How do I trust someone new at this age?

You trust someone new at this age by trusting the person slowly and the process plainly. Let your warmth grow from what they actually do over weeks and months, and keep a few simple checks running in the background no matter how good it feels. That split, feelings on one track and rules on another, is what lets you enjoy someone without being naive or paranoid.

Why does trusting someone feel so complicated now?

Take Carol, 57. Divorced after 26 years, two adult kids, a house she finally paid off. She’s been talking with Tom, whom she met online, for five weeks. He’s attentive, remembers her granddaughter’s name, sends a good-morning text every day. He’s a consultant and travels a lot, so they haven’t met yet. Her daughter keeps sending her articles about scams. Carol feels insulted on Tom’s behalf and also, privately, a little uneasy.

Separate the threads:

• What happened: Five weeks of warm daily messages. No meeting yet. He travels.
• The reading: Either “he’s wonderful and my daughter is paranoid” or “this is a scam and I’m a fool.”
• The fear: Being deceived again, after a marriage that already did that once, and being embarrassed in front of her kids.
• The next step: Neither reading has to be decided. A video call this week will tell her more than another month of texting.

The complication is real, and it comes from three directions at once: what the marriage taught you, what scammers know about people your age, and what aging does to how we read others. None of these mean you can’t trust. They mean trust needs a bit of structure.

Does age change how we read people?

A little, and in ways worth knowing. In a 2012 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UCLA researchers led by Elizabeth Castle showed faces to 119 older adults, roughly ages 55 to 84, and to a smaller group of younger adults. Both groups rated trustworthy-looking faces the same way.1 But the older adults rated faces carrying cues of untrustworthiness as noticeably more trustworthy and approachable.1 In a brain-imaging follow-up, older adults showed a quieter response in the anterior insula, a region tied to the gut-level “something’s off” signal.1

There’s a broader pattern too. Stanford psychologists Andrew Reed and Laura Carstensen describe a “positivity effect”: as people age, they tend to pay attention to and remember positive information more than negative information, partly because emotionally meaningful goals take priority.5 It also means your gut may not wave the red flag as loudly as it once did.

None of this says your judgment is bad. It says your instinct alone shouldn’t carry the whole job. That’s what the checks are for.

Why do scams target people at this stage?

Because they work, and because people at this stage often have savings, a home and a life worth protecting. According to a 2025 Federal Trade Commission report to Congress, fraud losses reported by adults 60 and older rose roughly fourfold between 2020 and 2024, from about $600 million to $2.4 billion.3 Much of that increase came from large losses, over $100,000 each, often to investment schemes, romance scams or impersonators.3

And it isn’t only people over 60. In a UK survey of nearly 12,000 adults, psychologist Monica Whitty found that romance scam victims tended to be middle-aged, well-educated women who scored higher on trust in others and on impulsivity.2 That last part matters: scams run on urgency, the emergency that needs help now.

So the rule that matters most is simple, and it comes straight from the FTC: never send money or gifts to someone you haven’t met in person.4 Not for a plane ticket, a stuck customs package, a medical bill or a can’t-miss investment. A person who is real and interested in you will survive hearing no.

If you’ve already lost money, or someone is pressuring or threatening you, you haven’t failed. Stop sending, keep the messages, and report it. The support line on this page is there for exactly that.

How do you verify without becoming paranoid?

Make the checks small, fixed and boring, so they don’t eat the romance.

1. See their face live, early. A video call within the first couple of weeks of regular talking. Repeated excuses are information.
2. Meet in public, on your schedule. Somewhere you got to on your own, with a friend who knows where you are.
3. Money is off the table. No lending, investing, gift cards or “just this once.” Say it out loud early (there’s a script above), so it’s a rule, not an accusation later.
4. Let the story be consistent. Not interrogating, just noticing whether details about work, family and where they live hold together over weeks.

Then, once those are met, let yourself relax. The point of checks isn’t to stay suspicious forever. It’s to be able to stop suspecting.

What about the trust your marriage broke?

That’s a different wound from scam risk, and it heals differently. A partner who lied for years can make you wonder whether you can read anyone. But the question with someone new isn’t “can I be sure?” No one can. It’s “is what this person says matching what they do, over time?” Trust built that way is slower, and much harder to fake.

If the fear is persistent, keeps you awake, or makes it hard to enjoy anything about dating, a licensed mental-health professional is the right person to help you untangle it. That’s not a sign you’re too damaged to date. It’s good maintenance on a heart you plan to use.

What can you do this week?

• Write your three rules. The non-negotiables, so they don’t depend on your mood.
• Suggest the video call or the public coffee. Watch how they respond as much as what they say.
• Loop in one person. A friend or one of your kids who knows who you’re talking to.
• Notice the pace. If things are moving faster than you’d want a friend’s romance to move, slow it down.
• Then enjoy them. Checks done, rules held, warmth allowed.