Posts Tagged ‘senior sex aging’
What Surprised You Most about Sex after Fifty (or Sixty and up)?
Vibrant Nation, a marvelous online community of women over 50, asked me this question:
What surprised you most about sex after fifty?
Here’s what I answered:
I was amazed at how hot it was!
I fell in love at age 57 with Robert, a 64-year-old artist and dancer who would inspire my book, Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty
, and become my husband five years later. I couldn’t believe how emotionally fired up for sex I was, how gloriously responsive to the kisses and touches of this vibrant man.
We were as lusty and giddy as a couple of teenagers, yet with the emotional and intellectual enhancement of age and experience. We knew, by now, who we were, what we wanted (in life and in a relationship, not just sexually), and how to talk about it. We had made plenty of relationship mistakes in the past, and now we were ready for the relationship we would do right. All of this heightened our sexuality and led us to express it joyfully and loudly.
Does that mean we were just like lust-crazed 20-year-olds with wrinkles? Not at all. My post-menopausal body was slow to arouse, although emotionally I was on fire from the moment I looked into Robert’s blue eyes. But that turned out not to be an impediment at all, because Robert was not only willing, but elated, to take lots of time in foreplay (which I prefer to call “loveplay”). He said – and he was embarrassed when I quoted this in Better Than I Ever Expected
I know I had the fortune of loving an amazing man, but I think we are all capable of joy-filled, fulfilling sex at our age if we learn to express (gently) what we need and understand the changes in our partner and in our relationship as we age.
You can also read my response here on VibrantNation.com, where they’re giving away five copies of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty
If you’re a woman over 50, I hope you’ll join Vibrant Nation — it’s an interesting and supportive community filled with women sharing experiences, information, and ideas. I’ve been enjoying spending time there myself.
Restless Vagina Syndrome?
“‘Restless Vagina Syndrome’: Big Pharma’s Newest Fake Disease” by Terry J. Allen discusses the attempt to medicalize women’s sexuality as if we were men with faulty functioning who need fixing. Allen, senior editor of In These Times, writes,
It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.
You are among the “43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function,” according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties—but only if the woman feels “personal distress” about it.
So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.
Allen goes on to describe the big pharmaceutical companies’ attempts to define women’s sexuality as men’s sexuality gone awry — we should get turned on easily and have mind-blowing orgasms every time — and their failed attempts (so far) to give us instant arousal and explosive orgasms with drugs. She discusses several drugs and how they have not turned out to be helpful to women.
I agree that we’re not defective men, and we absolutely should not fall for attempts to medicalize what might be perfectly normal. I encourage you to read Allen’s article in full. (I itched to retitle it “Restless Clitoris Syndrome,” however!)
On the other side, I hear from enough unhappy women (and men) to assert that we often DO have medical reasons that our sex functioning isn’t working the way we want, especially as we age. I encourage both women and men who are experiencing changes in their desire and/or ability to get aroused and experience orgasm to see a trusted medical professional. It’s important to learn whether there’s a medical reason for the change and to explore treatment options, if so. The right hormonal treatment, or a change in other medications that are affecting our sexual response, can make an enormous difference in our enjoyment of our sexuality.
If the change is due to psychological and/or relationship issues, then a counselor or sex therapist can make the difference between a dissatisfying or non-existent sex life and a richly rewarding one.
Doing nothing about an unhappy sex life only insures that it will remain the same or worsen.
Teaching counseling students about older adults & sex
Update 10/20: Wonderful experience talking to counseling students yesterday at San Francisco State with fabulous instructor Rebekah Skoor. Once the counselors-in-training realized I really would discuss anything they asked, we covered an array of topics about ageless sexuality, many of them very personal. They were also interested in understanding grief after loss of a spouse, and I talked openly about that, too. It was beautiful to be in a crowded room of mostly young people who were eager to understand and support the older person’s experience. I came away with more ideas about topics I’ll want to bring into focus in my new book, Naked At Our Age.
I’ve been invited to speak about sex & aging to graduate students of counseling at San Francisco State University in their one-and-only sexuality course. When the instructor, Rebekah Skoor, invited me, she told me, “This class has historically skipped over the lives of older adults in the curriculum and I am working to correct this critical oversight.” Kudos!
I want to help these future counselors understand senior sexuality, and also help them understand how to talk about it with clients who may be three times their age. Would you help me by commenting here about how you would like a counselor to talk to you about sex, and what issues you’d like help bringing up in the first place? Specifically, please comment on any or all of these questions:
What issues in your sex life — or, perhaps, lack of sex life — would you like a counselor to help you resolve?
How difficult would it be to speak to a younger counselor about your sex life?
How could a younger counselor help you feel more comfortable about opening up? Would you like her/him to initiate discussion of sex, or wait for you to bring it up?
What else would you like me to tell these counselors-in-training?
I suspect we’ll get lots of divergent points of view here, and that’s fine. Just because we’re seniors and elders doesn’t mean we feel the same way about anything! I’d like to collect these points of view to share with the counselors-in-training. Please post your comment, or email me and include permission to post it for you.
If you’re one of the students I’ll be talking to at SF State, please add your questions and comments — I’d love to hear from you.
Chip August: “Sex isn’t just a piece of skin wiggling around in some other skin”
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Charles “Chip” August, Personal Growth and Couples Intimacy Coach, interviewed me on his “Sex, Love & Intimacy” internet radio show. Now it’s my turn to interview Chip:
JP: I understand you’re writing a book titled “Marital Passion: The Sexless Marriage Makeover.” Do you see many later-life couples in sexless marriages?
CA: As a Couples Intimacy Coach, I have met and worked with hundreds of couples struggling with unsatisfactory sex lives, most in their 40s, 50s and 60s. But it’s not just my experience. Recently I saw a blog from Dr. Phil where he writes: “sexless marriages are an undeniable epidemic.”
JP: Why do these couples give up on sexual intimacy? Do they say it’s because of physical changes?
CA: One major factor behind the “death” of sexuality in long-term relationships is changes in our physiology brought on by aging. As young, sexually active adults, we take for granted that feelings of arousal will be accompanied by tumescence (the swelling of genital tissues), erections (nipples, clitoris, penis) and lubrication. In our minds we link these physical experiences to the idea of arousal. As we age we seem to forget all the other feelings, emotions and sensations associated with arousal.
JP: What happens emotionally when those physiological responses change?
CA: Later in life, when erections and lubrication are less certain, we falsely assume that it is the end of sexuality. It’s as if we have forgotten all the other feelings, emotions and sensations associated with arousal. We seem to forget how hot it once was to hold hands, to kiss, to talk nonsense for hours into a phone late at night, to dance, to finish each other’s sentences.
JP: I often hear from women whose men have given up on sex when their penises don’t work like they used to. I also hear from men whose women don’t want sex because they say it’s no longer comfortable or pleasurable. How can these couples reconnect?
CA: I believe human beings are designed for a lifetime of sexuality. There are many causes for a man’s erection to become unreliable or even impossible, and just as many causes for a woman’s vagina to stop lubricating or hurt. These symptoms are sometimes physiological, sometimes psychological, and sometimes just requiring a bit of education.
If your body does not work the way you believe it should, or you are experiencing a loss of desire, see your doctor, as these could be symptoms of various medical/health problems, psychiatric problems, low levels of testosterone or high levels of prolactine. Low sexual desire can also be a side effect of various medications.
JP: Besides physical changes, why else do couples give up on sexual intimacy?
CA: Beliefs about sexuality that support the idea that sex is really for “young” people. Our culture fosters age-ist, sex-negative beliefs. Most people don’t realize that sex is meant to get better and better as a relationship matures. They’ve bought into the idea that they can’t have a rockin’ sex life if they’re no longer young and the relationship is no longer new. They believe myths that sabotage their sex lives, such as “Sex just doesn’t feel good anymore—sometimes it even hurts—but I can’t talk about that with my husband,” and the most disastrous belief of all: “Passion always dies in a long-term marriage; it’s the price you pay for stability.”
JP: How do you coach people in a sexless marriage to become lovers again?
CA: To become lovers again means behaving as lovers do. When we are in new relationship energy, we gaze into each other’s eyes, we kiss, we phone and email. We send cute cards, buy flowers, go out to dinner, and go for long walks. We make time just for us.
JP: And most couples stop behaving like lovers as the relationship matures?
CA: If we spent as little time and attention working at our jobs as we spend on our relationship, most of us would be unemployed. Relationships take time. Make dates (and keep them). Get naked together and just hold each other and talk. Park with your sweetie by the lake, the beach, the overlook, and neck like you were 17 again.
JP: What’s your most important message for improving senior sex and relationships?
CA: It saddens me that sex has become so genitally focused. Our biggest erogenous zone is between our ears – our mind. Sex isn’t just a piece of skin wiggling around in some other skin. Penises in vaginas are a necessity for procreation. Sex is about intimate connection and shared vulnerability. Sex is stroking each other from head to toe, eye-gazing, shared laughter and shared thoughts. Sex is kissing and hugging and dancing. Sex is lying naked in each other’s arms listening to our hearts beating. Sex is about surrender and control, about laughing and crying.
Chas. “Chip” August is a Personal Growth and Couples Intimacy Coach, host of “Sex, Love & Intimacy” an internet radio show, and author of the soon to be published “Marital Passion: The Sexless Marriage Makeover.” Chip sees clients at his office in Northern California and also does phone-coaching, phone: 1(650) 391-7763, email him at ChasAugust@gMail.com