Does Her Past Sex Life Matter?

By Joan Price | July 24, 2006 |

Don, age 73, who read Better Than I Ever Expected, wrote this email:

A question for Robert Rice. I need your help. Like you I have re-entered the world of two people in the same house after 5 years of no one, and like your Lady, my Lady has had a very active sex life in the period before our meeting. The question is this…how do you deal with that? Do you think about the other men that were before you? I understand that at our age it shouldn’t be an issue but I find myself wondering how I “stack up” to the others. I don’t want to ask, I feel that would be crossing the line. Should I just accept the fact that we are together and that’s the end of it? Tell me how you deal with it… and thank you !

Robert replies to Don:

Don, in response to the question that you asked me, I understand where you’re coming from. I used to worry about this myself. I am fortunate to have someone who assures me that I am the one she loves. This assurance comes in many ways, and sometimes it’s up to me to see and recognize it. This gives me great freedom to let go of worrying about what has happened before.

Since we learn from all our previous sexual experiences what we want and like, and what we don’t, this sexual learning necessarily includes all past lovers. A couple of Joan’s past lovers are now our mutual friends, and both of us get along well with the other’s ex-spouse.

The question whether we measure up to other guys who have had sex with our partner and question whether we are good enough, or big enough, etc., I am told — and believe — it’s much more a male concern than female. In any case, I have come to believe that authentic expression of love and the ability to be playful and experimental seem to be the most reliable ingredients for successful sex, rather than focusing on measuring up (which can only be unknown anyway).

It seems to me that you answered your own question in your last statement about accepting the fact that you are together. That says a lot! It sounds like you’re on the right track!

I hope this helps with your concern.

Joan replies to Don:

When I fell in love with Robert, it didn’t matter to me whom I had bedded before and what I had experienced with anyone else. All that surfaced in my mind was how powerful my bond was with this man I loved. Remember our primary sex organ is our brain. For me, my previous experience was a good thing, because I was done with needing to experiment, and I knew whom/what I wanted, sexually and emotionally. I’ll bet your special lady would tell you the same.

Have other readers dealt with this situation? What do you think about Don’s question? I invite you to comment.

— Joan

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What’s in this book?

By Joan Price | June 13, 2006 |

When I order a book, sometimes I feel that I’m taking a chance, because I don’t really know what’s in it–even with the editorial description, reviews, and sometimes an excerpt. I’d like to make this easier for you by posting a description of each chapter of Better Than I Ever Expected : Straight Talk about Sex after Sixty. (These chapter descriptions are also available on my website)

Let me know if this helps you make your decision — and remember you can purchase a book autographed by the author here.

Chapter Descriptions:
Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty by Joan Price
1. Tale of a Book: How This Book Came to Be. The history of this book, starting with the author, age sixty-one, affirming that she is having the best sex of her life. The surprises of sisterhood rediscovered, as women respond to her request: “Wanted: Interviews with sassy, sexy women, age 60+, who are willing to share feelings and experiences openly and anonymously in a candid, woman-to-woman book.” The discovery that women want to talk about the most intimate details of their sex lives, present and past.

2. Sex in the Golden Age. What makes sex after sixty the best sex of our lives? Great sex isn’t just about body parts. Wisdom, connection, logistics, time, intimacy, a sense of humor, ease of communication, resilience of body and spirit, no kids barging in—who needs youth? Sexually seasoned women speak about what makes sex better than they ever expected. Includes Boo Hiss Department: media messages that present older sex as unseemly, pathetic, and altogether icky.

3. My Sex Education. How and what we learned about sex in the fifties. Jaunty account of author’s early sex education: early misinformation, discovering love and sex (but not orgasm) with first boyfriend, and greatest teenage nightmare: getting caught. Includes reflections of first boyfriend as he remembers the experience and relationship. Sexually seasoned women speak about early sex ed and their experiences.

4. The Bodies We Live In. Learning to accept and celebrate our bodies’ changes. Topics include Body Image, Facing Our Faces, and What Color is My Hair? Author’s fiancé gives a male viewpoint on the attractiveness of wrinkles and wisdom. Includes author’s story of near-fatal automobile accident and reclaiming her body and her sexuality. Sexually seasoned women speak about their bodies and what they love about them.

5. It Ain’t Easy After Menopause. A lively look at the challenges of post-menopausal bodies and having zesty sex in spite of them. Topics include Hormone Hubbub, Hot Flash Flashbacks, and the author’s trials, alternatives, and personal solutions. Sexually seasoned women speak about HRT and alternatives. Expert tips: Painful intercourse problem-solving.

6. Fitness and Exercise: Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Sex Lives. Fitness isn’t body weight or shape—it’s regular physical activity to rev up energy, self-image, and sexy feelings. Tips from the author, a fitness professional, about how exercise enhances sex, with specific exercises that enhance horizontal workouts. Sexually seasoned women speak about exercise routines that make them feel sexy.

7. Public Sex Acts and Private Preparations. Sex starts long before we get naked. What we do in public, in private, and with or without our partners to heat up in advance. Ways to be intimate outside of bed. Sexually seasoned women speak about what gets them in a sexy mood. Includes a couple of group sex adventures, to keep the chapter title honest.

8. Beds Afire: Stoking The Slower-Burning Flame. Sexual arousal after sixty is a slow burn rather than an instant flame. Adjusting to slow arousal with understanding, communication, acceptance, and sexy rituals. Topics include Kiss Me Forever, Foreplay: We Need a New Word, Lube Power, and My Brain Chemicals Made Me Do It. Sexually seasoned women describe what turns them on.

9. Plug In, Turn On: The Quick Version of Everything You Need to Know about Sex Toys. Women with decreased sexual sensation can fly high again, thanks to sex toys. Author’s frank, personal vibrator history, including involving her fiancé. Expert tips: Your First Vibrator: the Possibilities of Pleasure and Tips for Toys: A Guide for Women of a Certain Age. Sexually seasoned women speak about using sex toys.

10. Staying Sexy without a Partner. Author’s story of partner-less years, overcoming desperate attitude. How to feel sexy, attractive, and satisfied without a relationship. Includes Solo Self-Pleasure: Being Your Own Best Sex Partner and expert tips for toning, lubrication, and massage for genital health. Sexually seasoned women speak about how they stay sexy and happy without a partner.

11. Hunting Grounds: In The Dating Game Again (or Still). Author’s story of social dry spells, finally meeting the love of her life at her line dancing class. Challenges of being in the dating scene after sixty. Two stories of women who found love on the Internet and another who’s still looking. Includes Around the Block: Erotic Adventures of Single Sexually Seasoned Women.

12. Done It All—Ready to Nest. Sexual experimentation, multiple partners, sex with strangers—many of us tried it all, and now are happily settled down with one partner, or want to be. Sexually seasoned women speak about their wild, past sex lives, and compare early excesses with the contentment of a stable, monogamous relationship.

13. Late Bloomers—Ready to Fly. Women who married early and opened up sexually later report that they’re enjoying the wildest, most satisfying sex of their lives right now. Stories your grandmother didn’t tell you: surprising, real-life tales of finding sexual fulfillment after sixty in unconventional relationships, including one woman, age seventy-seven, in a relationship with a man thirty years younger.

14. Sparking a Familiar Fire: How to Spice Up a Long-Term Relationship. Satisfied women in healthy, loving, decades-long relationships describe how they keep the sparks flying with long-term partners and make sex sizzle, not fizzle. Spicy activities and fantasies that keep the fires burning. Expert tips: Keeping a Long-Term Relationship Fresh and Sexually Hot.

15. When You or Your Partner Can’t. Ways to enjoy sex (and life!) despite erectile dysfunction and other health challenges of aging that affect sex, including upbeat tale from man with ED about his enjoyment of pleasuring his partner, and a lusty elder couple overcoming a myriad of medical obstacles. Sexually seasoned women speak about how they cope with their partners’ physical challenges and their own.

Appendix A: When and How a Physician or Therapist Can Help. Not having the best sex of your life? How to talk to your doctor about your sex life, and when to see a sex therapist. Expert tips from Tina Tessina, relationship therapist.

Appendix B: Resources
– Directory of women-friendly sex shops, both brick-and-mortar and online
– Recommended books Appendix C. Interview Questions
The questions answered by our sassy, sexually seasoned women.

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Healthy Life: “a celebration of sex”

By Joan Price | May 10, 2006 |

I was interviewed by Jennifer Margulis, author of Why Babies Do That and editor of Toddler: Real-life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love. She turned the interview into a marvelous feature story for Healthy Life, a quarterly health supplement to the Greenfield Recorder which circulates to about 50,000 readers in Massachusetts and Vermont.

The article is not available online, but here are some excerpts:

Fitness writer and former high school English teacher Joan Price has finally found her calling. At 62, Price now identifies herself an “ageless sexuality advocate.” What’s that? A spokesperson for the sex life of aging Baby Boomers.

Her advocacy has come in the form of a 269-page book, just released from Seal Press, “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty.” The book is divided into 15 chapters—everything from “Plug In, Turn On: The Quick Version of Everything You Need to Know about Sex Toys” to “When You or Your Partner Can’t.” Price also includes advice for spicing up long-term relationships, reentering the dating scene, fitness over 60, and other topics.

The book is a celebration of sex by a woman who writes frankly about her own sexual awakening over the years… “Juicy is an attitude,” Price writes in a chapter entitled, “It Ain’t Easy After Menopause,” “… based not on the flow of our vaginal secretions but on physical well-being, emotional state, mental attitude, and love of sex. Here’s to post-menopausal zest—and understanding lovers!”

The idea for the book came out of the relationship she was having with an understanding lover….

“I went looking for good sex books, both fiction and nonfiction, specifically aimed at my age group. I was surprised – and turned off! – by how few of these books existed, and how dry and unsexy most of them were,” she says. “Some were much too academic to bring into the bedroom, many were outdated, and some were supposed to be titillating but weren’t—at least to us.”

So Price decided to write the book she wanted to read…. And her book—which is full of exclamation points and positive affirmations about ageless sex—reads like it was written by a woman on a mission.

Price’s mission is to celebrate, enhance, and affirm the sex lives of women (and men) over 60.

…Of course, sex after 60 isn’t always easy, as Price is the first to admit. In Better Than I Ever Expected Price includes a chapter about when one partner or the other is not able to be sexually intimate. She also talks honestly about the changes wrought on women by menopause and on men by aging, gravity, and prostate dysfunction.

… “Our hormonally deprived bodies challenge us with less lubrication; thinner, less resilient vaginal tissues; and often less physical sensation,” she admits. “Our bodies are slower to respond, and we may have more trouble reaching orgasm.”

Some of Price’s solutions to our body’s changes? Lubricants, vibrators, a sense of humor, and a very patient, loving partner.

“Sexual response is in our brains more than our genitals,” Price insists. “My lover and I are as turned on by each other as a couple of teenagers, but with the juicy addition of decades of life experience, self-knowledge, communication skills, and a ense of humor.”

She says sex over 60 has made her both adventurous and accepting: “We’re willing to experiment and stretch our boundaries. Men will be relieved to learn how accepting most women are about men’s changes and how to have great sex even when some parts aren’t cooperating.”

Throughout the book Price includes quotes from women who took her survey—women in their 60s who are having great sex. It’s a pre-selected group, which Price herself points out. When she sent out a call for interviewees she stated she was looking for “sassy, sexy women, age 60+ to share feelings and experiences openly and anonymously” so any women who didn’t fit that description would not have responded.

…If you’re looking for great sex over 60 but not yet having it, this book might make you feel rather alienated and depressed (wow, all those folks out there getting their groove on, where’s mine?). But maybe, just maybe, it’ll get you into your first sex shop purchasing your first sex toy. After all, it’s never too late to start.

For more information about Price, visit: http://www.joanprice.com/.

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