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Eury Jones was 58 the first time she pegged a man. It was May of 2021. She was coming out of a long-term relationship and entering a new life chapter. “I did a bit of Googling about threesomes and chanced upon Feeld,” she says of the dating app for free-spirited relationship structures. But Jones, who lives in London and has a generous smile, wasn’t accustomed to the circus of online dating: maneuvering fake profiles, encountering people who only want to swap photos and never meet. Gradually, she says, “I knew not to entertain that nonsense.”
Then she met him—a cyclist in a Che Guevara T-shirt. The two were close in age and, from what she could tell, he seemed to check all her boxes. It also didn’t hurt that Jones found him attractive. So they started messaging back and forth. At some point in the conversation, “I told him that a strap-on had just arrived in the mail. And he said, ‘Oh great! Let’s meet tomorrow.’”
Jones, now 61, is considered a boomer (individuals aged 59 to 78). They are currently the fastest growing segment on many dating apps. On Feeld, members aged 60-plus have increased by 340 percent since 2022, according to the company. The same goes for Match.com, where the 50-plus crowd now accounts for 26 percent of the platform’s users. One in five singles in their fifties has used Tinder, a recent Pew Research Center study found, while OkCupid and Bumble have likewise become go-to destinations for older singles seeking some version of romance, be it a no-strings-attached hookup or real companionship.
That initial experience was eye-opening for Jones, she tells me when we chat by Zoom one Tuesday in April. (Her name has been changed for privacy and employment concerns.) “I went to his flat, and he had all sorts of things I’d never seen before: bed restraints, a hook on the wall, ball gags,” she says. But their meeting didn’t pan out exactly as she hoped. “I spent all afternoon using the strap-on on him. He barely touched me.” That’s when she had an epiphany. Even at her age there was still a lot to learn about navigating the sexual wilds. She realized that “this kink stuff takes more negotiation than I was used to. You learn to be resilient, to communicate your desires.”
Of all the changes that come with old age—slower metabolism, stiff joints, memory loss—better sex is not a given. But sex may in fact improve with age, according to a 2023 Singles in America study from Match that found 90 percent of boomers were having orgasms during intercourse in the last year, compared to 54 percent of millennials and 50 percent of Gen Z singles.
That’s right—boomergasms are on the rise. Through Feeld and OkCupid, “it was the first time I kissed a woman, the first time I saw a woman cum. It was all a revelation,” Jones says of her many experiences in the past three years. She also realized she loves group play. “It’s been an education.”
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As Gen Z ditches online dating and millennials struggle to recapture the golden days of social media, dating apps are helping older singles to redefine the feel of connection in the digital age. Much of the rise in older singles joining apps has to do with “the shedding away of stigma about dating later in life,” says Justin Garcia, a sex researcher and executive director at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute. In only a few decades, North America has undergone “massive shifts” in courtship patterns.
Garcia says one particular shift is the result of what he has termed “reverse intergenerational transmission” Where the flow of family or social customs is typically top down, with online dating it is bottom up. “We have generational transmission of information and knowledge, but what we are seeing in dating is the reverse. Kids and grandkids are putting their parents and grandparents on dating apps and helping them understand the new rituals of courtship in today’s world.”
There was a time when Wendy felt guilty for having desires of her own. She was born in 1952. Everything was geared toward the gratification and pleasure of men. Then came the 1970s, a time of rebellion and independence. “We burned our bras and screamed for women’s liberation,” she says, “but inside, in many marriages and many bedrooms, nothing had really changed. That’s so very different now in a million ways. Now my sex is mine, no longer something to just be given away to a man.”
Dating apps have become ground zero for aging singles to explore expanding sexual appetites, but they also serve as more than a virtual meeting place. They’ve helped equip seniors with a newfound confidence. Wendy, who asked to be identified only by her first name citing privacy concerns, was married for 40 years. Now 72, she lives in Hampshire, a county in South East England, and started using dating apps in the wake of her divorce. “I was very low,” she says of the wound that her separation left. “A family member pretty much instructed me to get on Feeld, as it had been brilliant for her.”
Online dating has since given her a new perspective on life—and a means to take back the control she lost. “It’s no longer a ‘show’ of fake orgasms to keep a partner happy. It’s holding out for the real deal—sensually, that is, not in the ‘in love’ sense. I feel in love with myself, and I’ve given myself permission,” she tells me. “I can’t describe what a radical turnabout that is for me in terms of pretty much the whole rest of my life pre-Feeld. It sounds dramatic, but it’s truly my experience.”
Even as older singles are more open to love via dating apps, their success, in part, is owed to being “more rigid, a little bit more sure about what it is they want and don’t want,” Garcia says. “For many, this isn’t their first rodeo. The concessions we may make in our relationships [when we’re younger], people 60 and older don’t feel a need to make those concessions.”
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Wendy tells me she’s got a “sweet spot”—men between 35 and 45. “It feels creepy to go younger, and for me a man older than that comes with a lot of baggage sometimes. I just want to keep it light and fun and make sure we both enjoy it.”
This was also a point Jones made clear when we spoke. She now knows exactly what she wants, and what’s for her. “In my twenties I thought I wasn’t a good feminist to want things like that—I had submissive fantasies. I wanted to be restrained and spanked. Now it’s a very feminist thing to ask for what I desire.” She has since been to kink parties at Torture Garden and The Fox Den.
According to a 2017 poll conducted by the University of Michigan, 54 percent of adults aged 65 to 80 said sex was an important factor to their overall quality of life. A fact confirmed by the Singles in America study, where older daters reported having the best mental health, least amount of stress, and overall happiness compared to younger age groups. Today, one in five single boomers has a fuck buddy (or FWB, a friend with benefits).
“The desire for intimacy is a basic human desire,” Garcia says. “Love and sex is part of what it means to be human, even until the very late stages of our lives.”
An hour after we end our Zoom interview, Jones emails me. There’s one last thing I need to know, she writes. “I am a size 24 and weigh over 200 pounds. My body confidence has improved, and I no longer see thinness as synonymous with sexiness. I now have a collection of lingerie, kinkwear, and sequined miniskirts. I have learned that it is the joy I bring to sex that makes me—in a new friend’s words—‘smokin’ hot.’”
