A Jewish matchmaker shares an inspiring love story of finding true love after age 50…


Sometimes I come across a video or an article that is so packed full of wisdom that I feel I must share it with the Jewish singles I work with. “A Love Story” is from a YouTube channel that mainly focuses on 50+ makeup and style. In this video, she talks about her own real-life love story while getting ready for a photo shoot, and it is inspiring.


If you doubt that you’ll ever find love again, this is a MUST read. I’ve transcribed (and edited) her love story below but if you’ve got 30 minutes to watch her video, I highly recommend that you do. The link is below.


Looking for Love


“Four years ago, I was obsessed with an on-again, off-again, over 8yr relationship with a complete narcissist who repeatedly broke up with me for the “crime” of having grey hair.


He broke up with me many many times and it was always some excuse or another, but one of the big ones was the fact that I had grey hair.


Very well rid of him, but you all remember seeing me cry over him.


Then, a guy that I was dating – a nice enough guy – but he had this weird relationship with his ex-wife and it was just drama, drama, drama. If I’m going to be involved with this man, his ex-wife and all the machinations with their child and everything is going to be a part of my life, and I don’t really want that to be a part of my life; that was a level of crazy I didn’t need.


So then I was single and dating for some time. I was on a couple of dating apps. I used Hinge, and the one date that I went on from somebody I met on Hinge, was very much a situation where I was really glad I got out of it without having been raped. I was not having great experiences on dating, and at one point, I decided to look in a broader spectrum.


Expanding my Options


Living in Los Angeles, you tend to date people who are “geographically desirable” because you spend so much time in traffic – and I had a 50 mile radius that I was “shopping” in. Bumble was my favorite app because women get to make the first move. I swiped through everyone until I got the “There are no more people in your parameters” message and I did that a few times, so I decided to start looking a little bit wider.


I opened up my field to 75 miles and on June 26th, 2017, I saw a man who looked like what I pictured for myself. There was something about his smile – he had a big beaming smile while holding a bag of soil amendment on his shoulder. I could see the big smile but I could also see the big muscles and the fact that that this is somebody doing gardening – you don’t have soil amendment on your shoulder if you’re not gardening. And he seemed happy about it. And I have always loved to garden and I thought that really spoke to my soul. There was also a picture of him dressed beautifully in a suit and I like me a man who dresses well and they are hard to find.


So, June 26th, I swiped on him. I woke up on the morning of June 27th; I had a photo shoot that day, and he had responded. So we communicated back and forth a little bit at 7 in the morning and then we started communicating a little more. We went back and forth and then we thought, “Why don’t we try texting?” So we texted and we said, “Let’s have a phone call.” And the very first time I spoke to this man on the phone – my mother was visiting and I very rudely disappeared for an hour into my bedroom while I was on the phone with this “new man” who seemed…interesting..a little edgy…a little angry…a little chip on his shoulder…I found that sexy; we kept talking. I really liked this man. We started speaking about once every couple of days on the phone and then before you knew it, it was every day.


And I looked forward to those phone calls at 8 o’clock every night and we would talk for an hour, hour and a half, two hours. I still hadn’t met him in person.


Falling in Love


We finally agreed to meet for a date. We met in public – we went to the Getty Museum – had an amazing day – just so fun to get to know each other. So we had a wonderful first date.


That was July; it was mid-July when we had our first date and due to busy schedules, we did not have our second date until August. Our second date, we went to a rock concert. He picked me up at my home and we went to go see, “Midnight Oil”. First we had dinner, we had drinks at a bar.. We had a great dinner and fell in love with this restaurant. We had great seats, and the energy being at a concert and standing next to each other. And he took my hand. And when he held my hand – just standing next to me – he took ahold of my hand and I felt connected to someone like I never have. I felt perfection. That night, after the concert, he kissed me for the first time, and I felt more perfection.


So then he asked me if I would enjoy for our third date – bear in mind that now we’ve gotten close to knowing each other two months and speaking almost daily on the phone, so our third date we went to the Bakara resort in Santa Barbara. So we went to Santa Barbara on our third date. Santa Barbara is beautiful – I’m from up that way – and it’s always a very mild temperature in Santa Barbara. Not that weekend. It was incredibly hot. A heatwave like I’ve never seen – it was 110, 115 degrees as we went around wine tasting. And we went to eat at this one winery that said they had a taco truck. It was lovely – we got these amazing tacos – but there was no place to eat except outside and it was so hot. And I remember him taking ice water and pouring it on a napkin and holding that napkin on the back of my neck to cool me off, and then lifting my hair and gently blowing on the back of my neck to make me cool. And he was so caring, and so considerate – and we fell in love that weekend.


And now this weekend, three years later, we are going back. We are going to Bakara this weekend to keep falling in love.


It hasn’t been easy – it hasn’t been perfect. For reasons that we don’t understand, he lost almost all of his friends because of dating me. They never met me, but they decided that they wanted him to date who THEY wanted him to date and the fact that he wasn’t dating THEIR chosen people for him, made then decide to stop being friends with him.


Dating is hard – it is hard to find good people when you’re dating. By the time they are our age, everybody has so many walls built up and so much anger and baggage and they bring it to all their relationships. Howard has given up so much to be with me. We have an amazing life. I am so incredibly blessed I cannot even begin to tell you how blessed I am, we are. And we celebrate it constantly.


Howard and I moved in together about a year and a half ago. We rented an apartment while we put his condo on the market. Every night at dinner, we always – even if we’re drinking iced tea and not wine – we always toast our relationship. Sometimes we’ll toast different occasions or things that are going on – but every night, “to us – to the love of my life” because you have to work at keeping it. You have to.  We make efforts every day.


Ditch Your “Conditions”


Leave yourself open to possibilities. Don’t close yourself off. If you’re looking for love, maybe now, being a pandemic, might be a really good time because you get to not see each other in person, you can really get to know each other over the phone.


I think that our relationship is so strong because we talked on the phone every night for an hour  to an hour and a half, sometimes longer. We would have FaceTime dates or Zoom dates where we would set a time and he would order me dinner and have it delivered. I would have my dinner, he would have his dinner and we would sit down – candlelight, glass of wine and look at our computers and have a date – even though we were separate.


We had to do it then because we were far apart in distance, but now, living in this pandemic era – I still think that if you could find a worthy candidate – that’s the hardest part – but if you can find somebody – if you can find that one special person and really get to know them – just talking and over the phone, I think that gives you a really big advantage in starting a relationship.


For anyone who’s looking – it’s hard to find – it’s not easy – but it IS possible. It is possible to find love after age 50. Howard’s 61 now, I’m 54, I’ll be 55 in a couple of months. Yikes!


And I feel like a teenager in love – and it’s been three years. And we’re going to keep feeling this way because every single day, we celebrate the amazing love that we have. And I just want all of you to know that you CAN find love. It takes two people, though, and I realize that most of the men out there are not willing to work as hard as we women are. But SOME are.


If you have set parameters such as “I won’t date anybody who is less than 5’10”, “I won’t date anybody whose income isn’t above this”, or, “If they’ve got children and they don’t have any money to spend on me, I don’t want them.”


You know, everybody puts all of these “conditions” on love – are those conditions making you happy? Are you finding love with those conditions?


If those conditions are keeping you from finding love maybe you should open up a little and look outside your search parameter because maybe the love of your life is looking for you and you just need to open the door.”


-Monique Parent


A Love Story (original youtube video)


*For more about love after age 50, click here