LaurieGerber.com Blog
Dating ChallengesThinking About Dating Older Men: But Don’t Want to Be A Nurse Or A Purse?
September 25, 2025
Once women are done complaining to me about how older men are only looking for younger women, they turn around and complain that they’ll end up being an older man’s nurse, purse, or, dreadfully, both!
Stop worrying, sweet thing! You’ve been listening to negative propaganda, and there’s a much better alternative.
It’s true, we are in a different time.
As a dating coach specializing in helping women over 50 find love again, I encounter a success differential a lot. We women born in the 1950s-70s grew up pretty liberated, and a lot of us have made our own money and professional success. Some of us got money in a divorce and/or inherited, and unlike our mothers, or even our young selves, we don’t need a man for money or validity.
Single life has treated us well, freeing up our time to focus on family, friends, and fitness! Some of us are in the best shape of our lives and amazed by how good we feel. Maybe we’ve had health issues, but we overcame them. We’re feeling pretty darn good.
So then, when we think about adding a man to the mix, there is a sense of foreboding.
Is he just going to want to take advantage of our money or our health? What if he’s infirm and needs support with a chronic, or worse, fatal, health issue? Even though these fears are valid, you have to watch your inner dialogue like a hawk to make sure it’s not throwing off your dating game.
First of all, the general concept that men are needy, pathetic, dependents is not doing you any favors. Women hate it when men generalize about us, without realizing we, too, are doing it about them. If you don’t believe in overgeneralizing, you can stop doing it.
Words have power.
Notice what you keep listening to and saying about dating. Is it filling you with hope and excitement or dread?
This is why I say dating is a team sport (you need teammates and a cheering section), and why I added group coaching and a private community to my Master the Art of Love course. You need to be surrounded by positive voices.
If you are using the term “nurse and purse”, someone has been talking dirty to you, and not in a good way.😉 Someone has been filling your mind with negative thoughts about men, and this works against you being excited to date and attracting quality men.
If you are listening to your friends' horror stories or watching sad love stories on TV or the internet, I urge you to stop. Your friends might think it’s strange at first, and maybe even feel judged. But you will explain that you are working on a positive mindset (because you’ve heard it works) and made an agreement with yourself not to participate in any negative talk about men or dating. So many of my clients found the vibes of their usual coffee klatch conversations improving tremendously as a result of this little shift.
It’s not that men don’t sometimes experience financial or health problems; it’s just that we’re all going to commit to focus on something different–the beauty and comfort of a solid, healthy partnership between two people who commit to being romantic partners.
Remember this, too: true partnership will mean, at times, each of you might need to mentally, physically, or financially support one another. You can choose to take sharing finances off the table forever (and I understand if you do), but you can’t take the “caring for each other” part out of a healthy relationship. If you do well at finding love, you’re going to grow old(er) together, and that IS likely going to mean some nursing, one way or another.
Now, back to how to prevent becoming a nurse (too soon) or a purse (ever).
Money and health are two topics to get very humble and clear about. If you happen to have both, count your blessings, be grateful, and remember THINGS change! Judge not a potential mate who doesn’t presently have as many of these wonderful gifts as you do.
That being said, if you want to have a boundary, like never sharing a bank account, or you have certain dealbreakers, like–they need to be able to pay their own way on trips, or you need to leave X amount to your kids, or they need to be committed to healthy eating–that’s fine.
That’s not judgmental, it’s just what would make you feel happy and safe. Talk about these things in the first few dates, from the perspective of what you’ve learned from your past, and what you now know you want.
You may be pleasantly surprised to find the person you are dating is compatible with you in enough ways that a long-term relationship could work, even if their finances or health aren’t where you’d ideally like them to be, right now! Love is funny that way.
If you write off anyone with a financial or health issue from the get-go, you may really be missing out on the love of your life.
But what’s worse, the general negative attitude will be felt by even the solid, healthy guys with good finances. That’s the real reason to take your focus off your fears and put it onto your desires.
Aren’t you glad to know that the negative hype isn’t the only possible perspective? Want more inspiring positivity?
Join me for some more negative-hype myth-busting at my upcoming FREE webinar:
3 Secrets to Finding and Maintaining Healthy Love without Repeated Disappointments.
I’ll be covering:
✔ The biggest mistake women make that prevents them from finding love over 50
✔ The 3 Essential Ingredients to finding a suitable companion for long-term commitment
✔ The 3-date strategy to find your soulmate in WAY less dates
Here’s the registration page → https://lauriegerber.com/webinar
See you there!
Love,
