I'm a Happily Married Woman on a Dating App

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Like many people with an aging parent, I receive regular calls for tech support. Weekly, I explain to my 80-something mother how to attach a photo to an email. When her printer died, I offer sage counsel (“Is it plugged in?”).

But lately I’ve been getting tech support calls for an issue I never anticipated.

“I need help with my profile photo,” my mother informed me recently. “I want one in the green sweater.”

Mom is on a dating website.

My mother has never been good with technology, but she’s rarely lacked for male attention. Coming of age in 1950s New York City, she enjoyed a series of romances before embarking on the first of what would ultimately be three marriages. The last, to my much-missed stepdad, was the most enduring.

She has been widowed for several years now, and the loneliness is getting to her. This is how I — happily married for decades — find myself navigating a dating app, evaluating the dubious charms of a gallery of elderly bachelors.

Since almost none of these hopefuls appeal to my mother, she keeps looking. And when I drop by to visit, I join her. After 30 years of monogamy, it feels distinctly odd to be assessing single guys. It’s also an intriguing window into a realm of dating that I bypassed entirely.

“What’s wrong with this one?” I ask, scrolling through her latest matches. The guy is in his early 80s, a resident of a leafy suburb, a graduate of a prestigious East Coast university. He belongs to the Native Plant Society!

“Absolutely not,” she tells me. “I could never kiss a man named Elmer.”

I am genuinely shocked. “Was this the way you raised us? What about judging people by the content of their characters, and all that?”

For a moment, my mother looks abashed. “No, it wasn’t,” she admits. But before I can plead his case, she has deleted the hapless Elmer.

My mother is — let’s be honest here — a snob. She was a scholarship student at a private school and an exclusive women’s college. An English major, she has no use for frivolous modern novels, preferring obscure European classics. She listens to Renaissance music and attends the local English country dance, where earnest seniors engage in the decorous quadrilles seen in Jane Austen movies. Her idea of a good time is touring a Gothic cathedral.

The guys on the app mostly like fishing, cars and their grandchildren. Mom is undeterred.

So I pose her for a more flattering photo, help fine-tune her profile. I explain that technical issues can be fixed without calling customer service, and nobody nefariously moved the “edit” button.

After her coffee shop dates, we debrief. One guy was a devout Catholic despite a profile proclaiming him agnostic. Another could not hold a conversation. A man she described as “a kindred spirit” never contacted her again. (It’s tough to explain the term “ghosting” to an octogenarian, although it turns out she is familiar with the concept.)

“He was a prison guard for 27 years!” she informs me, after her most recent date. “He had no other ambition. Needless to say, that’s the last I’ll see of him.”

“Didn’t you ask about his background before you decided to meet him?” I respond.

“Do you think I should have?” she queries back.

I roll my eyes. “Mom.”

“Oh, well!” she says merrily. “Onward!”

I understand that my mother misses male admiration, even in her 80s. I know she longs for the companionship of being in a couple. But watching her seek it on a dating app has only emphasized our differences.

Unlike my mom, I was a romantic late bloomer, a shy wallflower who yearned for love but never expected men to notice me much. By 29, I’d had one chaste high school romance, a serious college boyfriend, a few first dates and a lengthy case of unrequited love.

Then I walked into a dance and met my husband. Together for nearly 30 years, we can still make each other blush, have a plethora of inside jokes and have silly nicknames. After weathering the exhaustion of early parenthood, the shenanigans of middle school and a lot of teenage angst, we know we can get through most things together.

I’ve had a great love. Helping my mom navigate the online quest for romance has reinforced just how fortunate I am. If, God forbid, something should happen to my husband, I don’t expect to find that kind of kismet again. Moreover, I won’t be looking for it. Not on a dating app, not anywhere. I will be done.

My mother tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about. “Never say never!”

I admire Mom’s courage in reaching out for love. But watching her struggle to connect with strangers has taught me that I have no problem saying never. I’ve always been comfortable with my own company. Despite the joy I find in my marriage, I still thrive on time alone. And no matter what happens, I’m pretty sure I always will.

Have any of you tried using a dating app? If so, how did it go? Let us know in the comments below.