Over 60 Dating In Canada

Dating in your sixties in Canada is a different proposition from dating at thirty, and not only for the obvious reasons. The country is large, the winter is long, and a good many of the old ways of meeting somebody have quietly gone. The workplace is behind you. The friends who used to introduce people have their own lives. And if you've moved to be nearer the grandkids, you may not know many people in town at all.

Which is why a lot of Canadians over 60 end up looking online, and why an age-specific site tends to work better than a general one.

Why an age-specific site

On a general dating app you spend most of your time filtering out people who were never going to be right, and fielding the occasional message from somebody thirty years younger with an investment opportunity. Here, everyone is in the same age bracket by design. That sounds like a small thing. It isn't. It changes the tone of the whole place, because nobody has to explain why they're not looking for a nightclub.

It also means the shared reference points are already there. Retirement, grown children, grandchildren at a distance, a house that's suddenly too big, the question of whether you still want to go south for the winter or you've had enough of the drive. You don't have to preface any of it.

What people are actually looking for

Not everybody here wants to remarry, and it's worth saying so. Some people are looking for a partner. Plenty are looking for companionship: somebody to go for dinner with, take a trip with, sit through a film with and argue about afterwards. Others want a walking friend or a curling partner and would be quite happy if it never became anything more.

All of those are legitimate, and the ones who do best are usually the ones who say plainly which they're after. Being clear costs you nothing and saves everybody time.

Distance, and the Canadian version of nearby

Worth thinking about before you set your search radius. "Local" means something different in Canada than it does in a small country, and an hour's drive each way in February is a rather bigger commitment than an hour's drive in July. Be realistic about how far you'd genuinely travel on a dark evening in January, then set the filter accordingly. Somebody two provinces away who seems perfect is a harder proposition than it looks on a screen.

That said, plenty of members do meet somebody a couple of hours away and make it work. Just go in with your eyes open about what the driving looks like.

Taking it at your own pace

The most useful feature of online dating at this age isn't the searching. It's the distance. You can exchange messages for a fortnight before deciding whether you'd like to hear their voice, and hear their voice before deciding whether you'd like to meet. Nobody is standing in front of you while you make up your mind, and there's no awkwardness in simply not replying.

Your contact details stay yours throughout. Messaging happens inside the site, so you're never handing over an email address or a phone number to somebody you're still working out. If you stop replying, that's the end of it.

Getting started

Joining is free, and it takes about ten minutes. Write a few honest lines about yourself, add a recent photo where you're smiling, and have a look at who's nearby. If you want the detail on any of that, we've got a guide to writing a good profile, one on the photo, and one on what to say in that first message.

Before you start talking to anybody, it's also worth ten minutes on staying safe online and knowing how to spot a scammer. Not because this is a dangerous business, but because the people who know the warning signs never get near the trouble in the first place.

And if online dating turns out not to be your thing, that's fine too. There are plenty of other ways to meet people over 60 in Canada, and the best results usually come from doing two or three of them at once.

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