Charlotte Rampling, actress and Paris resident, recently disclosed that she has a loving friendship with a new man at the age of 80. She shares her experiences of loneliness, dating, and personal development after the death of her partner, writing a memoir on her journey to find love and share her experiences with others through writing retreats.
Charlotte Rampling , actress, icon and Paris resident, recently disclosed that she has ‘une amitie amoureuse’ – what she described as ‘sort of a loving friendship’ – with a new man, having found love again at 80, more than a decade after the death of her long-term partner and after she had learnt to live alone with her cats.
Now, there’s an idea. At 76, I am learning to live alone too and am contemplating my own romantic future with far more realism than before. The 26 years since my husband Jerry died have been a steep learning curve about relationships, men and myself. All this experience has been grist to the mill and has made me who I am today, for better or worse.
Jerry was my first boyfriend when I was 17, and I was 50 and living in Brighton when he died in 2000. Seemingly unable to do life on my own, I fell apart without the love of my life, my best friend, by my side. I flailed around, lost in grief, searching for a man to save me. But, of course, that was never going to end well.
Luckily, at 55, The Hoffman Process – an intensive, residential, personal development retreat designed to help release negative behavioural patterns, often rooted in childhood conditioning – helped me understand that I wasn’t a total failure and that I was a loving mother to my three children, then aged 25, 21 and 16, and that they needed me. It gave me back the will to live and the tools to achieve the life I wanted.
But then, despite deciding to live a life of abstinence and denial, I fell in love with a guy I met at a friend’s wedding hundreds of miles away in Penzance.
At 76, I am learning to live alone too , and am contemplating my own romantic future with far more realism than before, writes Elaine Kingett I miss touch, laughter, companionship, walking side by side, holding hands with someone I trust, sharing that candle-lit dinner, that bed, writes Elaine The remainder of my 50s was spent in an exciting but challenging relationship that sadly disintegrated in spectacular fashion, with me having a heart attack and being told to leave his house in Cornwall which we’d shared for five years. Six months later I’d successfully completed a writing MA after relocating back to Brighton.
Never known for doing things by halves, Ms Kingett. I’ve also never been one to accept defeat on the dating front. My 60s were action-packed. I was an adopter of the online dating site eHarmony before the Hinge and Bumble apps took off.
After answering a 45-minute compatibility quiz and specifying that I wanted to meet someone closer to home, I was matched with a man 800 miles away: a crofter who farmed oysters, stalked stags and dug peat in the Hebrides and for whom coitus interruptus meant a short pause for a snack and a wee dram. Deciding he looked rather interesting and attractive in a wild, outdoorsy way, I decided to give him a chance and meet him in London.
That seemed to go rather well so, when he invited me to stay with him for a few days, despite my daughter’s worries that I might get murdered and buried in a bog, I caught the train to Inverness, bus to Ullapool and ferry to Lewis. One dark night, in a howling gale, he prodded me awake and passed me a blue boiler suit and Wellingtons.
‘Oh joy, role play! ’ I thought. But then he instructed me to help him birth a sheep. Charlotte Rampling recently disclosed that she has ‘ une amitie amoureuse ’ with a new man at the age of 80 We met again in Edinburgh and he even came to stay with me, but when my terrier chewed a hole in the pocket lining of his jacket, it was over.
Then there was a local who lived in a yurt, made his own sandals, was good at jigsaws, but a sex addict with – as I later discovered from mutual friends – a wife. Moving on, an old friend reappeared, back from the Californian high life. After a couple of weeks he sent a photo of a rail of clothes he had bought for me.
Generous to a fault – but they were from Topshop and mainly miniskirts, fringed leather jackets and high heels. More role play, or a negative comment on my decidedly laid-back dress code? Still single but still hopeful, I celebrated my 70th birthday in Spain, where I run my writing retreats, with a gang of friends and my three adult children.
I wondered if I would wake on the day to find my wardrobe swapped with clothing for a dull elder: beige, elasticated Viscose trousers; loose tops in dodgy prints; comfy Velcro fastened slip-ons. Of course not, I put on my bikini and went for a swim, Needing a new challenge and already an admirer of smartly dressed Andalucian older guys who still had a waist, and quite often hair, I decided to move to Seville and see if I could meet an older man who farmed sheep and made cheese… but didn’t pause in the middle of the action for a sherry or a caña.
However, I soon realised that, despite the beauty of the city and delicious food, I was unlikely to meet a delicious man. Seville is very much a traditional community with strong church and family ties, which has a lot of pluses for Sevillanos, not so much for us immigrants. And it was 2020, Covid time: people wore masks, and I didn’t speak Andalus or dress as smartly as the local senoras. Who could?
Do those women not eat?! As a male friend who knows Spain succinctly said: ‘Oh, the locals will f*** you, but they’ll never introduce you to their friends or family. They have wives and/or mistresses for that. ’ Yes.
Sigh. I did try dating apps, but no one even near my age was using Hinge so, at 70, I held my nose and matched with a guy on Tinder; an Italian in his 60s, but in Seville for a work trip. His messages were so full-on – ‘Can I come to yours and play? I always use a condom’ – that I hid before I received the dreaded full-on full frontal.
After three fallow years, having a great deal of fun but not in that way, I decided to move back to Brighton, where my kids had grown up. At least I’d speak the language. By then the dating app choice had exploded to include Feeld, a ‘location-based app designed for open-minded individuals, couples, and polyamorous or kink-interested people seeking ethical non-monogamy, casual encounters, or alternative relationship structures’. Gosh, that sounded a bit scary even for me.
There were age-appropriate ones for ‘over-50s’ such as OurTime, SilverSingles and SeniorMatch. But none for ‘over-70s’, who supposedly had learnt to accept their proper roles as crones or grannies and not act like sex-mad teenagers and embarrass their family. But I don’t dress or act like a stereotypical 76-year-old. I’m not retired, I love my work and can’t imagine ever not writing or teaching.
My hair hasn’t gone grey and I don’t have a fat private pension that allows me to travel the world in luxury and meet a man on a cruise – not that I am looking for a man-as-meal-ticket, far from it. But I miss the different energy of good men in my life. I miss touch, laughter, companionship and stimulation both mental and physical. And snogging!
I miss walking side by side, holding hands with someone I trust, sharing that candle-lit dinner, that bed. Deciding whose turn it is to make that cup of tea. I miss it not only being me who makes the daily decisions about what to do, where to go, what to watch or what to have for supper. Living alone and working alone or mainly with women, I feel excluded from half of society.
In the last couple of years, I have dated two guys, neither of whom I met through apps. One was an old friend I first knew when I was 15 – but he decided it was too soon after the loss of his wife three years before. Another I was introduced to by his daughter. On our second date he admitted he was still in love with his ex who had left him years before.
I seem to have become a sounding board for lost love. But am I downhearted? I am not. I know from experience that my life is richer on all levels in a relationship with the right man – not a woman, as has been suggested by a couple of well-meaning friends.
I do hope to find someone with the same energy as me, the same sense of curiosity, inquisitiveness and spontaneity. After all, Charlotte Rampling did!
Romance Lifestyle Charlotte Rampling Paris Loneliness Dating Writing Retreats Personal Development Love Friendship Romantic Journey Resilience
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