Tinderland-50 Shades of Grey, in hair

At the age of 60-plus, in addition to a painting class and a retreat on the big questions, I embarked on a delusional anthropological journey in "Tinderland" - the land of unlimited possibilities and impossible men. This is a travelogue from Tinderland. No filters, no Botox for reality. My name is Yael and I live in a movie. Unfortunately, this is not a Disney movie. The prince on the white horse is stuck in traffic on the Ayalon highway, and the horse is probably dead. What

My name is Yael, I'm 60 years old, and my daughter, Shira - who is already 28 and thinks she invented the world - claims that I'm a "cougar." She didn't have to explain to me. The subtle irony (or thick, depending on which side of the router you're looking from) is that Shira doesn't realize that she herself is the incriminating evidence. This girl, who is condescending to me with Generation Z concepts, is effectively "Israel's first Internet baby." She was born as a result o

There's a myth, as stubborn as a tahini stain on a white shirt, that women my age (or as the National Insurance Institute calls it: "senior citizen") have no needs. That after age 60, our bodies become a kind of comfortable hanger for loose clothes, and the only organ that still beats strongly is the heart - and even that only when we buy clothes or when there's a sale at the supermarket. Or when there are missiles from Iran. So I have news for you. Bullshit. Or as the wonder

After the glorious failure with the "spiritual" Sol, I decided to change strategy. If the wind is blowing in an unclear direction, maybe you need someone with feet on the ground. Someone solid. Someone who knows how to give orders - but also to love. Then he came with me. Itay didn't just "have been on the app." Itay managed his profile like a complex military operation deep in enemy territory. The photos: he's in a jeep in the background, he's wearing binoculars, he's lookin

December 2024. Winter. I have one iron rule on Tinder: don't go beyond the 3 km radius. It's not a matter of geographic racism, it's simply practice. At our age, traveling too long is a recipe for back pain, material fatigue, and wasting time on disappointments. My area is my fortress. But then Kobi arrived from Rishon LeZion. Rishon LeZion. The city of malls and Superland. For me, it's like traveling abroad without a passport. And yet... the picture. Oh, the picture. In the

January 2025. New year, old hopes. And then he popped up. Yaron, Tel Aviv, 66. A widower, a cinematographer. Let’s put all the cards on the table: His looks? Definitely not my cup of tea. In fact, not even my cup of lukewarm water. But then I read his bio. And in Tinderland, words can be sexier than six-pack abs. I wrote one sentence that apparently hooked him: "Only someone who loves the scene with the pigeons from Blade Runner would understand..." Boom. Blade Runner. The ul

There comes a moment in every Tinder user's life when they realize that the rules they've made up for themselves are nothing more than a non-binding recommendation. The first rule that was broken was the "radius rule." I started with 3 km. Why? Because I'm lazy, and because I was hoping that Prince Charming happened to live on the same street. But I quickly realized that within a 3 km radius I would mostly find the neighbor's ex-husband, my book, and maybe Walt's delivery man

It was supposed to be easy. Easy! Kfar Saba. Which, in my terms, is more or less the backyard. No passports, no packing for an overnight stay, no Wiz. Assaf. On paper (or on the screen), it seemed like a "perfect match" for the algorithm. We're both people from the big world of the keyboard. I write content, edit video. Him? He has a sales website, does e-commerce. Colleagues, for God's sake! The preliminary conversation was like a particularly successful team meeting, only w

After some difficult adventures, I said to myself: Yael, maybe we should try something "artistic"? Something with Tel Aviv roots? Facebook, the tireless matchmaker, brought me Yotam. A friend of a friend (supposedly). An artist, photographer, video-art creator. In the pictures, he looks like a handsome remnant of the old Tel Aviv bohemia. Silver hair, amused, a veiled gaze, and the vibe of someone who sat in a chair with Alterman (or at least drank beer in a monastery with ho

After the fiasco with Yotam from the previous chapter, I swore I was going celibate. I imposed a digital fast upon myself. I told myself: Yael, you’re a grown woman; you don’t need apps to feel wanted. You can just go to the supermarket and wait for someone to ask for help reaching a can on the top shelf. But then came Tuesday night. Boredom, in a lethal combination with a glass of red wine, brought me back to the scene of the crime. My finger swiped right and left automatica

I'm a little tired. I decided that Tinder was a fire zone. I deleted, blocked, declared abstinence. I told Dekla: "That's it. From now on, only coffee shops and artificial intelligence. This jungle is not for me." But Mark Zuckerberg had other plans. The Facebook algorithm, that tireless digital pimp, popped me a "friendship offer." Handsome Alon. A friend of a friend's friend. Interesting face, gray hair, bright blue eyes, a melancholy look. I wrote to him: Buddhist. Remembe

One day I said to myself: Yael, it's time to move up a league. No more Tinder, the meat market of the masses. I signed up for **"Alpha"**. The site for academics. The crème de la crème. The General Staff Patrol of dating. The place where men know how to use punctuation marks and don't send pictures of their glasses before "Good morning." Then Danny arrived. On paper? A wet dream of every second chapter. A family doctor (retired, but a doctor is a doctor forever). A relatively

After the turtles and the tormented poets, it was time for a little culture. Theater, gentlemen. Theater. This time Yossi came to mind. An actor (an amateur, but with a soul for the stage), a handsome man, 72 years old, well-preserved. There was just one small, tiny, microscopic problem: he lived somewhere in the Negev, in the desert. Now, you understand. I started this journey with an ironclad rule of a 3-kilometer radius. In my terms, the Negev is like another solar system.

After the Negev, I decided to return to the center. But not just to the center, but to the roots. If you have to fall, then in Portuguese. It sounds sexier when you crash. Meet Arik. Ramat Gan (which is almost Tel Aviv, if you close one eye and ignore the humidity). On paper? Bingo. Jackpot. Carnival in Rio. The man is an actor. And not an "amateur" like Yossi from the Negev looking for Twiggy at the community center, but an actor-actor. Appearing. But the real scoundrel? He

There are moments in Tinderland when you feel like a homeless person begging for attention, and there are moments - rare as a solar eclipse - when you feel like the queen of the class. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the "threesome" landed on me. No, not The team included: Roy, who had just returned from a retreat in the Himalayas, didn't really connect with us. Nimrod the Golfer: A man of the great world, interesting. We met for coffee. It was nice. Period. Lior (the jewel in the

Okay, stop everything. Put aside the popcorn you've been chewing in front of the stories of the misers who asked for half-and-half on tap water, or those who thought the sun shone on the wrong side of their backs. This episode isn't another failed romantic comedy; it's the moment I realized that Tinderland isn't just a playground with rusty swings, but a dark forest where the wolf not only dresses up as a grandma - he also sells you tickets to his lecture on "female empowerme

In Tinderland, every second man is a "CEO", every third man is an "entrepreneur at heart", and everyone else is a "lover of life". But then D arrived. No picture (just a silhouette of a back on the beach at sunset, a classic for divorced people), no full name, and no profession. The description only said: My instinct said: Swipe left, Yael. It must be a Walt messenger who is ashamed of his uniform. But curiosity... oh curiosity. It killed the cat, and it's on its way to killi

Okay, let's look at the statistics on the whites of the eyes (although my eyes are already blurry without glasses). 16 episodes have passed. I've met con artists, turtle breeders, chronic misers, ghosts, and human molecules that fall apart when exposed to reality. The obvious conclusion? Love in Tinderland is like parking in Tel Aviv: everyone says it's possible, but in reality you're just driving around, burning gas, and eventually getting a ticket. So I decided to change ta

Beloved friends, partners in fate and simply sympathizers, Remember the "immunity" episode? That moment of grace in which I decided to be the Mother Teresa of menopause and grant the male sex a sweeping amnesty for past sins? Well, it turns out that this immunity has side effects that don't appear in the consumer leaflet. The main one: motor paralysis in the index finger. Ever since I hit "publish" on that episode, I find myself standing in front of my smartphone, staring at

Meet Lawrence. Lawrence is 69 years old, and he lives in Jaffa. For him, Jaffa is not just a neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv - it's the French Riviera, Tuscany, and Casablanca all rolled into one. He's so proud of his location that he bothers to point out that it's "the furthest from Tel Aviv," because Jaffa is overseas. I, a casual Tel Avivian like myself, have already started packing my passport. In the picture, he looks like a combination of Indiana Jones and a biker in