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Middle-Age Spread: Navigating relationships in Jersey when you’re over 40 Words&Illustration: Stella Six
There comes a time when the island of Jersey, once a sun-drenched playground for your saladday trysts, melts into something else entirely, like old wax on an abandoned surfboard. A surfboard which, was owned by a guy probably-calledAaron, who you got off with at the Splash in your twenties, before throwing up lemon-flavoured Hooch on his Uggs. And much like that surfboard wax, you’re older now, and you have LOST YOUR GRIP, because of a condition called ’40-Year-Old Shoulder’ which is an actual thing that you wish you hadn’t Googled. Anyway, the point is – you’re past your prime; you may have your halcyon memories, but you also have many, congealed, sticky regrets. Welcome to middle-aged dating in Jersey! Like the romantic landscape of your youth, it’s just a little bit harder and weirder than in other places. Lucky for you though, Stella Six, Jersey’s premier relationship savant, is back with a few tips to help you to navigate your way through the un-Amazin Maze of ‘mature’ island courtship.
TIP ONE:
Change Your Identity
You’re single again, maybe post-divorce, maybe even two (who’s judging? Everyone, that’s who…), and you decide, ‘why not give things another shot?’ You finally, bravely, lift your head from your tear-sodden pillow and look around at your options. It’s then you realise there are only about three eligible people left in your age-group, and you just divorced one of them. He’s now going out with someone with stupid hair who laughs at his jokes. Ha! She’ll learn soon enough that his limited repertoire doesn’t just extend to repartee. Anyway, who else? Oh. The other two used to be married to quite good friends of yours, so there is an insurmountable ick-factor. Like the 1984 film Ghostbusters, which you are sadly old enough to remember, the streams must not cross. They probably wouldn’t even be interested in your over-familiar old caboose. Or would they? Consider this – eyesight in over forties is not what it used to be. You’re probably struggling to read this very article! With a radical haircut, some strategic filler and a name change, you’d be unrecognisable! You could be the hot-new thing on the scene. Fresh meat! At the very least, you’d be able to walk down King Street without someone asking you ‘how are you coping with the divorce?’ and having to pretend you’re fine, when all you want to do is buy a prawn f*cking sandwich on your lunchbreak without crying.
STATS&FACTS A Rubik’s Cube can always be solved in 20 moves or less, no matter how mixed up it is.
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LIFE & ST YLE IN JERSEY