Love Over 50: Navigating Double Standards in Dating with Keshia Rice

Keshia Rice is a certified dating coach, hypnotherapist, and two-time Emmy-nominated journalist. She runs the coaching program "Cherished Women," helping successful women attract quality partners while maintaining their values, identity, and femininity. Keshia also hosts the podcast "Confidently Cherished," covering topics like building confidence, setting boundaries, and navigating relationships at every life stage.

In this Part Two of the discussion on Love Over 50, host Kali and Keshia Rice talk about the double standards older men and women face in the dating world. They bring to light the societal expectations, challenges for women reentering the dating scene, and the historical and cultural factors influencing these dynamics. Keshia provides actionable insights for older women seeking meaningful connections while maintaining their standards and self-worth.

References and Links:

• Connect with Keshia Rice and learn about her coaching services: Keshia Rice Website
• Follow Keshia on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and more: @KeshiaRice

Key Topics:

• Double Standards in Dating: How societal perceptions of aging and desirability differ for men and women.
• Changing Norms: The evolution of women’s roles and how education, career opportunities, and financial independence have shifted expectations in relationships.
• Presentation and Confidence: The importance of style, aura, and self-presentation for women dating later in life.
• Remarriage Dynamics: Why older men remarry more frequently and the stigma women face for seeking second marriages.
• Breaking Stereotypes: How women can navigate societal judgment and redefine success in love on their terms.

Potential Listener Questions:

1. Why do older men face less criticism for remarrying compared to older women?
2. How can women over 50 navigate societal expectations while dating confidently?
3. What role does self-presentation play in dating success later in life?
4. How have changing gender roles impacted perceptions of dating and marriage for women?

References and Links:

• Connect with Keshia Rice and learn about her coaching services: Keshia Rice Website
• Follow Keshia on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and more: @KeshiaRice

Find out more about Kali and the show HERE: https://humanityoffame.com/

Transcript

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the only way she should be getting remarried is if her husband didn't do his job and like left her broke and then of course she needs to get married to find another man to provide. Hi, welcome to Humanity of Fame. I'm Kali. Let's get to it. All right. So today, my friends, we are going to talk about not so much miss, miss Lisa Ray, but she is the catalyst of the topic. We will be discussing today. Okay. Vivica Fox, you know, she came out, she was on a couple of shows, you know, talking about it or what have you. And now it popped up again with miss Lisa Ray. So I wanted to have a conversation about this because more than I see women making, um, what would be considered negative comments or backlash. It's the men. I'm going to bring up my guests that we have today. Let me start by welcoming back my guest, Keisha Rice. Welcome to the show, Keisha. Thanks for having me again. I always love being here. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me. And you know, for this topic, I had to call on you. I was like, you know what? This keeps coming up. Let's talk about some differences. Okay. Between how older men and women are viewed. What are some of the key differences in how older men and women are viewed when it comes to seeking relationships or marriage? First of all, there is a different age bracket for being settled. Um, and I've, you and I have actually talked about this before that in general, when people look at a woman, they expect that by the time she's 35, she's kind of at coast point as in she is married. She has kids, her career's in a place where it's pretty stable. Like, you know, maybe she'll get a couple of promotions or whatever later on, but she's generally like where she's going to be. And that is the point where for better or for worse, people have a tendency to judge a woman by how successful at life she is at 35. Men get a pass. They get that judgment around like 50. And if you don't believe me, go look at male celebrities who were eternal bachelors. And when they started to get married, like George Clooney, you will find that a lot of these men, it, even if they were like the biggest bachelors in the world, everybody was like, Oh, this is a party guy. He's not a family man. He's never going to get married all of a sudden around late forties, early fifties, they start settling down because there's a bit of judgment of like, Oh, you're 50 and you don't have it. Quote unquote together yet. You don't have your wife, your kids, your career. You know, there's, there's a little bit of judgment for that. And also men get that pass on being a little bit older because there's kind of this assumption that with that men are going to provide. Therefore, you know, there's a, there's a little bit of a pass on marrying later in life because it's assumed that this man should have been spending his twenties, definitely his twenties. And a lot of cases, even his thirties, getting the money, building his career, getting the promotions and all of that. So that when he gets married and has kids, he's able to provide for them. Whereas, you know, the woman's value societally is in her fertility, which is often in her youth. So therefore it's assumed she's going to get married younger. And if she is going to have a career, maybe she's working on that a little bit more after she lands the man first, and then she can, you know, focus on the career. So there's that. That is one of the reasons why women have so much more pressure to find a man and to get married and all of that at a younger age, because 35 is typically that societal set point. So, you know, our, our clock ticks a little bit faster, ticks a little sooner. Yeah. Yeah. But also when you look at the different expectations, that whole conversation of what do you bring to the table? I absolutely hate it. When it comes to dating and relationships, you know, men pretty much always have this expectation of they need to be stable providers. And that is something that they should always bring. One of the things that when I work with older women that I have to explain to them is if you're dating at a younger age, you're out here single. Yeah. Your youth gives you a pretty pass. Like your, your pretty privilege is in your youth. Yeah. So you can get away with so much more dating in your twenties because you're nice and young and fertile when you are in your, particularly once you start to get into like mid to late forties. And then especially once you get into fifties, sixties, your attractiveness is about having presence and an aura around you and a magnetism. And a lot of that includes, you really have to start paying more attention to like how you're doing your hair, how you're dressing. You really have to like dial in on the presenting yourself because you sadly don't get the path. You don't get the youth pretty privilege anymore. You don't get that pass. And it's not to say that you're not beautiful because just, just Google celebrities. There are so many beautiful women in their forties, fifties, sixties beyond, but those beautiful women, if you also notice the ones who get the credit for being the most beautiful are also the most stylish, the most put together. Like you, you have to take more time on that when you get older. And you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back a little bit when you were talking about how it's assumed that men of a certain age and their youthful age, twenties and you know, thirties or so they're getting to the back, they're getting the money, you know, and dating as, as often as they want. Right. Right. And then they settle down, you know, when they're a little later in years versus women who pretty much is doing the same thing. They're getting to the money. They're working their career. That's, that's their focus. That's their right. That's their focus. And they are prioritizing how they want their life to play out. Okay. There's some women who are doing that. Okay. This is, this is the stage where I'm doing this by the time I'm at certain age, this is what I want to start focusing on. It's just hilarious. The idea of that's somehow backwards, that's somehow wrong. And, you know, Oh, you spent all this time, you know, chasing your career and doing this, that, and the third. And now all of a sudden when you are of a certain age, you want to settle down. Don't know, man, won't know woman that got this and got that. And her body parts, you know, is not working. It's not up to par. And you know, you should have, you should have did that when you was in your, you know, twenties and thirties, you was fine back then to your point of pretty privilege. Right. Yeah. So, but a man who settles down later, you know, and they get the gray hair or whatever, they're distinguished, you know, they're handsome, you know, it's totally different, totally different. Well, we also have to remember that the rules have changed. And we were talking about, you know, considering the source and where you're getting advice from and all of that. Right. As late as 1970, women could not have their own bank accounts without a man signing off. Seventies. Wow. So generationally, we have to think about this. It was not that long ago that women had to get married. They had to go from their parents' house into their husband's house because in order to have anything monetarily, in order to have a bank account, in order to live in a house, home loan, things like that, you had to have a man to get those things. You couldn't, you couldn't raise kids. You couldn't live life. You couldn't survive without a man. So now women have the options of getting more education. Again, you and I are Black women. We are now the most educated demographic. We have more college degrees than anybody else. Yeah. So we can get things for ourselves, even when it comes to kids. Now that you have like sperm donation, surrogacy and all of that, you want to become a single mother by choice. You, you can do that. Sure. And you have to look at, at the difference where our mothers, our grandmothers, when they started to see that we had these opportunities and they were excited about it because they didn't have that opportunity. They told us, go out there, get your education, do all these things for yourself because you can do it now. Mm hmm. But they didn't have any advice on how to navigate the dating and relationship part of that because they, you know, for them, dating and relationship was find the first person who can take care of you and move into his house. So they don't know how to navigate any of that going out and actually having real choice and who you have as a partner. Now you look at men, nothing has really changed for them. You know, 40, 50 years ago, they were taught, go out there, work hard and provide now is as we're recording this 2024 and they're taught, go out there and work and provide the same. Nothing's changed for them. And then they're looking at women and they're following the playbook of their fathers and their grandfathers and great grandfathers and they're expecting women to do the same thing. Women don't have the same playbook that their grandmothers had. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely changed because I'm just listening to you. I can, like I said, think of people in my own family and it's not to criticize, it's just thinking of examples of things that I've seen or maybe not seen, but because it happened before I was born, but to know what the situation was, you know, I have aunts who from a different era who are much older than I am and my, um, my parents and, you know, right out of high school, boom, they're married, they're having kids, you know, and they might along the way, pick up a part-time job, like at a school, maybe like, you know, cafeteria, you know, those type of little office type things, but never really, you know, okay, I'm going to go to school now. And I'm going to, it's all about my career. No, it's get married so that you can therefore have stability. Right. Let's talk about, uh, remarrying. Why is it often seen as acceptable for older men to remarry multiple times versus women who do the same? Yeah. I mean, again, we talked about it earlier, even with kids, there's this idea that women are caregivers and women are child raisers, right? So if a man, particularly if a man has children and he ends up divorced or he ends up widowed, so he's in a household by himself with no women, there's an expectation that he needs to find a woman as quickly as possible, because otherwise you're going to traumatize those poor kids. You know, someone needs a, you know, those kids need a mother in the household. Again, even if he's divorced and, you know, he's co-parenting on the days that he has his kids, there needs to be a woman around in the household. Whereas if you're the woman and you have kids and you get into a divorce or you end up widowed, you are the woman in the house. So how dare you take a time and attention away from your children, you know, to go out there and find a man, like you're supposed to be focusing on raising these kids, right? I'm cracking up at these double standards, keep going. Yeah. So, I mean, that, that is one of the main reasons why you see this double standard in remarriage because of what is seen as the role of women and in child rearing. There's also just the idea that this isn't an incredibly toxic stereotype, but the idea that men go out there and sow their royal oats and, you know, they're, they're always out there exploring and, and, and men need sex and things like that. So of course, they have to find- Emphasis on the word need, heavy emphasis on the word need. Right. I'm not going to argue that point. I'm just saying some of the, some of the additional points with the heavy reliance on the word need are interesting, but go ahead. Yeah. So with that, of course, men have to go out there and find partners because they, they have to find, they have to find a bang maid. They have to find somebody to sleep with, right? Yeah, they're going to explore. Whereas, you know, women, we're, there's so many taboos on the fact that women are also sexual beings. And there's this idea that we're not supposed to care about sex and be as concerned about it. You know, there's the whole double standard on like body counts. A man sleeps with a bunch of women. He's a God. A woman sleeps with about, with a bunch of men, she's a slut. And you know, the math does not math on that because if men are supposed to be sleeping with a lot of women, then where are the women that there's, that there's supposed to be? Right. And then you don't let them, don't let, don't, don't let a woman tell a man five in their mind, they're going to say, okay, that's five plus five, right? They always going to add, they're going to double it up, right? Because they never think the woman is telling the truth, right? Right. So, so you have this, this double standard, this idea that like women aren't supposed to be sexual and therefore they shouldn't be concerning themselves with dating and relationships unless it is for the purpose of having kids. So then the first marriage is, well, that's natural. You have to get married so that you can have kids and so that you have a man, you know, provide for you and all of that. Yeah. A woman should be done because she's done the thing that she's supposed to do. She's had the kids and she's raised the kids. The only way she should be getting remarried is if her husband didn't do his job and like left her broke. And then of course she needs to get married to find another man to provide. But other than that. She needs visibility, right? Yeah. Oh man. Thank you so much for joining me, Keisha. If you guys are interested in, um, her consultation services as a coach, you can reach, reach her at Keisha rice.com. For those of you listening on the audio, that's K E S H I A rice, R I C E.com. Social media platforms. You want to shout out right quick. Instagram, Tik TOK, threads, uh, blue sky. Now all of them are at my name, Keisha rice. So very easy to find. All right. All right. You guys hit her up. She got some value, valuable information. As you can see from this episode here. All right. Thank you, Keisha. Bye.