When Maria Foster turned 40, she broke the news to her husband Michael — she wanted to see other people. Also, she wanted him to do the same thing.
The Dallas, Tex. content creator and her spouse are featured on Peacock’s eyebrow-raising new dating show, “Love for the Ages,” premiering Dec. 15 on the NBCUniversal-owned streamer.
Hosted by Adrienne Bailon, the reality series focuses on three middle-aged, longtime couples, each at a crossroads in their relationship. On the show, husbands and wives are given the opportunity to date younger people in their 20s, and live with them for a full month. At the end of the experience, they decide whether they want to reunite with their spouse, or move on to pastures new.
“I like to have fun. I feel like life should be lived and full of experiences,” Foster told The Post. “My husband is 42, we’ve been married almost 20 years. He doesn’t like gatherings, or trying new things. It’s a lot of routine, the same stuff over and over. I [said], ‘Do I want to continue to live this way for the rest of my life?’ I’m 40, half of my life is gone. I brought him on this experience in hopes that we both can figure ourselves out and hopefully come to a compromise. If our happiness means being apart, we were both willing to do that.”
Marc Maravilla-Louie, 25, an aspiring software engineer from Southern California, is one of the singles on the show who mingled with Foster, along with three other fortysomething married women.
“My dating experience these last few years hasn’t been ideal,” he told The Post. “I wasn’t having the best luck, so I figured why not take this new approach? This isn’t the age group that I normally date, but I was open to it. Everyone was consenting and wanted to be there, so this wasn’t a home-wrecking situation.”
To qualify for the show, both wives and husbands agree to split up — at least temporarily — and move in with six younger members of the opposite sex.
Foster said that before saying their goodbyes, she and her husband talked about personal boundaries, about things they were comfortable and not comfortable doing. They both agreed — no sex.
“But at the end of the day, I control me and he controls him,” Foster said.
And while Foster admitted to being a little anxious about her spouse being swept off his feet by some other woman, her real worry was that he’d fall in love with someone else’s personality.
“For me, it was, ‘What if he connects with someone, and they have those things in common? And he thinks to himself, I don’t need the extrovert wife. Maybe he wants an introverted person.’ There were moments of doubt throughout,” Foster said.
Foster married her husband at 20, and never dated anyone else before that. She counts that among the reasons she was game to try her luck on the show.
“I always wondered, ‘What would it be like to be with an extrovert — would that be fun?’” she said.
“I went in thinking, ‘This is going to be a walk in the park. It’s a bunch of young men.’ But this is real, raw human emotion. It was definitely a roller coaster. I don’t regret it,” Foster said.