As Valentine’s Day approaches, we are once again flooded with the usual suspects: roses, chocolates, sophisticated dinners and glossy ads featuring young heterosexual couples staring earnestly into each other’s eyes. The problem isn’t just that this version of romance is exclusionary – though it is – it’s that it’s profoundly out of step with how love is actually being lived, negotiated and reimagined in contemporary Australia.

Culturally, love has long been framed as a pursuit of the young. From Romeo and Juliet to Normal People, from Bridget Jones to When Harry Met Sally, romantic fulfilment is depicted as something you secure early; ideally before your knees give out or your mortgage locks in. The message is consistent: find love in your twenties or thirties, settle down, and then coast (emotionally paired and narratively complete) until death do you part.

That story no longer holds (if it ever truly did).

In Australia, people over 50 are one of the fastest-growing cohorts actively seeking love – or, at the very least, rethinking what intimacy, partnership and companionship might look like in the second half of life. This shift isn’t marginal, it’s structural.

New research shows that close to a third of Australian divorces now occur after the age of 50; a phenomenon known as “grey divorce”. While overall divorce rates have declined since their 1990s peak,........

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