How do you handle sex and dating?
You’re dating again, after years, maybe decades, away from the dating scene. How do you handle sex with a new person? Do you use/require condoms? Do you get tested for HIV and other STDs and request the same from your partner? What questions do you ask? In other words, what steps do you take to protect your sexual health?
When Robert and I started dating, we used condoms, talked openly about our previous experiences, and got tested. I don’t know if most people our age do that, or if they assume that they’re not at risk. I’d love to hear from you about this.
I wish I had included this topic in my book, and I may include it in a future magazine article. Please either post your comments here or email them to me, and I’ll post them for you.
Thanks —
Joan
10/21 update: Some very interesting comments have begun to appear on this topic — if they don’t display automatically for you below this post, click “comments” to view them. Please keep your comments coming!
A man asks about sex after prostate cancer
Billybob, 62, has written several times, always willing to share his thoughts and experiences to help both men and women talk more freely about the special challenges of sex after 60. In his case, these challenges include recovering from divorce, re-entering the dating scene, and living with prostate cancer. I just received this question from him:
Since my cancer treatments I still want sex but I have an erection problem that Viagra seems not to work to well. What would a lady think of me if I chose to use a strap on device? Or do you know of alternatives? And If I were to use a strap on how would I break or tell such an idea to a lady?
I wrote this to Billybob:
If you read the chapter of Better Than I Ever Expected titled “When You or Your Partner Can’t,” you’ll see that women are very happy with fingers, tongue, vibrator, and cuddling when their partner can’t have an erection. I don’t think many women would appreciate a strap-on device, though I suggest you talk about it ahead and let her know you’re willing if she’d like it. My suggestion: level with her about your situation as soon as the intimacy gets past kissing, and see what she’d like and — please! — also tell her what would make you feel satisfied. Let me know how this works for you.
What do the rest of you think?
I read two good books on this topic, which I mentioned in Better Than I Ever Expected and which you can order from Amazon by clicking on the links:
Intimacy with Impotence: the Couple’s Guide to Better Sex after Prostate Disease by Ralph & Barbara Alterowitz (Da Capo/ Lifelong Books, 2004). A frank, practical guidebook to satisfying, sensual intimacy whether or not the male partner can have erections. An array of self-help strategies, from communication and creativity to medical therapies.
Making Love Again: Hope for Couples Facing Loss of Sexual Intimacy by Virginia and Keith Laken (Ant Hill Press, 2002). Candid personal narrative by Keith Laken, prostate cancer survivor facing impotence, and his wife, including fears, arguments, resolutions, setbacks, and a new definition of intimacy.
— Joan
Older Woman, Younger Men
Recently Judy, age 62, who attended my Ask Me, I’ll Tell You workshop, emailed me a description of her special “niche of passion:”
Here’s what Judy has to say:
I’m interested in the special challenges of over 60 women with under 25 men. This has been my preference for many years.
Contrary to expectations there seems to be a wealth of available men for me. Perhaps it is the “sex only for the pure joy of it” idea; I have offers pretty much daily.
I don’t pay but treat the young men with respect and a great deal of motherly (grandmotherly!) concern. Our relationships have lots of laughs and energy. ever see the movie Harold and Maude?
Currently I live with 4 young men under 25. All are affectionate, and watch each other to see if I have a favorite. (I tell them I love them all equally.)
Then there are numerous lovers from outside the house who visit. This is as close to heaven as I can get. It would be fun to meet another grandma who has found this niche of passion.
Are there other women out there who love men much younger? Share your stories, please!
How did you learn about sex?
How did you learn about sex, and how did your early sex education affect your enjoyment of sexuality later on? Please post your comments.
Here’s my story from “My Sex Education,” Chapter 3 of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty:
It was 1955, and I was twelve, with budding breasts, when my father–an obstetrician/ gynecologist–sat me down and handed me a pamphlet about the “facts of life.” The language was vague, with references to pistils and stamens, very little about penises or vaginas, and certainly no reference to the clitoris. The only fully developed information was about how the egg in the woman was fertilized by the sperm from the man, leading to pregnancy. My father sat quietly as I, embarrassed and confused, read the pamphlet.
“Do you have any questions?” he asked when I finished.
“No,” I lied.
I did have one burning question, which I asked my best friend: “How does the sperm get from the man to the woman?” That itty bitty fact was nowhere in the pamphlet.
My friend, oh so much wiser, told me, “He puts it in her.”
Not only was “how” omitted from my introduction to sexual information, but also “why.” Over the next few years, I was taught what not to do (sex or anything that could lead to it) and what awful things could happen–after all, my father saw lives ruined by teenage pregnancy. I was never taught why people want to have sex and how fulfilling it can be.
I was totally unprepared for the excitement and delicious pleasure of my urges a few years later.
Here’s what a few of the Sexually Seasoned Women I interviewed said about their Early Sex Ed and Experiences:
I was reared in a home where one did not talk about sex. When I first had sex at nineteen I felt guilty because I was raised to believe it was something for married people. However, my guilt did not stop me. I justified it by becoming engaged. (Melanie, 64)
In the 1950s, when I was a teenager, few of us had intercourse due to fear of pregnancy as well as the taboos placed on extra-marital sex by society. However, I loved “heavy petting” and had terrific orgasms with digital stimulation and squeezing on men’s thighs–or on horse back or fence railings! (Phoebe, 64)
I came out when I was twelve years old. I was oppressed by the times and I came from a violent family. I created my own little private world where masturbating was a way I’d feel comforted. I had my first sexual experience at fourteen with an older woman, twenty-one. I felt that was going to be my life, that I would be a sexual person. (Claire, 66)
I was brought up in a rural area in the 1950s, when sex was supposed to be forbidden, but several girls in my (very small) high school became pregnant. Then I had an affair with a married neighbor from age sixteen to twenty, and sex became a major focus, although I still excelled in school and got scholarships to college. I am very satisfied now, and no longer searching as I was. (Tina, 61)
When I was young, I was very affected by the abuse I suffered as a child. I hadn’t coped with the molestation even though I had a very active sex life. I was always fearful and held back. I grew up without boundaries. You don’t know your own body. It belongs to someone else. I was always so confused about sex. (Monica, 60)
I was raised in a very repressive environment. Everything about sex was labeled bad and forbidden. French kissing was a sin, kissing over ten seconds was a sin, masturbating was a sin. Birth control was also a sin, and so I became pregnant after my second sexual encounter. (Susie 60)