Jane Fonda’s relationships have long been in the tabloids, but as she reaches her mid-80s, she’s revealed she’s no longer looking to date. If she were, she has some pretty serious criteria that would need to be met to change her mind. Instead of dating, she’s focusing on other things in life, like the women she surrounds herself with.
She opened up about dating in her 80s
On an episode of the ‘Absolutely Not‘ podcast, Fonda revealed how she truly feels about dating in her 80s. “I’m done, I’m over, I’m 86 years old, even in the dark I wouldn’t want to be naked in front of anybody,” she confessed. However, that’s not to say she hasn’t thought about what dating would be like for her if she were to pursue a new relationship. Later on in the show, she described what criteria would have to be met for her to date again.
“And here’s another thing,” she began, “I’m ashamed to say this, if I were to take a lover, he’d have to be 20. Because I don’t like old skin.” The irony is not lost on the 86-year-old, who said, “And consequently, I don’t want to foist that on anybody else. I assume other people are like me, I just don’t like old skin.”
While she explained that there would have to be a pretty serious age gap between her and a new partner, she also noted that she does not condone any kind of large age gap in dating circumstances. “I disapprove of 86-year-old men with 20-year-old women, so I’m not going to repeat it. I can ogle them, and I can’t pretend that I don’t get turned on if I see a certain kind of a person, but no, no, no, I don’t want to force that on anybody,” she said.
Fonda’s secret to moving on from exes
Fonda has lived a long life, and in that time, she has done her fair share of dating. Having been married three times, she’s seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in relationships. She was with her first husband, director Roger Vadim, for eight years, from 1965 to 1973. Then she moved on to her second husband, activist Tom Hayden, with whom she was married to from 1973 to 1990. Her third husband, whom she said would be her last, was CCN founder Ted Turner, and the two were married from 1991 to 2001.
While all three marriages ended in divorce, Fonda has been able to stay on relatively good terms with her exes. Following her separation from Turner, she explained how it wasn’t easy at first. “Well, in the beginning, I wanted to kill him. I was so angry.” However, she shared her trick for moving past that anger to get to a better place. “And so what I did, and it’s what I did with the other two before him, I write the letter that I want to really write him, which I still have,” she said. “Don’t send it! But you write it and that helps.”
Fonda still has the letters she wrote for all three of her previous marriages, and explained that “when I know I’m about to go, I’m going to burn them all.”
She’s focusing on friendships
In her older age, Fonda has other things to focus on rather than dating. Near the top of the list is her relationships with other women. “At 86, if I didn’t have female friends, I don’t know…I don’t know. And they’re all younger than me, I don’t have friends my age,” she explained. “When I’m with my girlfriends, I don’t think about that they’re younger than me.”
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However, their age difference does manage to show up in various ways. “One thing age related that I do think is that I’m way older than them, and I’m in a pretty good place. I’m centered, if I died tomorrow it would be fine,” she said. “I don’t have any major traumas…and the younger ones, not so much. So that reinforces my understanding of how, if you work at it, that age is kind of great. If you’re healthy.”