Suzanne NobleHost, Sex Advice for Seniors · Sex, Dating & Relationship Advice for Over 50s

The Biggest Dating Mistake Women Make After 40

25 Jun 2026 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:37

In this segment of Suzanne Noble’s YouTube video, the hosts discuss how women over 40 often make the critical dating error of over‑idealizing new partners. They explain that early childhood caregiving shapes adult attachment styles, which in turn influence how people approach romantic connections. When someone has had few positive relationships, they may fill in unknowns with fantasies, projecting qualities onto a new crush—a phenomenon known as limerence. This leads to “future‑tripping,” imagining a shared life with someone they barely know, and to giving the new partner too much leeway (“too much rope”). The speakers argue that this pattern can result in poor partner selection. They advise viewers to recognize their attachment patterns, slow down the dating process, and deliberately assess compatibility before investing emotionally.

Chapters

those situations where you really like someone and you're willing to give them a little bit too much rope.
If you haven't had a lot of good connections, when you make a connection, you start to often fantasize and fill in the blanks, I like to say, when you don't even know. In fact, they may be the opposite of blank, but you think, well, they're so handsome and they're good in bed and we have good conversations, so they must be all these other things. And we don't know because people reveal themselves over time, but we also are operating from our attachment styles, right? So for anyone who doesn't know, when we're growing up, our parents, how they raise us, or our caretakers, sometimes it's not even parents, the way that they raise us has a lot to do with how we are romantically later in life. And so if we grew up in a very secure environment where we trust our choices because our parents validated our choices and they validated our feelings and we were allowed to have all feelings, To be securely attached and to feel like I really trust my choices, that is the work. And I just interviewed a woman who wrote "When Longing Is Your Lover," and this is a limerence. This is where, like what you're describing, I think, is where you have a crush on somebody or where you start to think about them a lot. You start to future trip, you know, what would it be like in a year, where we're gonna travel, and then, you realize that you don't really know them. And so we need to slow down and we need to know how to pick the right people and how to gauge like what's really happening here.