Posts Tagged ‘books’
Tips to Increase Sexual Pleasure, Solo or Partnered – from The Ultimate Guide to Sex after 50
“My body feels like an alien being,” you tell me. “I want my old self back!” We spent decades figuring out who we were sexually, what turned us on, what touch or rhythm brought us to orgasm, and how to please a partner. Now it feels like we have to learn this all over again.
Aging affects sex in a gazillion ways: physical comfort, emotional needs, body image, and what we need for sexual arousal and pleasure, to name a few. This is true whether we’re having sex with someone new, a reunited lover from our past, or a longtime partner. It’s not what we signed up for, but it’s what we get with aging.
We may need stronger or lighter stimulation now, a gentler or rougher touch, slower or faster rhythm, and lots more time. Sometimes we don’t even know what we need, and we mistakenly think that if sex as we knew it no longer works for us, we’re doomed to a sexless future. Not true! We just have to rediscover what turns us on now and makes our body respond. Think of it as a wonderful journey of discovery.
Instead of focusing on what doesn’t work, let’s focus on what does work to increase sexual pleasure, and make that special, such as:
- Plan sex for the time of day when you are most energetic and in the mood for sex. Enjoy a morning or afternoon delight. If energy is a problem, try resting or napping first.
- Have sex before a meal—not after one. When our diminished blood flow is working on digestion, there isn’t enough to arouse the genitals. You’ll have more energy and better arousal before eating.
- If a medical condition is making sex problematic, plan your sex dates for the times that your medication is working best to ease the condition while leaving you lively. Ask your doctor about the timing of your medications—is there a way to modify the schedule for better sexual response and comfort?
- Celebrate the deliciousness of long, slow arousal. Rather than wishing orgasm came faster, enjoy the slow-moving ride.
- Try new positions if a position you used to love is no longer comfortable. If one position is the best way for you to reach orgasm but you can’t stay in it comfortably for a long enough time, try starting in another position and finishing with your favorite.
- Whether you’re single or partnered, relish the capacity of your body to enjoy sensual pleasure and indulge yourself regularly on your own.
From Chapter 2, The Ultimate Guide to Sex after 50: How to Maintain – or Regain! – a Spicy, Satisfying Sex Life by Joan Price
The Ultimate Guide to Sex after 50: How to Maintain – or Regain! – a Spicy, Satisfying Sex Life offers helpful information and practical tips for enhancing or reviving your sexual pleasure after 50, 60, 70, and beyond. Chapters cover these topics:
- Busting the Myths about Sex and Aging
- What’s Happening to My Body?
- Getting Your Mojo Back
- Sex with Yourself and Toys
- Sex with a Longtime Partner
- Stretching Boundaries
- When Intimacy Ends
- You and Your Doctor
- When Sex Is Painful
- Cancer, Cancer Treatment, and Sex
- Heart, Brain, Joints, and Sex
- Sex without Erections
- Single After All These Years
- The New Rules of Dating
- Sex with a New Partner
- Safer Sex: Always
- Sexy Aging Going Forward
Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60
Gray Love:
Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60
ed. Nan Bauer-Maglin and Daniel E. Hood
Reviewed by Mac Marshall
“We are stunned sometimes when we realize how old we are. Eighty-one and eighty-eight! How I wish we had decades left, but we’re both aware that one of us could drop like a leaf at any moment no matter how healthy we are right now. And we’re also aware that this relationship could not have worked if we were younger.” — Barbara Abercrombie in “Where Is This Going?”
In lively personal accounts, 45 contributors to Gray Love explore the ups and downs of their searches for new relationships late in life. These authors range in age from 59 to 94. Most have experienced divorce or widowhood. Their stories underscore our strong human longings for connection, sexual pleasure, and abatement of loneliness as we grow older. Gray Love offers both cautionary tales and reasons for hope.
Nan Bauer-Maglin
“Meeting someone informally through family, church, or neighborhood networks has been in decline since World War II,” editors Nan Bauer-Maglin and Daniel E. Hood note in their Introduction. Now, meeting new people online has displaced all other ways to locate potential dates.
The first half of Gray Love (“To Be or Not to Be in a Relationship”) focuses on a variety of seniors’ often disheartening experiences with online dating sites. And yet, in “You Say Potato,” Amy Rogers comments, “Without an ability to imagine some sort of future happiness, we’d have no reason to put ourselves through these hapless and sometimes heart-breaking endeavors.”
Daniel E. Hood
While they understand that this is the best current way to find dates and possible partners, 22 single seniors chronicle a litany of being frustrated, ignored or rejected online. Several have engaged in online dating for a decade or more. For example, Elizabeth Locke laments in “A (Mostly) Amusing Exercise in Futility”:
“Fifteen years of throwing money I can’t spare at websites whose only real purpose is to fill their coffers was frequently a waste of my time. But it wasn’t a total loss; I had some truly delightful evenings and way too many mediocre meals… I crossed paths with men I would not have otherwise met. I formed attachments that teetered on the edge of love, experienced at least one heartbreak, and made a few friends… I learned to cope with an almost unimaginable dose of rejection.”
Phyllis Carito
These seniors aren’t fully happy or at ease with the quasi-businesslike procedures of meeting people online. In“Discovery Through Online Dating Sites: A Woman’s Perspective,” Phyllis Carito writes, “The process can be daunting or fun; it can reveal the deep sadness of a widower or the hidden desires of a man that can be a surprise to him depending upon past experiences molded by a traditional marriage.”
Several contributors have gone in and out of online dating or tried several different sites. All had meetings with other seekers, most had some sexual encounters, some developed temporary relationships, but few found “the one” that many of them seek.
But some have done so! The second half of Gray Love (“The Complications and Pleasures of Elder Relationships”) delves into cases where widowed or divorced seniors did find a new life partner. Usually, this happened via the online dating sweepstakes. Most partners have chosen not to marry. Instead, they simply
Dustin Beall Smith
revel in the joys of a loving, caring, intimate relationship, whether cohabiting or not.
“That night, all night, we lay on my king-size loft bed, with its view of the river, our seventy-four-year-old bodies smoothed magically young again by the forgiving light of yet another full strawberry moon.” — Dustin Beall Smith, in “At Once”
Several couples have chosen to live apart together (LAT), an ever-more-popular arrangement among seniors that combines independence with committed togetherness. Writing in “Pleasures and Complications: Living Apart Together,” widowed, 80-year-old Susan Bickley met her 7-year-younger partner, Mike (also widowed) on Match, and they clicked. He had a big old house. She had a recently purchased condo and wasn’t keen to share it. Luckily, another condo in the same building became available. Mike bought it and sold his house. Now, in Susan’s words, “We are finding joy in small things… knowing that we are here for each other, even when we are apart—and down the hall.”
Gray Love chronicles a search for connections, sexual and otherwise, in life’s final chapters. Most contributors live in or near New York City and have backgrounds in education. These characteristics lend their tales a certain flavor. Most stories were written amidst the COVID pandemic, and the shadow of that still-with-us event hovers over their searches for dates and relationships. As a reader, you will learn much about the road ahead by engaging with these seniors as they share honestly some of their life experiences.
Order Gray Love from Rutgers University Press or Amazon.
Mac Marshall
Mac Marshall, PhD is a retired anthropology professor, researcher, and author who is delighted to explore sexuality studies at this time of his life.
“He Wants Me Naked When I Fling the Front Door Open” – Roz Warren reviews Ageless Erotica
7/19/21 update. I just replenished my supply of Ageless Erotica — I had sold out yet again! — and thought you would enjoy this hilarious review by humorist Roz Warren from March 2013. Yes, Ageless Erotica is still available, from my website (autographed and shipped immediately!) or Amazon, or you can ask your local bookseller to order it. It makes a great gift for yourself or another sexy senior. — Joan
“He Wants Me Naked When I Fling the Front Door Open”
– Roz Warren reviews Ageless Erotica
If you want a glimpse into the erotic imaginations of sex writers who’ve been around the block a few times, pick up a copy of Ageless Erotica, a new collection of sex writing by, for, and about seniors.
Joan Price is on a mission to “talk out loud about senior sex.” She gives lectures. She holds workshops. And she writes books. Better than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty was followed by Naked At Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex. And now there’s Ageless Erotica, described as a “steamy assortment of erotic stories and memoir essays written for a mature audience.”
The book collects tales of seniors from all walks of life, gay and straight, vanilla and kinky, taking their clothes off and having a good time. I’ve never found erotica a turn-on, but I still got a kick out of reading it. I even learned a few things. (Masturbation clubs for women? Who knew?)
The stories in Ageless Erotica are a fascinating mix of the sensual, the medical and the humorous. The writing itself is all over the place. Laughingly abysmal. Unabashedly smutty. And, often, oddly moving.
Here’s a sampling of my favorite lines:
- “My yoni was a ravenous hollow.”
- “In a flash, he was butt-naked except for his socks.”
- “I came in places I didn’t know I had.”
- “My first blue cock. Would anything else on earth ever feel so good?”
- “I played his instrument with my mouth as if it were a flute.”
- “You are amazingly well constructed,” he said. “There’s evidence of too much sun on exposed areas, leaving a coarseness to the skin, but,” he added, stroking my ass, “the hidden parts are the silkiest I’ve ever felt.”
- “Lifting her breasts away from her chest, he kissed his way down, until he found her sparse, gray pubic hair.”
- “A lifetime of hard work let me afford trendy cashmere sweaters.”
- “You have such beautiful, manly nipples, sweetheart.”
- “I skipped teasing him with the knitted glove and went straight to the surgical one — in my actual size.”
- “Filthy incoherence is always a positive sign at that point in our lovemaking.”
- “He wants me naked when I fling the front door open.”
- “It’s my boyish charm, as I’m told, that hangs around, unlike my hair.”
- “I’ve included the inevitable butt plug.”
- “A heavy date requires a slow day beforehand and a preparatory nap.”
- “Off to the bedroom?” I asked with a wink.
- “I clutch the sheets and yell, ‘Fuck, oh fuck, yes, yes, yes, do me, oh do me, thank you Sir, oh fuck, fuck, yes, yes, yes!’”
- “We were naked before we even washed our vibrators.”
- “I couldn’t remember if I had shaved the gray hairs from my lollipop just in case it was going to get licked.”
- “Barry took my legs and spread them like a wishbone.”
- “Tom Maynard, you’re as hard as a prize salami!”
- “You can thank my hormone supplements. They do wonders for this kind of thing.”
- “His first question when we met was, ‘Do you know how to gut a deer?’”
- “He says, ‘I’m prepared,’ code for the Levitra pill he took a half hour ago.”
- “My heart resumed a normal rhythm, all fears of another infarction vanished.”
- “His tongue slid around my clit, which I’ve named Ethel, and over it, and too soon, I flooded with warmth.”
Intrigued? You can find Ageless Erotica on Joan’s website or at your local indy bookstore. If it’s not in stock, just give the salesperson a lascivious wink and ask him to order it for you. And Ethel.
 |
| Roz Warren |
Roz Warren writes for The New York Times and The Funny Times. Her work
also appears in Good Housekeeping, The Christian Science Monitor and The
Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit her website.
This review (c) Roz Warren first appeared at HumorTimes.com on March 30, 2013. It is reprinted here with Ms. Warren’s permission.
Sizzling Sex for Life by Michael Castleman
Sizzling Sex for Life by Michael Castleman
reviewed by Mac Marshall
Are you a man who wishes that sex was more pleasurable? Do you feel furtive about masturbating? Do you have erectile problems? Do you feel guilty watching porn? Do you believe that your penis is too small? Do you desire sex more than your spouse/partner does? Sizzling Sex for Life: Everything You Need to Know to Maximize Erotic Pleasure at Any Age by Michael Castleman offers sex-positive answers to questions like these and many others, based upon the best available current knowledge.
This book largely addresses the sexual issues facing cisgendered heterosexuals—nine out of ten people…While I write for men, I’ve also striven to be sensitive to women, to inform men of the many research breakthroughs of the past few decades…that have shined new light on how women experience erotic pleasure…[I have] also endeavored to inform women about men’s experience of sexuality.
Castleman’s book is a 432-page encyclopedic compendium covering a host of different sex topics. His 52 chapters are organized into six major parts:
I. The Ten Ingredients of Sizzling Sex. (10 chapters; 66 pages)
II. From Infancy to Old Age: Sexual Issues Throughout the Lifespan. (20 chapters; 155 pages)
III. A Guide to Resolving Men’s Sex Problems. (4 chapters; 38 pages)
IV. The Man’s Guide to Women’s Sexuality. (5 chapters; 35 pages)
V. Other Ways to Play. (6 chapters; 43 pages)
VI. What Everyone Should Know About Pornography. (7 chapters; 54 pages)
Castleman’s recipe for “sizzling sex” is summarized in Part I. In a mantra repeated over and again throughout the book he argues, “For sizzling sex, your default position should always be slow, tender, mutual massage that eventually—after twenty minutes or so—extends to gentle, playful genital caresses.”
Other recommended ingredients for sizzling sex include:
- Coaching your partner. “Everyone is sexually unique…No one can read anyone’s erotic mind. No one can possibly know what you like and dislike unless you reveal it. For sizzling sex you must speak up.”
- Obtaining affirmative consent. “Women have become fed up with the problems inherent in no means no and have promoted a new standard, yes means yes—clear, unambiguous consent for every sexual escalation—‘affirmative consent’.”
- Using lubricants. “Currently, an estimated fifty million Americans use lubricant regularly. Most consider it a quick, easy, inexpensive, erotic enhancement.”
- Introducing novelty. “To make sex hotter, include something new: a different time or place, new moves, new lingerie, a new sex toy—anything.”
- Indulging sexual fantasies. “An active erotic imagination contributes to sizzling sex by boosting libido, aiding arousal, and enhancing pleasure.”
- Masturbating. “Masturbation is the foundation of satisfying sex and the world’s most widely practiced type of lovemaking…If you feel ambivalent about making
love with yourself, it’s difficult to have great sex with anyone else.” - Engaging in outercourse, including oral sex. “Many people rank oral sex, fellatio, and cunnilingus, among their top erotic pleasures…Gentlemen, if you want your partner to feel sexually satisfied and sing your praises, what hangs between your legs is usually less important than how creatively you use your tongue.”
- Focusing on pleasure. “All genders’ top three reasons [for engaging in sex] focus on attraction and pleasure…Having children was one of the fifty least cited reasons for partner lovemaking…The goal of sex is not orgasm but mutual pleasure.”
- Scheduling lovemaking. “In established relationships, sex therapists are virtually unanimous in the opinion that scheduled sex offers couples the best chance for long-term erotic happiness.”
Many chapters stand alone for those who seek answers to certain questions. For example, Chapter 12 offers “A Parents’ Guide to Toddlers’ and Preschoolers’ Natural Sexual Curiosity,” and Chapter 20 provides suggestions on “How to Prevent Sexual Assault and Harassment.” Chapter 36 discusses “A Man’s Guide to Women’s Bodies.” This makes the book particularly useful to sex counselors and therapists who may direct clients to specific chapters relating to their clinical discussions.
Overall, the book is splendid, but I had a few issues:
- It’s problematic that Castleman’s discussion of sex toys leaves the impression that they’re all for women or for men to use on women. He fails to mention the numerous penis toys that have come on the market over the past decade that enhance sexual pleasure for men (e.g., the Pulse and Jett from Hot Octopuss, the Manta from Fun Factory, and the Ion from Arcwave). Moreover, I can personally attest that many vibrators designed for vulvas provide wonderful stimulation to penises as well.
- This important book harbors a certain amount of repetitiveness that might have been eliminated with more careful editing. While some of this may be intended to hammer home certain key points, much of it uses the same wording over and over. Some examples: we’re told many times that porn is like a cartoon version of sex; that 5%-6% of normal, mentally healthy women are highly sexual; that all men watch and masturbate to porn; that Fifty Shades of Grey sold 150 million copies worldwide in fifty languages during its first eight years in print; that men tend to become more sexually aroused than women by visual imagery; and that only 25 percent of women are consistently orgasmic from vaginal intercourse alone.
- As it stands, the book ends very abruptly following a 54-page discussion of porn. I would have appreciated a brief chapter that summarized and highlighted the author’s main points and brought the reader full circle.
A strength of Sizzling Sex for Life is the author’s lively and accessible writing style. He presents sometimes complex information in an easily comprehensible manner, often laced with humor. For example, “Fellatio is as simple as eating a banana—without using your teeth.”
He also provides historical tidbits:
The ancient Greeks and Romans preferred small penises. In Aristophanes’s play The Clouds (423 BC), an elder admonishes delinquent boys that if they continue to misbehave, as punishment, their penises will grow larger. But if they repudiate wickedness, their organs will remain blessedly small. What the Greeks wanted was a jumbo scrotum. A big nut sack suggested great potency. The Greeks considered penises incidental injection devices for what really counted, big ejaculations. Five centuries later, the Roman novel Satyricon (ca. AD 50) describes bathers at a public bath who ridicule one character’s large penis.
Throughout much of the book, Castleman notes the special sexual issues associated with aging for men and women alike. This is welcome information for senior readers age 50 and beyond. He gives special attention to erectile problems for men, vaginal dryness for women, and the delightful joys of slow, gentle outercourse as pleasurable sex for seniors. He also devotes all of Chapter 29 (“No One is Ever Too Old for Sizzling Sex”) to older folks, commenting that “Elder sex just might be the best of your life.” We agree!
Michael Castleman is a journalist who specializes in health and sexuality. Over the course of his long career, he has worked as a counselor at a family planning clinic, was employed by a company that marketed sex toys, wrote answers for the Playboy Advisor column in Playboy Magazine, and authored two earlier sex books. He currently writes the “All About Sex” blog for Psychology Today and answers sex questions from readers at GreatSexGuidance, In assembling the wide-ranging materials for Sizzling Sex for Life, he has drawn on this varied background and his extensive personal network of sex counselors, coaches, and therapists.
Purchase Sizzling Sex for Life from https://sizzlingsexforlife.com/.
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Mac Marshall, PhD is a retired anthropology professor, researcher, and author who is delighted to explore sexuality studies at this time of his life.