense emotional experiences?
• How does it respond to sexual intimacy?
• Does rejection send you into a tailspin?
• Can you “dip in and out” of depressive episodes, or are they long term?

Finding a healthier approach

I have recently limited my engagement with these apps and only go fishing every one or two weeks — dropping "likes" on women I find attractive. But I leave the profiles up, and if anyone drops a like on me I'll check them out. I have also become more discriminating, abandoning the "crumbs at the table of love" mindset in favor of one in which I regard it as a special privilege to be matched with me. Does that sound arrogant? Well, too bad.

I go on a first date with no expectations. Hope, sure. Fantasy, maybe. But when it doesn't work out, my feeling is: par for the course. I have been in too many relationships that were doomed from the start — and we hung on through some kind of masochistic self-delusion. No more of that.

Turning it over

I am fond of experiencing my life through a spiritual lens. I belong to a fellowship which encourages me to give my will and my life over to a power greater than myself. I have done well with this in most ways but one — my love life — which I have continued to regard as a battle to be won, a problem to be solved. I have tortured it through personal will, inflamed desire, and fear.

I am in my sixties. The stakes go up for us now. If solitude is not your happy place, having faith that a mysterious benign force will bring a love partner into your life is a stretch. It means being okay with being alone, maybe until the end. Or maybe it means redefining what "being alone" means.

What if I turned it over, gave it away, became open to outcome but not attached to outcome? What if I said, You decide? What if I finally understood that she will never make me feel better — she will never make me feel anything? That's not how feelings work. They arise in me, for better or for worse, and then it's up to me how I deal with them. Feeling better is an inside job, not a project to be subcontracted to another human being, even if she's "hot."