Is it anxiety or intuition, or a real warning sign?

Anxiety usually feels vague and turns up no matter who you’re seeing. Intuition usually points at something specific this person said or did. A real warning sign is behavior you can describe in one plain sentence that keeps happening. In your 50s there’s one more strand to check every time: if someone you’ve never met in person starts steering toward money, stop, whatever your gut is telling you.

Why are these so hard to tell apart?

Meet Diane, 54. Widowed three years, close to her two grown sons, recently back on the apps after a lot of encouragement from her sister. She’s talking to two men. One, Paul, she’s met twice for coffee. He’s kind and a bit awkward, and when he talked about his divorce he said something about his ex “taking him to the cleaners” that she hasn’t been able to shake. The other, Richard, she hasn’t met. He’s a contractor working overseas, he calls her every morning, and he says he’s never felt this way so fast.

Diane’s gut is uneasy about Paul. It feels wonderful about Richard. And that’s exactly the problem, because the feelings might be pointing in the wrong directions.

Anxiety is one reason. It fires early and predicts badly. Penn State researchers Lucas LaFreniere and Michelle Newman asked 29 people with generalized anxiety disorder to log their worries for 10 days and check later what actually happened. 91.4% of the worry predictions didn’t come true.1 That was a small group in treatment, not daters. But it’s a reminder that a strong feeling about the future is mostly information about the feeling.

Can you trust your gut more or less as you get older?

Possibly a bit less, in one specific way. In a UCLA study led by Shelley Taylor, older adults (average age 66) were just as good as younger adults at spotting trustworthy faces, but much more likely to rate untrustworthy-looking faces as trustworthy and approachable. On brain scans, they also showed less activity in the anterior insula, an area tied to that “something’s off” gut feeling.2 The researchers suggested a quieter warning signal might be part of why older adults are targeted by fraud more often.2

That study looked at people older than most readers here, and at photos, not people. It doesn’t mean your instincts are broken at 54. It means a warm feeling isn’t the same as a safety check, and the absence of an alarm isn’t proof that everything is fine.

What does a real warning sign look like?

It’s behavior, it’s specific, and it usually repeats. Two kinds matter most.

The first is behavior that would bother you on any day of the week: someone who’s unkind to a server, who pushes past a no, who gets angry when you have other plans. You don’t need to know why they do it to decide it doesn’t work for you.

The second is the pattern romance scams tend to follow: very fast intensity, a reason they can’t meet or video, a move off the dating site, then a crisis that needs money. Anyone can be caught by it. In a study comparing romance scam victims with people who’d never been scammed, Monica Whitty found victims were more likely to be middle-aged, well-educated women who scored higher on measures of impulsivity and trustworthiness.3 Being trusting and well-educated didn’t protect them. And the stakes for older adults are high. The Federal Trade Commission reports that combined losses among older adults who lost more than $100,000 to scams rose from $55 million in 2020 to $445 million in 2024.4 Those figures cover many kinds of scams, not just romance ones.4

If you’ve already lost money, you’re not foolish, and you’re not alone. Stop sending, tell someone you trust, and use the support links on this page to report it. Reporting quickly can matter.

How do you sort what you’re feeling?

Diane tried writing out four things for each man:

• What happened: “Paul made a bitter comment about his ex and money. Richard has called every day for three weeks, and has twice said his camera is broken.”
• The reading: “Paul might be resentful. Richard is devoted.”
• The fear: “I’ll pick wrong again. I’ll be alone.”
• The next step: “Ask Paul what happened with his divorce. Ask Richard for a video call.”

Written down, the picture shifted. Paul’s comment was one moment, worth a curious question, not a verdict. Richard’s facts (fast intensity, no video, overseas) matched the scam pattern closely, however good it felt. Diane couldn’t know what either man intended. She didn’t need to. She needed the next step.

When she suggested a video call, Richard had a new reason it wouldn’t work. Two days later he mentioned a customs fee holding up his equipment.

When is it time for more help?

If worry follows you from person to person, keeps you awake, or makes dating feel unbearable for weeks, a licensed mental-health professional is the right help.

What the research doesn’t show

• The worry study was small and clinical, not about dating.1
• The trust study used photos of faces and adults older than most 50-somethings.2
• The victim study is correlational. It can’t predict who will be targeted, and it says nothing about blame.3
• The FTC figures are reported losses, and many scams go unreported.4
• Nothing here can read someone’s intentions. It can only help you see their behavior clearly.

What to do this week

• Pick your answer above and try its next step once.
• Write the four lines for each person you’re unsure about.
• Ask for a video call with anyone you haven’t met. Most real people say yes.
• Make a money rule now, before anyone asks: no sending money, gift cards or crypto to someone you haven’t met in person.
• Tell a friend who you’re talking to. A second pair of eyes catches what a warm feeling can miss.