The Ultimate Guide to Sex after Fifty

I used to be eager for sex, easily aroused. My desire dipped after menopause and now barely exists. I can go weeks or more without desiring sex or thinking much about it. The funny thing is, if I get started, I like it, but it’s so hard to get in the mood.

The number one sex problem that I hear from women is the lack of desire for sex. They do still enjoy sex once they get started, they tell me, but they’re seldom in the mood ahead of time. It isn’t just a problem for women—many men also report decreased desire—but for women, it’s the primary complaint. The problem is that if we wait for the mood and don’t make sexual pleasure a priority, we’ll rarely have sex.

There are lots of reasons that you may be feeling decreased desire, but let’s cut to a solution that works first, and figure out the reasons afterward:

Instead of waiting for the mood, start getting yourself sexually aroused—on your own, with a partner, or with a vibrator. Just do it. The physiological arousal will trigger the emotional desire.

That’s the opposite of the way it used to work! When we were younger, our hormone-induced sex drive bombarded our brain and body with desire—especially during our most fertile times. This was simple biology. A glance, a thought, a murmur, a fantasy, or a touch sparked the mood. Once in the mood, we opened ourselves to the pleasures of physiological arousal. We got turned on, our arousal built, and we crashed joyously into orgasm.

But now, this all works the other way around. Instead of waiting forever for the mood to strike, we can induce the mood by letting ourselves get physiologically aroused as the first step. Arousal will lead to mood and desire, instead of vice versa.

“You may have just saved my marriage,” a woman told me after I gave this suggestion at a presentation. Try it—you may feel the same!

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to approach our sexuality in this new way: Relax, start getting physically aroused, emotional arousal will happen, and voila, we’ll be in the mood. So the key is to commit to regular sex, partnered or solo.

SOME OF THE MYRIAD REASONS FOR LOW SEXUAL DESIRE

Hormone imbalances

Job stress or job loss

Financial problems

Relationship stress

Conflicts with partner

Relationship staleness

Lack of sexual variety

Illness

Side effect of medication

Depression

Anger

Grief

Guilt, shame

Fear of unleashing unacceptable emotions

Distrust or fear of partner

Discovery of partner’s infidelity

Boredom

Clamping down unfulfilled desires

Abuse or past history of abuse

Autoimmune problems

Metabolic imbalances

Lack of exercise

Poor eating choices

Overuse of alcohol or recreational drugs

Low self-esteem

Self-image as unattractive

Lack of senior sex education

Lack of communication

Lover who doesn’t understand how to please

No longer attracted to partner

Not having a sexual partner

Not having regular arousal and orgasm (partnered or solo)

Societal message that older people don’t have sex or enjoy it

Our bodies still need touch and sexual release to deeply connect us as partners, but we don’t always have the same biological prompt—a sexual urge, an instinctual nudge, or an outright horny feeling. A woman with low desire is like a Porsche with a tank full of gas and a broken starter.

—Laurie Watson, certified sex therapist and author of Wanting Sex Again: How to Rediscover Your Desire and Heal a Sexless Marriage

When you first fall in love, you’re so filled with lust, interest, and excitement that you barely notice any difficulties. After years with the same partner, it’s not unusual for sexual expression to seem less important, happen less often, and feel less satisfying than it used to. Reality sets in, the high wears off, and you need to work on keeping your relationship sexy. Our hormonal deficits compound the challenges.

But sex is worth nurturing. It’s a big part of intimacy; it helps you stay bonded and strengthens your love and closeness. Even if you feel as if sex has flown the coop in your relationship, it’s not too late to get it back. Understanding it is the first step.

When one of you doesn’t want sex, it’s important to find out what’s going on for the less desirous partner. First, make sure there isn’t something physical at the root of it, especially if the drop in desire is accompanied by decreased arousal once you get started. Heart disease, for example, can first show up this way. Get checked out before making assumptions.

If the body is working, but the desire isn’t there, what can you do to bring romance, fantasy, and newness back into your relationship?

Remember how you couldn’t keep your hands off each other when you were first dating? It didn’t matter whether you were in the ice cream shop, in class, or sitting in the car with your parents; you had to squeeze in close to each other and share furtive touches. Bring back that sense of “gotta touch you” with non-goal-oriented touching, entwined arms, brushing against each other. It’s best to confer about this rather than surprise your partner, especially if it’s been decades since the “gotta touch you” era of your relationship.)

When you want a more active sex life and your partner doesn’t seem as enthusiastic, be careful to be gentle, loving, and positive when you open up the conversation to avoid putting your mate on the defensive. Express your feelings in a tender, loving, and respectful way, and invite your partner to express his or her feelings honestly to you. You’re lovers, not adversaries.

I’m a queer woman, sixty-six. In my thirties and forties, I preferred to be single. Not celibate, but single. If I got involved with a woman, an affair was unlikely to last longer than three months. When that initial intense attraction started to fade, so did my willingness to spend time on the relationship. In my fifties I met someone with whom the sexual connection was so strong, just the memory of when it was its hottest—and the hope of recapturing that early feeling—has kept me engaged for many years.

When you were first sexual with your partner, you craved each other when you were apart. If you’re never apart anymore, how can you crave each other? If all your experiences happen together, how can you bring anything new to each other?

A major libido killer can be too much time together with your partner, especially if you’re both retired and spending your days and nights together. To spark your libido, you need time apart and new experiences on your own.

Your relationship will benefit, emotionally and sexually, if you bring mystery, surprise, and excitement back into your lives. Pursue independent adventures. Join a group that does activities you enjoy separately. Go to your high school reunion on your own. Participate in a sport or learn a dance style that has always interested you.

Just to be clear, “pursue independent adventures” is not code for “have an affair.” An affair does rev up sexual desire in the person having it—that’s undeniable—and it often results in feeling more passion for the primary partner as well. But if it’s cheating—when your partner doesn’t know and would be devastated to find out—an affair can shatter your relationship.

(If your relationship agreement allows for outside lovers, or if you’d be willing to give each other a hall pass for an adventure once in a while that will light fires at home as well as away, see chapter 6, Stretching Boundaries, for more about open relationships.)

Stress tells your brain that you’re in danger, triggering the fight-or-flight response that can shut down libido and sexual pleasure. Physiologically, the stress hormones make your blood vessels constrict, interfering with male erection, male and female arousal, and female lubrication. It also takes away the desire for sex,¹¹ decreases genital arousal, and increases distraction during sex.¹² Not good.

If you’re experiencing low libido, look at ways to shut out stress. Exercising before sex is a powerful way to let stress dissipate. Then relax—maybe a long bath or a nap. Put yourself in an environment that nurtures you and feels sexy, with no distractions. Then just do it, and let your arousal fire up your desire.

We’re a loving couple in our sixties with an extra bedroom we call our “erotica room.” It has a couch, a futon, and handicap rails mounted on the wall above the futon to hold onto. Our erotic videos and DVDs are there. The walls are decorated with erotic posters. A shelf holds lubricants and our toys; a bookshelf houses our erotic books. A lock on the door prevents accidental discovery by houseguests and visitors. We still make love in the master bedroom. But it’s a treat to go to the erotica room to enjoy sensual pleasure. Having that room at the ready is a delicious treat.

UNFILLED DESIRES: AN ESCORT SPEAKS OUT

I am an escort. I have a heart for my older gentlemen friends. Most have partners that they adore and admire, but their partner’s interest in physical intimacy has ebbed away over the years. The men appreciate the physical intimacy I offer. I like being the person who reminds them that they can be sensual, sexy, receive pleasure, and give pleasure as well.

The wives of a couple of my older friends know about their playtime with me and are supportive of having those needs for physical intimacy met. Most gentlemen, however, keep it private, because they think that it would hurt their partner to know. With me, there isn’t the risk of the sort of emotional entanglements that would happen if they had an affair instead.

I think a lot of older gentlemen have absorbed this absurd notion that there is an expiration date on their desire for physical intimacy. I am saying to them, “Yes, you are sexy,” “Yes, it’s okay to want that,” “Yes, you can please me sexually, and I want to please you, too,” and, “No, you are not a bad guy.”

To me, this is better than quietly suffering for want of sexual intimacy and fostering resentment toward an otherwise wonderful partner. Our sexuality and its expression are one of the most important aspects of our humanity. Being older doesn’t change that.

We often need a little extra push to put us in a sexy frame of mind and to nudge our arousal centers awake. Reading erotica and/or watching porn can be exciting ways to stimulate our brain and start the tingle down below. Erotica and porn let you vicariously experience sexual situations, encounters, styles, and adventures that live in your secret fantasy life—plus some that have never occurred to you.

Don’t panic if you get aroused by a sexual scene that you’d never want to do in real life. Getting turned on by a scene about being tied up or having sex with a stranger, a boss, the pizza delivery boy (or girl), or a son’s best friend does not necessarily mean that you really want any of these scenarios to actually happen.

That’s the point—you can experience a scene vicariously, let it make you squirm (in a good way), and get sexually charged without any actual forbidden behavior. That’s likely what accounts for the runaway popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. Millions of women read that book, and most of them aren’t debating leaving their husbands to be dominated by a kinky billionaire. (At least, I don’t think so.)

A variety of drugs to treat low desire in women (known as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder or HSDD) are being investigated in clinical trials. No drug has been approved at the time of this writing. Could such a drug really work? Do we even want it?

Desire is complicated and individual. There isn’t just one cause or reason. Sex educators are wary of the medicalization of female desire—throw a pill at it, let the drug companies make money. What about the side effects?

Ellen Barnard, co-owner of A Woman’s Touch and one of my favorite sex educators, had plenty to say about this topic. You can read her entire response on my blog, and here is her conclusion:

The bottom line is that drugs do best when there is a single, knowable cause for a symptom, and the drug directly addresses that cause by reducing or removing it. Sexual desire is complicated, varies a lot from person to person, and has many moving parts. The idea that a drug could be developed to change desire is pretty far-fetched once you understand it that way, and one of our biggest fears is that you end up with a drug that has pretty wide effects and some nasty, unintended side effects. We would prefer to address desire issues in ways that give individuals more control and more understanding of their mind and body connections, so that they can do their own problem solving and not be reliant on a pill or a doctor.¹³

If you miss sex—or your partner does—you can bring back the joy with some new strategies. Creative, sexy aging includes accepting the emotional changes as well as the physical changes, then moving beyond them to create the sexy new you that is both possible and a worthy goal. Sexiness comes from inside you—believe in it, and make it so. (Imagine sexy Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, telling you that!)

We have the power to revitalize our capacity for sexual desire. Instead of shutting down our desire and joy of sex by avoiding sexual situations, instead let’s intensify both by grabbing every chance we get.

3