Listen Up, Single Older Women

The new book written by this woman from Calabasas, Calif., "Sex & the 60s," (AuthorHouse, $14.95 soft cover, 309 pages), outlines her adventures as a suddenly single older woman in the Internet age, and offers advice and counsel to others in the same situation.

"Dating at any age is hard," Wechter says in a telephone conversation. "The key is not to go in with great expectations. Whatever happens, you deal with it and you learn from it."

Yet, who wouldn't have great expectations after reading Wechter's book, which discloses that she met her perfect match online and has been with him more than three years? As a special bonus, she confides, her man is 30 years her junior.

"It just worked out that way," she says. "My success rate was higher with younger men."

Not that she didn't have her disappointments along the way.

She began dating, warily at first, after the death in 1998 of her husband, Julius, after 44 happy years of marriage. Julius Wechter was a musician who performed around the world with his Baja Marimba Band. The couple raised two sons on the road and composed many songs together, including the popular "Spanish Flea," performed by Herb Alpert among others.

"It's not that I was extremely unhappy being alone after Julius died," she says. "I wasn't really lonely. I just realized that there might still be something great out there for me."

Internet dating opened up an unfamiliar world, where the pool of prospective men was as large as she wanted it to be. She began to communicate with suitors across the country. Some seemed great online, but were flakes in person. Some were outright imposters. Some pulled the notorious disappearing act.

Wechter kept moving forward, and she began taking notes. She surveyed other senior women across America about their dating lives, then sat down and put it all together in a book.

In it, she discusses sex and the senior girl, the best ways and places to meet prospective mates and how to make the best impression in an Internet profile. She talks about how her adult children reacted to her decision to start dating again, and recounts "first dates, worst dates and dates with destiny."

And, of course, her happy ending.

Wechter met her current mate on a popular dating site, and they have rarely been apart since, she says. Although both are comfortable with their age difference, they have had some awkward moments in public.

Some people look at them with disapproval when they express affection. Some have openly mistaken her for his mother. A hotel clerk once urged them to get separate beds.

"The age difference is harder on my mate than it is on me," Wechter says. "He tells me that when people see me with a younger man they say, 'Good for you.' When they see him with an older woman they ask, 'What were you thinking?'"

Wechter is realistic about their future.

"I'm not fooling myself that it's forever," she says. But she's OK with that.

"Call me crazy, but I know that someday, when I'm alone, I'll be able to look back and say, 'When I was 68 years old, I had a fabulous, magical love affair with the most beautiful and sweetest man on earth.'

"Now how many women can say that?"

Source: The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Powered by YellowBrix.