Posts by Joan Price
“Friends with benefits” — at our age?
Can we have a bedmate who isn’t a soulmate — or even a steady date — at our age?
Miriam, age 57, wrote me this email pondering whether or not it’s possible to have a “friend with benefits” — AKA “sex buddy” — at our age, getting the perks of sex with someone we feel comfortable with, but don’t consider a love relationship:
I read in Better Than I Ever Expected
where you and others have had neighbors/ friends/ buddies you have sex with when you’re between partners. I never considered this option before and would like to explore it.
I eventually want another lifelong love. I could only consider having sex with someone I like and love. I’d like to try the sex buddy approach, but I have a burning emotional question: Even if he’s currently a friend who is willing to be a sex buddy and there’s not a chance between us for a long romance, how do you keep your oxytocin bonding feelings from taking over and locking onto your sex buddy when you should be looking for a more robust, true love, like you had with Robert?
I’d love to know how to navigate this territory without getting derailed or distracted from my goal of finding a long term love. So who are good candidates? And what kind of parameters do you have with such a pillow pal? Monogamous with each other for the time being? Either one is free to have other partners? How do you end it?
I think you said in your book that you actually had a sex buddy when you first met Robert. How did you transition out of it? Any tips for how to make this successful?
I had several sex buddies/ friends with benefits during my long decades of single life. These were men who were friends first, and we genuinely liked each other. We recognized and discussed honestly that we were not each other’s true loves and we understood that our relationship would not develop in that direction.
Yet we were attracted to each other, and at the time we were not in other exclusive relationships. We did a lot of talking before we decided that we would enjoy being sex buddies.
We agreed from the beginning — and I think this is very important — that we would not be exclusive with each other, would not stop seeking an eventual partner, and if we started getting serious about someone else, we would terminate the sexual part of our friendship.
In my 30’s and 40’s, I had a dear sex buddy whom I enjoyed for many years, on and off (depending on whether one of us became involved in another relationship that needed to be monogamous). We were good friends in and out of bed.
But that was largely hormone-driven. Now other sexual needs drive us than our hormones. We want to be touched and held, we love our arousal and our orgasms, we love the high of sex with an enjoyable partner and the laughter and intimacy afterwards. You’re right that our bonding brain chemicals could play tricks on us and convince us were’ in love when the sex is good, even though our logic says no.
The person you mention who was my buddy for two years (I was 55-57) right before Robert and I became involved was in a committed relationship with someone with disparate sexual needs. My friend and I met with his mate and discussed what would be acceptable. We agreed to do only what didn’t feel threatening to my friend’s partner. This worked out very well. But I know this is rare. We were, all three of us, unusually verbal and honest, with good communications skills and a solid friendship.
Then, when Robert and I shared our first kiss, I immediately broke things off with my buddy, who understood and wished me well. We stayed close, Platonic friends — and we still are.
Of course I was honest with Robert, who was understandably uncomfortable about the whole business — he had never had such a relationship, and didn’t understand or like this. So be aware, if you enter into such a relationship, that you might encounter this, too.
Robert eventually got to know my buddy and like him, though he continued to furrow his brow and shake his head at what seemed to him to be very odd behavior!
Miriam also asked me this:
Who are the candidates? When I think of my single male friends, overwhelmingly, I consider them like brothers, and there’s no sexual vibe at all. The only other candidates would be former lovers, if we’ve been able to separate amicably and maintain a friendship. I’d be willing to try that, but then I’m concerned about that oxytocin bonding boost. Since I have already been in love with them once, I fear I’d get too bonded to them again, and stop putting out energy to be available for anyone else, even though I know there’s no romantic long term future with them. But the sensual touch sure would be nice!
I would not return to a former lover whom I had loved for this experiment. It just seems full of potential problems, because your earlier emotions could kick in easily.
Readers, help us here. Where did you find a friend with benefits who was emotionally safe? How did you approach a friend with an offer of FWB? I hope you’ll comment.
(Originally posted March 2010.)
Senior Sex: Solo Style
Candida Royalle, known for pioneering the genre of woman-friendly erotic films and the Natural Contours line of intimate massagers, is the author of How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do. Candida wrote a marvelous piece for my new book, Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex (coming this June — finally!) about the importance of keeping ourselves sexually heathy when we’re not in a relationship.
At age 59, Candida says she’s not in a hurry to find a new partner, but “I am committed to having a date with myself at least once a week to exercise my PC muscle, which runs along the pelvic floor and surrounds the entire vagina. Then I reward myself with a nice little session of self-pleasuring.”
Erica Manfred, divorced at sixty, is the author of He’s History You’re Not: Surviving Divorce After Forty. Erica contributed helpful tips to Naked at Our Age for getting through the devastating emotion- and ego-slamming period of a later-life divorce. 
In a recent Huffington Post article, Erica writes that at age 68, she has decided to give up on dating and sex. “It takes a hell of a lot of energy to date at my age,” the former sexual enthusiast writes. She’s not closing off the possibility of “getting my mojo back” in case Mr. Senior Right shows up at the supermarket, but she’s abandoning the online dating sites and cuddling her chihuahua.
Rachel Kramer Bussel is, at 35, the youngest of our sex-positive celibates. Rachel is an erotica author, sex columnist, and editor of 38 anthologies, including my favorite series: Best Sex Writing 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Is it hard to write about sex all day and not go after it at night? “Am I missing out on what’s supposed to be my sexual peak?” Rachel wonders. “Maybe friends with benefits is the best life can offer me and I’m being foolish or stupid to hold out for something more fulfilling. Or maybe I’ll find that I like being on my own so much I don’t ever want to actually join forces with someone else.”
I’ve divulged my own celibacy since losing Robert — on this blog in a shy way, and with more candor in Naked at Our Age (you’ll see!). I’ve started to date again, which so far means a series of sexless first dates. I’ve had some excitement (again, you’ll have to wait for Naked at Our Age!) but without the culmination of inviting a partner into my body.
Senior sex is still my intellectual, emotional, and career passion. My mission to normalize later-life sexuality in the eyes of society is as important to me now as when Robert and I were curling each other’s toes. I know I’m getting somewhere when seniors are seen as oddities when they’re not having sex!
As always, I welcome your comments!
Size My Sex Toys, Please!
Women have their choice of sizes for bras and shoes, which is a good thing, because obviously our breasts and feet are all different shapes and sizes. So why haven’t sex toy designers/ manufacturers realized that our genitals are all different shapes and sizes, too?
Okay, it’s obvious that we are, and it’s also obvious that good sex toys would cost even more than they do now if they either came in a variety of sizes or were made to be adjustable.
But let’s say we’re buying a “rabbit” vibrator — a.k.a. “dual action” — which means that one vibrator has an innie for vaginal/g-spot stimulation and an outie for clitoral stimulation. Since I review sex toys, I get to try many different varieties, and I’ve sampled at least a dozen rabbits that don’t work for me at all. If they hit the spot internally, the clitoral-stimulator doesn’t land where I want it, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, the information details on the retailers’ sites generally include only length and circumference or diameter of the insertable part, but no way to gauge how close the two parts are, or anything else that might impact our enjoyment of a particular toy.
Besides, how many of us know our own measurements? Can we ask our gynecologist, “Hey, could you measure the distance from vaginal opening to clitoris?” And since I can’t bear a cervix battering toy, I’d also ask, “While you’re in there, how deep is my vagina from entrance to cervix?” (Readers: don’t tell me to insert a ruler, please, and yes, I know we’re expandable, but still….)
This rant started out as the prelude to a review of an absolutely gorgeous and expensive vibrator that fits all wrong, but I think I’ll stop here and see what you have to say.
Your comments are welcome. (Please don’t use this as an opportunity to promote vibrator retail sites other than the ones I endorse on this blog, though. I delete comments that try to hijack my readers to sites I haven’t checked out and endorsed.)
Enjoy my other sex toy posts here.
I first posted this in November 2010 and am posting again, hoping to get more comments from you. Any sex toy designers who want to work with me, please let me know!
Bonk by Mary Roach: book review
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roachis the most entertaining — and, in a madcap way, the most informative — book I’ve read in years. Filled with the weirdness of both the procedures and findings of sex research, Bonk combines arcane details with amazing facts and research tools (e.g. the “penis-camera).
Regale your friends with anecdotes from this book, and you’ll be the life of the party – as long as the party is filled with open-minded friends who enjoy zany details about sex.
Mary Roach writes in a clever, often hilarious style, which makes her books a pleasure to read, whether she’s writing about cadavers (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers ), the afterlife (Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife), or, in this case, sex. My copy quickly became spotted with Post-Its as I read, marking passages I simply had to tell you about, but numbering an impossible 45 markers by the time I finished.
Here’s just a small sampling of the facts I learned:
Princess Marie Bonaparte (great-grand-niece of Napoleon) blamed her inability to orgasm during intercourse on the fact that her clitoris was three centimeters away from her vagina. She did her own research in 1924 with a ruler and interviews and discovered that “téléclitoridiennes,” women with more than 2.5 centimeters between clitoris and vagina, were incapable of orgasm during intercourse. So she employed a surgeon to relocate her clitoris. (No, sorry, it didn’t work for her.)
Women don’t like men’s cologne, according to their rate of vaginal blood flow. The scent of men’s cologne actually reduced vaginal blood flow, as did the smell of charcoal-barbecue meat. Oddly, what increased vaginal blood flow the most (by 13%) was a mixture of cucumber and Good’n’ Plenty candy. Hmmm.
[describing one of many sex machine inventions:] “The motor housing is the size of a lunchbox and is raised on one end, like a slide projector. A flesh-colored phallus on a stick slides quietly in and out. The erotic appeal seems limited. It would be like dating a corn dog.”
[describing another sex machine invention, called “Therapeutic Apparatus for Relieving Sexual Frustrations in Women Without Sex Partners”:] “At the base of the penial assembly was a wide, black, wiry cuff of fur-like or hair-like material. For the partnerless woman who wants not only the ultimate climax or orgasm, but also the feeling that she is having sex with a shoe buffer.”
You’ll learn about “uterine upsuck” in pigs and how Danish farmers increased their pigs’ fertility by sexually stimulating their sows to “upsuck” the semen better. Why it rarely worked to use an MRI to study couples having sex. How porn stars make extra money by having their orifices replicated into plaster casts which are then used for sex dolls. And what Mary Roach and her husband did in full view of scientists to further sex research.
Some of the most intriguing diversions are found in the footnotes. Did you know that Victorian gynecologists and urologists wouldn’t look at the nether parts of the women they were examining? Can you guess why men land in emergency rooms when they can’t remove their improvised cock rings? Or the strangest foreign objects that have been removed from rectums? (I can’t decide whether to vote for the frozen pig tail or the spectacles.)
I highly recommend Bonk for your own delight and as gifts for your sex-minded friends.
[Read my interview with Mary Roach here.]