I’m an over-50s dating coach – my top tips to finding love after divorce and the BIG mistakes to avoid
PROFESSIONAL dating coach Jacqui Baker knows exactly how to play Cupid for the over-50s – because she has made many of the mistakes they do when looking for love.
The mum of three says her biggest blunder when seeking out a new life partner after divorce was rushing in too quickly.
Jacqui, from Southampton, runs over-50s dating service Select Connections.
She believes women who appear desperate are making a huge mistake and says: “As women get into their fifties, there is an element of desperation and panic, where they’re thinking, ‘I don’t want to be alone as I get old’.
“Women worry they aren’t beautiful enough to attract someone of the opposite sex at their age and think men are all looking for someone younger.
"Lonely people end up rushing into the wrong relationships and compromising on values.
“I always tell my clients, ‘Don’t go looking for a spark — where has that got you before? Take your time. Don’t set yourself up to fail again’.
"So many people go into a relationship knowing, deep down, it’s not right because they’re desperate not to be alone. But they’ll only find themselves single again a couple of years down the line.”
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Jacqui met her ex-husband in London aged 25, having kids Ciaran, 28, Conor, 24, and Lucy, 16, during their 20-year relationship. They split in 2007 and divorced in 2009.
That same year Jacqui, then living back home in Derry, met Thomas* while on a visit to England and hit it off.
They started a long-distance relationship which lasted four years, before Jacqui moved 550 miles with her kids to be with him, getting a job as a business development manager at the University of Southampton.
But the relationship was not a happy one and Jacqui, 57, now admits she rushed into it.
She ended things in January 2018 and has been single ever since.
Jacqui says: “It was built on a weekend relationship and the moment I moved here, things were different.
“I lived with Thomas for five years and I should have left earlier. But because I sacrificed so much to move over here with my kids, I stuck with it.
“I thought, ‘I’ve got to work at this — not everyone gets a fairytale ending’.
“I was scared to be single in my fifties but also scared to be single in a place where all my friends were people I’d met through my partner.
“The relationship was bad for longer than I let myself know and I compromised on too many things. It didn’t work, no matter how hard we tried.
“I literally started again with nothing. But eventually I took the plunge and I’ve never been happier.”
CHANGE TACTICS
Jacqui had looked for singles events in her local area but could only find “dreary” walking groups or cheap group meals at chain pubs.
She decided in January 2020 to set up dating mixers for those in their fifties and older.
She then trained as a matchmaker during lockdown, launching Select Connections in November 2020, before cashing in a pension and going full-time in February last year.
She says: “I’m now a matchmaker with more than 1,000 singletons on my books.
“I’ve left my full-time job, which was a huge thing for me.”
Jacqui works chiefly with divorced people, widows and widowers.
She aims to be “open, honest and blunt” with her clients, and says rushing in is “one of the biggest mistakes” people make when dating after marriage.
Others errors include being too picky and discounting potential partners over trivial things.
This exact time of year — the third week in February — is when people feel most despondent about finding love, according to research by findingtheone.com, with singles giving up their New Year hopes of finding love.
But Jacqui says singles simply need to change their tactics.
She says: “If you stop focusing on aesthetics, you have more chance of making it last. You’re not purely judging someone on what they look like.
“At 50 or 60, you’re really set in your ways. What side of the bed you sleep on, how you drink your tea, what you watch on the telly.
"Sex is so different in your sixties. I had a new couple who both walked round to get into the same side of the bed.
'THEY SEE ME AS ONE OF THEM'
“He said, ‘That’s my side of the bed’ and she said, ‘Well, I sleep on that side too’ and they had an argument over it.
“When you were younger, you’d be too concerned with the sex itself.
“I don’t want my clients compromising too much, like I did in my last relationship. But at the same time, I need to make them more flexible.”
Jacqui charges £475 for a six-month membership and £975 or £1,295 for 12 months, depending on how many introductions the client wants.
As for Jacqui, she is happily single but still “100 per cent” hoping to find love — and has set herself a “deadline” to meet her man before turning 60.
She says: “I’m just too busy at the moment. I could easily date — I get asked out all the time. But when I enter into my next relationship, I know that I want it to be my last.
“My clients love that I’m single because they see me as one of them.”
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*Thomas is not his real name.