70-Year-Olds Still Pine For ‘The One Who Got Away’

FYI, this so isn’t in our life plan

We’ve always had pensioners pegged as wise souls who look upon their heartbreaks of yesteryear as things that they’ve learnt from.

Our nans chuckle and joke that they’ve dodged a bullet, telling us how ugly we would have been if they had ‘courted’ Simon who ended up going off with their friend Rita, which makes us all the more confident that old people really do know best.

But we’re wrong, as apparently not all 70-year-olds feel the same way about those who broke their hearts in the past. According to a recent survey of 2000 septuagenarians, one in seven of them still pined for a person who had broken their heart, or regretted a relationship that had failed - even though many had been married for 30 years.

What? 30 years marriage and they’re still thinking about someone who didn’t telegram/carrier pigeon them back decades ago? That’s not ideal! Plus it doesn’t bode well for how shattered we still feel over the guy that ghosted us last year and who we still dream will suddenly message, acknowledging his awful mistake.

Thankfully 72-year-old writer Virginia Ironside has spoken some sense and made us feel less fearful, labelling them ‘sad old romantics, still pining for that elusive Mr or Mrs Right.’

Writing in The Guardian she continued: ‘I come out in a cold sweat of relief when I think of how many narrow escapes I’ve had from the so-called Mr Rights of yesteryear… Recently, I bumped into a bloke I was obsessed with 40 years ago – although I didn’t recognise him, because he has turned into a pleasant, but frog-like old pudding, his hair far darker and more sinister than when I thought he was the bees knees.’

In fact, she has the healthiest approach we’ve seen in how to treat exes.

‘I’m delighted that the ones that got away did, in fact, get away. And those that were worth hanging on to – well, I’ve hung on for dear life, and they’re now some of my best and closest friends.

‘I see old relationships rather like chickens. Don’t throw away the bones, but make stock out of them, so you get something more out of the bird than just the flesh.'

Thanks Ms Ironside, for giving everyone some closure to aspire too, and for bringing back the phrase ‘bees knees’, it’s criminally underused these days.