Sex Over Seventy and Beyond – Part II – Truths About Aging and Sex

Read Sex Over Seventy and Beyond – Part I

Some Undesirable Truths About Aging and Sex

From infancy throughout the years, we are sexual beings.  Sex is not just a part of us; it’s like humor.  It never loses its response, until it does.  As we age, our bodies don’t respond the way they used to.  So many mitigating factors interfere with what was once exciting to “Seriously?  You mean you feel horny?” There is not much we can do about this existential issue.  Women are the first to say something like, “Save it, Gene”, as were my mother’s favorite words when my dad would give her the eye. The sexual energy that women had in their prime years will evaporate due to the decline of estrogen, as said in Part I.

However, love-making can morph into other ways that can be just as satisfying for both men and women as we age. It’s almost impossible to provide a blow job if Molly has severe arthritis or osteoporosis.  With the help of Viagra, Jim can sustain an erection, but has difficulty sliding it into a vagina that has atrophied.  When it hurts, it ain’t fun for either of them. Using medical enhancements makes it possible physically, but mentally, there is a vacancy of desire.  It’s a conundrum! The head and the heart are not in sync. There are ways however, to enhance our intimacy without sexual intercourse and oral sex.  My patient who is quoted above, claims it was the best sex she ever had and the truth is, I’ve heard it from many!

Connection is the key to maintaining closeness

So many relationships lose connection overtime. It was Martin Buber who said the relationship does not exist in each partner. It lives in the space between the partners and that space is sacred space.  Too often that space unwittingly becomes polluted and feels unsafe and even dangerous unless we learn how to clean it. How we communicate with one another; how we look into the eyes of our partner; how we get to know their love language, study the landscape of their face and how we listen with a third ear is just as “sexy”, but in a different way. Women who were once excited to prepare new recipes and cook dinner parties lose interest as they age. There was a time they once made the best pot roast, but as they age all they make now are reservations!

Recalling Henny Youngman’s quote, “I said to my wife, ‘Where do you want to go for our anniversary?’ She said, ‘I want to go somewhere I’ve never been before.’ I said, ‘Try the kitchen.’” Men who once ran marathons, played sports and had hard-ons that never quit, have trouble walking more than a mile as they age. As George Burns once said, “Having sex at 90 is like playing pool with a rope” It’s an existential passage we all go through, if we are lucky to live long enough.

Freud and Sexuality

Freud, the father of psychoanalysis was obsessed with the relationship of sex and the unconscious. Although I admire and give credit to much of his theories, having been under analysis for five years, I don’t imbibe everything he espoused.  Besides, he was using cocaine for about two years beginning in the 1880’s, so if he were in a state of being void of the drug, he might have had a different interpretation and belief.

The unconscious is the driver of our behavior.  It is important, if not vital to know who we are and understand the dynamics of our personality and our family of origin and how it impacted us as we grew up.  Many unfortunately, go to their death never knowing who they are. “What I am is me, for that I came” by Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem, As Kingfishers Catch Fire

Jung on the other hand, had his own theories, different from Freud. However he was obsessed and involved in a sado-machoistic relationship with his student.  That however, does not discredit his contributions to psychology. Being highly erotic doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person! Everything in sexual behaviors if mutually agreed upon, are fine as long as no one gets hurt! Life without the sex we once knew can still be enjoyable and fulfilling.

Sex can be sublimated by enjoying the pleasure of being with each other and sharing joy in different ways. Waking up together with an embrace and kiss and sitting on the patio overlooking a landscape with a morning coffee can be just as pleasurable, if not even more that having an orgasm. Sharing time with your friends, children and grandchildren can be a way of sharing your life’s blessings.  Listening to your favorite songs, enjoying a play, movie, concert, and dinner together can be equally enjoyable and satisfying. Togetherness, affection and sharing your hopes, dreams and wishes often brings intimacy closer than an orgasm.  If you think of sex as something lost and never to be again, then you miss out on other wonderful opportunities of contentment and joy.

Recalling your life’s experiences together, sharing memories, and feeling content with the years you shared can be a wonderful way of enhancing closeness with more valuable moments that what you shared between the sheets. Joy and closeness can be experienced in many ways; not just in sharing an orgasm.  Life has so much to offer us when we age. It’s all in the attitude and accepting our lot in life.   In his video, Dance Me to the End of Time, Leonard Cohen portrays the very best we can hope for as we travel together to the end of time.

Conclusion: Where Oh Where Did My Sexy Self Go?

In his book, Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson writes about the eight stages of man, beginning with stage one, from birth to 9 months.  Let’s skip over to the last stage of life. This is where you are if you are on Medicare, using your social security benefits, have prostrate problems, stenosis of the spine, osteoporosis and more. According to Erikson, this begins at age 65, however, his book was published in 1950, so I will take the liberty of changing the age to 75 as our life expectancy is longer than it was in 1950.  The truth is that life is like a space ship.  We are all on board, each of us getting off at a different stop.  We all have an expiration date and none of us is getting off the planet alive! One of Woody Allen’s favorite lines, “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens!”

The truth is, if we can’t change it, we need to accept it.  Accepting our lot in life is a wise option.  We may not have achieved everything we wanted to accomplish, but we must be grateful for what we have accomplished.

The answer to the conclusion of where did our sexy self go, it graduated to a higher level. It is now called LOVE; the greatest gift of all!