3 Stoic Lessons To Improve Your Over-40 Dating Life (And Find True Love)

I bet you thought these guys were virgins.

Stoic philosopher Epictetus says life comes down to persisting and resisting. You want to persist towards meaningful and beneficial things and resist those that get you nowhere.

Often in the over-40 world of dating, we tend to persist but not resist, or vice-versa. It’s rarely a healthy mixture of the two, and we end up frustrated and alone in ignoring the balance between these concepts.

While the Stoics didn’t specifically tailor their teachings to people trying to date in their forties, many of their principles apply perfectly to the situation in which we find ourselves.

Here are three stoic lessons to improve your romantic life if you’re over 40 and currently in the dating scene.

Don’t Fear Change

For many of us, dating in our forties implies a severe life change. Many were married and going through a divorce or had lost a partner. If you’re in the dating pool at this age, I’d imagine the majority of you aren’t like me and have been dating around for twenty years with no romantic direction.

The fear of change can be crippling, but more importantly, it keeps you from evolving and facing the challenges coming your way. You may not want to admit that your previous relationship is over, or you don’t want to relinquish the memory of the departed.

This is normal, but the Stoics encourage us to remember that every great thing that ever happened to you resulted from change. Marcus Aurelius in “Meditations” says, “what am I going to do about tomorrow? I’m going to meet it with the same weapons that I met today.”

Embrace change and open yourself up to new opportunities in the beautiful world of dating over 40.

Don’t Ruminate On The Trivial

This is a fancy way of saying, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” but I thought I’d church it up a bit.

When you’re in the dating scene at our age, it’s easy to look at every little detail of a potential partner trying to find out what’s wrong with them. You might think their hair is a little unkempt…