Leanne Lucio, a 56-year-old disability support worker from Melbourne, has been dating on and off since her divorce in 2002.

Her last long-term relationship ended over a year ago, when her partner of two years got “cold feet” just weeks before they were due to marry.

“That was a really big blow for me in terms of trust,” she says.

“I found it very hard to be able to manage that. I certainly don’t have these big walls up; I’m open to meeting someone, but I’m a bit weary of that.”

Lucio, a mother of two adult daughters (and a French bulldog, Kingsley), is currently braving Melbourne’s dating scene, mainly online, although she says her preference would be to meet someone organically.

The main challenge of dating men her age, she says, is that most are only looking for casual relationships.

“They’re going to the gym, you know, they’ve probably been the provider – the husband, the father – most of their life, and now they’re looking after themselves a bit more and are not after anything longer term,” she says.

Sitting firmly in midlife, Gen Xers like Lucio, naturally, have lived more of life than their younger counterparts. The search for love, then, comes with more baggage – be it the scars of a broken relationship, young children or ageing parents to care for – and a smaller dating pool.

Equally, dating in midlife can bring with it new-found freedom in the absence of pressure to marry or have children, greater financial security and, oftentimes, a stronger sense of self.

What defines Generation X?

Generation X is generally defined as the cohort born between 1965 and 1980, making its members aged 46 to 61 in 2026.

Like any generation, they are far from homogenous, but there are some broad themes we can look to.

Coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s, they grew up during periods of great social, political and cultural change – from evolving familial formations and gender norms, and amid the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Dan Woodman, a professor of sociology at The University of Melbourne, says Generation X was the first to extend (or eschew entirely) traditional markers of adulthood beyond something to be reached in our early 20s.

“Baby Boomers were a high point or a low point, depending on which way you look at it, at which people were getting married and having children and buying houses pretty much as early as there’s ever been in Australian history. And then Gen X marked the big shift that’s gone on for future generations,” he says.

Between 1969 and 1999, the proportion of mothers aged 15 to 24 more than halved, going from 46 per cent to 20 per cent. Meanwhile, the fertility rate of women aged 35 to 39 and 40 to 44 doubled between 1979 and 1999.

Between 1970 and 1990, the median age at first marriage jumped from 23.4 years to 26.5 years for grooms, and from 21.1 years to 24.3 years for brides.

Meanwhile, the average age of first home buyers has increased from 27 in 1990 to mid-30s in 2024.

Sometimes referred to as the “forgotten middle children”, Generation X comprises a smaller proportion of the population than Baby Boomers and Millennials (in part due to the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1961), and were often left unsupervised by parents (aka the Latchkey Generation) due to a greater share of dual-income households as women entered the workforce at unprecedented rates.

Their parents – mainly the Silent Generation and older Baby Boomers – are ageing and living longer today. Often referred to as the “Sandwich Generation”, many Gen Xers and Millennials (particularly women) are faced with the double responsibility of raising children while caring for ageing parents.

Gery Karantzas, a lecturer at Deakin University’s School of Psychology, says Gen X are at a life stage where they’re “straddling multiple life tasks and priorities”.

“Typically, they are heavily involved in their career or have more senior roles that are requiring more of their time. They are juggling parenthood and often that can be co-parenting with a former partner … so there are all these other life stresses and challenges that can compromise one’s ability to invest the time and effort they would like to put into dating.”

These stressors in turn, he says, can “get in the way of quietening the mind, in a way where you can make effective decision-making around potential dating options”.

“The expectations on parents have also changed,” adds Woodman.

“Even if your kids are a bit older, that kind of intensive parenting – emotional support, but also financial transfers – goes on way beyond 18 now. So your kids can still be putting a dampener on your dating life well into their 20s.”

And then, of course, there’s the fact that Generation X is ageing.

Sex and relationship counsellor Susie Tuckwell says that tougher beauty standards can be a challenge for midlife daters, but notes for some, getting older can bring a newfound confidence in oneself.

Regardless, “I think it’s terribly important to challenge these ideas. Everything in society tells women that unless they’re 20 basically, they’re over the hill,” she says.

Dating after divorce

In 2023, the divorce rate hit its lowest point since 1975. But there is one group bucking this trend: the rate of divorce among those aged 45 to 60 (in other words, Generation X), has increased.

The age of divorce has also been creeping up for decades.

In 1995, the median age at divorce was 40 years for men and 37.1 years for women. This year, it reached 47.1 and 44.1 years respectively.

A phenomenon sometimes referred to as grey divorce, high-profile splits like that of Hugh Jackman and Deborra-lee Furness exemplify this wider trend.

Tuckwell thinks this is related to the “HSC divorce”, where parents may choose to stay together for the sake of their kids until they finish school.

She says changing social norms also mean couples, particularly women, may be more likely to feel as though they have “permission” to end a marriage, especially if they have borne the brunt of care work in a relationship and been unsatisfied when it comes to sex.

Moreover, ending a relationship in midlife can carry the hope of a second (or third) chance at love.

“Often it’s related to, ‘we’re still young enough to find another partner’,” she says.

For others, Karantzas says a midlife split may be a chance to be alone for the first time, and re-establish a sense of identity outside a relationship.

Former educator Janette Holzer, 57, is a self-described romantic. She married young, and stayed married for 22 years despite being unhappy.

“I was more a mother to him than I was a partner. I call him Peter Pan because it’s like the boy that just never grew up,” she says.

“But I had that belief, which was my grandmother’s, which was, ‘When you marry, you marry for life, and that’s your lot.’ So I just kind of went with it, but I don’t think I was happy.”

More than eight years ago, the marriage ended when her husband left her.

“I would have stayed in the marriage, but I actually found that for the first time in my life I could breathe again. I realised how much stress I had been under in the marriage because that depleted me.”

Still, the separation took its toll – particularly on her son, who was 10 at the time.

When she caught the flu at the childcare centre where she was working and developed chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, she was forced to stop working and move back in with her parents. This, in turn, prompted a return to her childhood self.

“There was a kind of coming back into myself before I ever really dated, when I was 18, and the things that I had wanted then, and looking at myself and how much I really knew myself and what I wanted out of a partner.”

Holzer sat down and came up with a list of non-negotiables for her new partner, which included respect and sharing household responsibilities like cooking and cleaning.

Most importantly, “I wanted somebody I could grow with,” she says.

“Somebody who could take me to another level, because I felt like in my marriage, I didn’t grow at all.”

After navigating the rocky waters of online dating (Holzer was scammed twice on dating apps, an experience she says gave her the confidence to speak up for and advocate for herself), she met her current partner, Christian.

While he wasn’t the type of man she would typically go for (“his profile had photos of him on his Harley, wearing motorbike gear, I kept thinking, ‘Why is this guy coming up on my feed? I’m not getting with a biker’ ”), he won her over with his kindness and similarities in their dating histories.

For their first date, they had dinner followed by karaoke. In the morning, he cooked her bacon and eggs.

The pair have tried living together, but Holzer now lives with her 84-year-old mother, who is in the early stages of dementia and needs her care.

“It’s not like when you’re in your 20s, and you get married, and you’ve got no children or big responsibilities, and your parents are in good health,” she says.

They hope to travel around Australia in a motorhome one day.

Dating in the digital age

Engineer Alex Aumann, 54, met his ex-wife online more than 10 years ago. Recently divorced, the father of two from Sydney has found himself back in the world of dating apps, which he says has changed markedly from a decade ago.

“I never got ghosted and there weren’t all of these conversations that sort of just end,” he says of online dating in the 2010s.

The oversaturation of users on dating apps means “there’s a dilemma of choice”, which he says in turn feeds into a never-ending pursuit of perfection, that in reality, does not exist.

“Before, you weren’t expecting to find a 10 out of 10 who checked every single box before you agreed to meet them. Whereas now people are looking for that,” says Aumann, who is mainly dating women in their 40s and 50s.

While younger users still dominate the dating app landscape in Australia, older users are a fast-growing demographic. One-quarter of Generation X have used a dating app, according to a 2023 survey from YouGov.

Karantzas says what people want from a partner has changed little, but for Gen Xers entering into a new digital age of dating, these values can bristle against reality.

“The way you go about communicating with people via dating apps, and what information you are exposed to in order to make decisions about whether you want to strike up a match or not, is a very different way of viewing and approaching a mate,” he says.

“People have to redevelop scripts around how you go about dating … I think that’s a real challenge.”

Aumann says dating with young kids and navigating co-parenting can have its challenges, but there’s also a freedom that comes with it.

“There isn’t that pressure of, ‘I’m expecting a perfect marriage, followed by the family of children’. You’ve done that aspect,” he says.

Leanne Lucio says another challenge of dating in midlife is that many men her age are looking for younger partners.

“That compromises me because I prefer older. I prefer someone who’s emotionally intelligent and mature.”

On the flipside, Lucio has noticed more interest from younger men.

“I’ve got one chatting to me at the moment, and he’s 43, and I’m struggling with that. But I’ve got girlfriends that are saying, you know, 30-year-olds are hitting on them.”

Indeed, while it’s normal to see men coupled with younger women, age-gap relationships in which the woman is older tend to face more societal disapproval.

Still, celebrity couples like Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and movie portrayals like Nicole Kidman, 58, and Harris Dickinson, 29, in Babygirl, are indicative of a broader change in relationship dynamics.

In middle age, Lucio says what she wants from love has changed.

“When I was younger, I always looked for someone who would support me, not necessarily financially, but just being the protector and someone big and strong that would look after me. Ultimately, I’ve always gone for the bad boys for that reason,” she says.

“Of course, I’d like to have someone who’s going to be supportive and have my back, but not looking after me as much. I’m independent and I can do that for myself. And I don’t like to feel obligated to anyone either.”

Aumann would like to find love again, but is happy being by himself for now if nothing comes of his dating endeavours.

“I have a good job, the kids are doing well, I have good friends. So if nothing happens from all the dating stuff, then that’s OK,” he says.

Coming out later in life

Growing up Catholic in Ireland in the 1990s, being gay never felt like a possibility for Bre Bondoux, now 46.

As a teenager, she had an intimate relationship with a female friend, but when she moved to Australia 20 years ago, she met a man, got married and had kids.

It wasn’t until last year that she came out, ending her 17-year marriage.

“It was like a pressure cooker and it was bubbling all the time underneath that I was living this lie,” she says.

“It got to a point where I just knew I wasn’t attracted to him, and I was starting to pull back by that point in the relationship, and he had sensed that I was robbing him of what it [a marriage] should be.”

While the decision was tough, Bondoux says the relationship ended amicably and she’s still good friends with her ex, who has since repartnered.

Recently, “late in life lesbians”, as they are sometimes referred to, have received more attention as a growing number of celebrities come out in midlife, like Jodie Foster, Cynthia Nixon, Rebel Wilson and Natalie Bassingthwaighte.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ first-ever estimates of LGBTQI+ Australians, published last year, found 2.9 per cent were aged 45 to 54 and 2.3 per cent were aged 55 to 64 in 2022.

Some research suggests women are more likely to come out later in life than men, while other research suggests women’s sexuality and sexual identification may be more fluid over the life course.

A study of more than 16,000 Australian women between 1989 and 1999 found 30 per cent changed their sexual identity label at least once during the four times they were interviewed.

The impetus for coming out, Bondoux says, was meeting a woman in her run club who had been out since her late teens.

“It was the first time I met somebody that I could relate to. She looked feminine, she was active, she was attractive, she was sporty,” she says.

“She used to say [to me], ‘are you sure you’re not gay?’ and I was like, ‘I’m happily married, I’m happily married’. And I think then as I became closer with her as a friend, we would have deep conversations around fluidity, gender norms, and she let me see that, ‘yes, you did get married, but maybe you’re actually not straight’.

“I started to realise I had suppressed so much.”

Since coming out, Bondoux has been dating, but says living in Geelong, where the queer community is smaller, has made it difficult. Coming out later in life also means she has fewer queer friends than she might have had if she’d come out earlier.

“Sometimes I feel I’m not gay enough,” she adds.

“That’s the thing about coming out later in life, you feel you didn’t fight the big fight that a lot of these other ladies have had to fight.”

Ageing, body image and sex

What 40, 50 or 60 looked like a few decades ago now looks very different, at least among the ageless faces of the Hollywood elite like Kim Kardashian, Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger, as cosmetic treatments and surgeries become more socially acceptable and widely adopted.

Indeed, midlife today looks different.

Consider, for instance, the cast of Golden Girls – most of whom were in their mid-50s in the show’s first season in 1985, to the cast of Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That…, who, despite also being in their 50s, look significantly more youthful.

Research on the relationship between body image and ageing is mixed: some studies suggest body satisfaction improves with age, while others suggest it may stabilise or that our perception and priorities towards our body shift.

Nor are these image-based pressures exclusive to any one gender – Aumann has felt the pressure to looks a certain way in the dating world first-hand.

“It definitely feels like, ‘now, you need to be a certain shape or nothing’s going to happen’,” he says.

Menopause, which tends to start between the ages of 45 and 55, can also bring its challenges – although it doesn’t necessarily mean a decrease in libido, as is often assumed.

For Bondoux, who says she’s “always enjoyed sex”, finding partners with a similar libido, who are willing to experiment, has been a challenge.

Lucio has found addressing menopause head-on, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, to be popular on her dating app bio.

“I actually wrote in one of my profiles, which I don’t have up any more, about menopause in a humorous way. It was something along the lines of, ‘the positive is that you get to have a different woman every week’,” she says.

Despite the image-based pressure that come with ageing, Lucio is hopeful.

“At the end of the day, it’s meeting someone who can overlook all of that and see the fundamentals of who you are – your personality and your morals and stuff like that.”

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