The VERY surprising way I found love after divorce at the age of 50: It wasn’t Hinge or Bumble, and certainly not Tinder, but a very different website altogether…

Let me count the ways dating apps let you down. The fake profiles, the endless “datemin” of swiping and messaging, the gaming and ghosting, the algorithms designed to encourage repeat business rather than finding true love. What started as a genius idea with the birth of the smartphone has shriveled into a steaming pile of disappointments.

After almost four years of using ‘the apps’, I’ve lived all the clichés. I’ve been love bombed by a narcissist for whom nothing was too much trouble or expense (until he sucked me in), had a scary confrontation with someone who thought he owned me after two dates, endured the guillotine-like experience. had. I just don’t feel it,” and have often tried to make amends with men who were clearly in the wrong.

After leaving my ex-husband in 2020, my post-divorce dating app affair was sometimes wild, passionate, and exciting, but more often exhausting, time-consuming, and discouraging.

At my ripe old age of 50, it seemed that all the good men had been picked up and that love in middle age was an impossibility.

Once I stopped annoying my neighbors by repeatedly wailing the chorus of Wolf Alice’s Don’t Delete The Kisses – ‘What if it’s not meant for me? Love’ – I have committed to turning all the disappointments, false hopes and many hilarious anecdotes into creative fuel for the novel I am writing.

But then, out of nowhere, it happened. I have found love. Or rather, it found me – in the most unexpected place. Not Hinge, not Bumble. And certainly not Tinder. It found me on LinkedIn.

No, this wasn’t a romance scam. It started after I wrote an article about my disillusionment with middle-aged men on dating apps. Suddenly strangers started messaging me. From university lecturers and TV producers to physiotherapists, teachers and ‘entrepreneurs’. Some were from colleagues of colleagues, but most were completely random and I struggled to understand how they had messaged me privately (although I now realize it was a privilege they had paid for through a premium membership).

It started to feel a little creepy. Confusing sometimes too. That former customer now asking for coffee: was it a new business question or a date request?

However, the LinkedIn invite that changed my life was very different. When the message pinged my inbox in March of this year, I felt less scared, more shocked. It was the man who had skinned my 21-year-old heart thirty years earlier. How dare he!

Dating apps can let you down, thanks to everything from fake profiles to the endless ‘datemin’ of swiping and messaging, says Helen Down (photo posed by model)

Maybe I should have been angry. The nerve to get back in touch after he dumped me for a trip to Australia when I was still in art school and he had already graduated. For a moment, that vulnerable 21-year-old whispered her fears in my ear. But I assured her that it was okay, all those years in the ring had made us wiser, bolder and more confident.

But above all, I was damn curious. There waiting for me was a nostalgic Polaroid montage of our first meeting: New Year’s Eve 1994. Drunken, exuberant grin full of optimism. I was surprised that he had held on to it – perhaps even cherished it? – these photos for 30 years.

I was even more surprised when I read his message: ‘I hope you remember that we had a short but quite intense relationship, starting with a crazy New Year’s Eve and ending when I left for Australia. I often think back to that time fondly, but I wasn’t very nice in the end, for which I apologize.” I was shocked and somewhat elated to discover that part of me had stayed with him.

It takes guts to do what he did. So I agreed to meet in a London pub for a few drinks.

When we met weeks later, I remembered how he had won my heart so effortlessly. Funny, kind, intelligent, creative, gentle. The blonde was gray now and inevitably his face was not so fresh. Working stupid hours in the music industry and raising two kids will do that to a man (three intervening decades and one child did it to this woman too). Yet, without a doubt, it was still very easy on the eyes.

And, big bonus, he wasn’t tainted by the ruthlessness of modern dating. In the ten years since he divorced his now ex-wife, he had been in constant relationships with friends and co-workers, and had never used a dating app. Oh boy, it turned out. No playing games, no grandstanding. Just pure vulnerability, honesty and an enthusiasm that felt genuine rather than desperate.

During a wine-soaked Saturday afternoon he entertained me with stories of how we survived on nothing but Smirnoff and Pringles, how I might have corrupted him (I beg to differ), how he cried the night before he left for Oz .

We had only spent four months together, but those months were intense and more promising than my other long-term relationships. He remembered much more of our time together than I did. As a woman scorned, I had made a pact with myself that I would never think about him again. I threw my heart in the freezer and moved on, charging through the next few relationships in heavy armor. But this time, forgiveness was easy.

Now we have done our best to make up for 30 years of missed opportunities. Since April we have laughed together, cried together, danced together, vacationed together and even been to the dump together. From the hi-octane to the mundane, we’ve fallen into an easy intimacy made possible by a trusted app-free connection.

Every sane person who has been on the dating app merry-go-round for more than six months eventually gets sick. After you’ve exhausted yourself taking the moral high ground, ghosting, breadcrumbing (maintaining interest by casually dropping crumbs of attention), and benching (keeping someone along as a backup) suddenly become acceptable. I sometimes wonder if these apps are partly responsible for the apparent decline in decency and friendliness.

Every generation has its dating challenges, but midlife we’re faced with a shrinking pool of options and excess baggage. Moreover, we are not digital natives. Taking selfies makes us cringe. It’s no wonder that many women my age feel the apps aren’t designed for them. Guess what, they’re not.

“Midlifers can feel uncomfortable swiping, connecting, and talking to multiple people,” explains Claire Macklin, divorce coach and author of Break Up: From Crisis To Confidence. ‘They often invest more early on and therefore have more to lose. If the date doesn’t turn out to be a success, it’s demoralizing to have to start all over again. That’s why more midlife women are now paying for matchmaking services.”

Helen Down at her home in London

Such services, ranging from £5,000 to £15,000, don’t come cheap. So what’s the alternative? It takes a brave soul to talk to someone in real life.

The same can be said of LinkedIn – and despite my experience, I don’t recommend it as a dating platform. Being asked out on LinkedIn feels even more unsolicited than having a chat in a bar. And no, the platform isn’t about to launch a feature called ‘LinkedIn love’ – that’s an online myth that gained popularity this summer. A LinkedIn spokesperson told me, “Romantic advances and harassment in any form are a violation of our rules and have no place on our platform.”

So my story is not about LinkedIn encouraging dating. Sure, my ex did that. But only because he had no other means. My story is about finding love after rejecting the apps.

That saying about things happening when you least expect them – it’s true. It also turns out that they happen where you least expect it. So maybe it’s time to take Hinge – the app that is ‘Designed to be Deleted’ – at its word. Go on. Remove it. And look for love elsewhere. Look up from your phone and maybe even look back at your past. But don’t give up the search completely.