Joan on ABC Nightline 12/1/06: senior dating/ sex

(photo of Vicki Mabrey from ABC Nightline)

Air date update: The senior dating/sex segment ran December 1, 2006!

Tuesday, October 24, put me on a natural high that still makes me tingle. That’s the day that ABC Nightline came to Sebastopol, CA to film an interview me for a segment about senior dating, sex, and sexual health.

First, the film crew met me at Coaches’ Corner, where I teach line dancing, and filmed my line dancers (who had assembled for a contemporary line dance demo) for an hour. It was both strange and exhilarating to dance with cameras literally in our faces, at our feet, everywhere we turned. I am grateful to our fabulous line dancers who kept their cool and kept on dancing and smiling.

The crew then drove to our house and settled in: moving furniture, asking Robert to move some of his paintings so the right color painting would be behind me, setting up lights in two different rooms, checking the lights and sound with me sitting, talking, typing. They filmed me typing and reading the Sex and Dating comments of my blog. (Thank you, those of you who commented!)

Next Vicki Mabrey, the 4-time Emmy award winning correspondent, and producer Talesha Reynolds arrived from New York. Fabulous women, full of spirit, they seemed to enjoy every word as they interviewed me for about 2.5 hours. We talked about many subjects related to seniors dating, loving, having sex. We discussed our culture’s stereotypes of older people having sex as either ludicrous or icky. (You know how I feel about that!)

At the end of it all, Vicki and Talesha asked me to teach them a line dance, which I did with pleasure. We danced, shook our hips, and laughed together.

I’m thrilled about getting the opportunity to “speak out” on this important topic to a huge audience. I’ll check in again here after the show airs.

2 Comments

  1. Joan Price on December 2, 2006 at 5:00 pm

    Thanks for your comment, and thanks for phoning in your book order when my website seemed overloaded. Your book is going out today.

    Yes, certainly orgasms are good for health, and I’m happy that the scientists are getting into the act (so to speak) and confirming what makes perfect sense.

    I want to be careful that we don’t blame the man with prostate cancer for being somehow responsible for getting the disease. The high incidence of prostate cancer (and other cancers) can’t be explained that smoothly, and I know from experience that a person with cancer tortures himself thinking, what did I do that caused this?

    Acknowledging that we’re not blaming the person with cancer for his disease, we can say that yes, sex is healthy and orgasms are healthy, and I’m very happy to read that you and your sweetheart are keeping up the count!

    Thanks again for the comment and the book order — if anyone else ordered the book through my website and had trouble getting the order to go through, just give me a call at 1-888-234-8837.

    — Joan

  2. Anonymous on December 2, 2006 at 4:17 pm

    If you don’t use It, You will Lose it!

    Joan… Good morning, it was such a nice surprise that you answered your phone yurself this a.m. when I called. I felt so fortunate to talk to the very person I enjoyed seeing just last night on Nightline.

    To add to your blog… I have long been of the opinion that a lack of sexual activity contributed to the incidence of prostate cancer. In fact, in 1969, my own father passed away at the very young age of 51 from prostate cancer.

    As teenagers, by brother amd I came to the conclusion that our parents didn’t have sex very often simply by counting the number of condoms in the box beside their bed. A package of 3 would last for 6 or more months.

    This led me to informally research into the sex lives of anyone I came across that had developed this cancer and, no surprise to me, there was a correlation. Of 23 individuals I identified that had been diagnosed with prostate cancer only 2 claimed to have been having sex more than “monthly”. The wife of one poor person acknowledged that in 18 years of marriage they had been intimate less than 10 times because he “didn’t know what to do”.

    Then I found a study in the British Medical Journal “Lancet” that followed a group of men for some 20 years in Wales and came to the same conclusion under more scientific circumstances. Those that had orgasams at least once a week had a very low incidence of prostate problems, those that had few, if any orgasms, had a much greater incidence of prostate ca. Now the AMA has come to the same conclusions, orgasms are good for mens health!!!

    My sweetheart and I try to keep up this count with orgasms for both os us at leasy twice a week by what ever means is our personal pleasure. It keeps me healthy and, I might say, it keeps her very happy. Thank You Again.

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