What’s My Label?

When you are married, they call you Mrs.
When you are single, it’s Ms.
When you get an engagement ring, you’re known as somebody’s fiancee.
If you are in a gay relationship, you’re someone’s partner.
If you’re going with a college frat boy – they say you are pinned.
If you are dating different guys, they say you are playing the field.
If you are only dating one man – you are going steady.

But in the senior dating world, the labels can be quite different. Take a friend of mine, who, as of this writing, is 77 years old. She is dating a man who is 91. If she referred to him as her boyfriend, she thinks her grandchildren would howl with laughter. But, she explains, should she refer to him as her gentleman friend, she would feel like a stodgy old lady.

The 91 year-old boyfriend, too, says he feels young and spry when he refers to her as his girlfriend, although he often wonders if it isn’t politically correct – at his age – to say he has a lady friend.

Not long ago, a friend said she had a lovely man she wanted me to meet. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m seeing someone.” My friend who is my contemporary, knew exactly what I meant. But if I had said that to a person decades younger, they might have wondered if I had a vision problem.

One step beyond dating is living together. In days gone by, such a couple would be considered living in sin. But in the senior dating world, this is a perfectly acceptable way of life. For no other reason than when 2 people share the household expenses, there is more money to spend to go on cruises.

And what if you are living together only on weekends? I have a friend who lives part time with her significant other, as she refers to him, because, she explained, she can go to her own house whenever he got on her nerves!

I’ve dated somewhat. One man I labeled Cheap Bob because he considered going to Wendy’s as a perfectly acceptable dinner date. Another I referred to as Deaf Man because he never heard a word I said. Looking back, I wonder if he really couldn’t hear me, or was so used to tuning out whatever his wife talked about, that not responding to anything I said was just a habit! And the most accurate label I ever gave to a man was reserved for a gentleman who thought he could drive at night. Unfortunately, his vision was so impaired that he was really a danger on the road. My name for him became Near Death, and frankly, I only went out with him once – for obvious reasons. In retrospect, as far as I’m concerned, he was a “blind date” in more ways than one.

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Bea Lewis is the author of the recently published “A Widow’s Journey: How I Went From Loss to Learning to Moving On.” It is available on Amazon. com, both in the paperback and Kindle versions.