The Ultimate Guide to Sex after Fifty

I am eighty-one and haven’t had sex for twenty years and now am almost obsessed with desire. I ordered vibrators for the first time. My husband had prostate surgery, and we don’t have any sexual partnering. I can’t talk to anyone about this for fear it will be seen as lunacy on my part.

If you’re in a sexless relationship, look at what the lack of sex means to you. We can get orgasms on our own. Often what we miss the most is intimacy and connection, that feeling of bonding with another human being. Although this book is about sex, it isn’t just about sex. (Even sex isn’t ever just about sex.)

As an eight-year prostate cancer survivor with a wife with no interest in sex, I have turned to solo activities. During these times I fantasize about sex with my wife. I miss the closeness and resulting intimacy, afterglow, and being held by my loving wife.

We can still strive for that intimacy and connection even if what we used to think of as sex, however we used to define it, isn’t in the picture. There may be health reasons, or the relationship changed for myriad other reasons. If the love is still strong and you are committed to staying with your partner, a companionate relationship may fulfill you. Companionate means you love each other, can’t imagine being without each other, thrive within the relationship—but it doesn’t happen to be sexual. You can express your sexuality in other ways—through masturbation, through a creative outlet, or, if your partner agrees, with another or others.

All this takes conversation and being willing to expose your vulnerability by expressing what you really want and need. The more complicated the issues, the more reason to involve a counselor, who has the skills and experience to guide you.

Some couples feel intimate, bonded, and perfectly content in a relationship that no longer includes sex. But more often, I hear from people whose sexual expression was shut down by health problems, relationship conflicts, or a partner’s unwillingness or inability to be sexual with them.

I’m sixty-two, and my wife lost all interest in sex about fifteen years ago at menopause. She feels that this is natural and normal, and you don’t try to fix normal. In my social circle this seems to be the common opinion. I don’t know any men over fifty-five who are still having sex with their wives.

I have tried everything to get my husband of thirty-three years to talk to his doctor, go to counseling, anything to figure out his complete lack of desire. He gets very angry when I try to talk to him about it. He makes me feel like a freak, dirty, and not normal. I love my husband, but if I had known things would get this bad—well, I don’t know what I would have done. I haven’t seen a counselor by myself, because I fear that I’ll be told to move out. My husband is a very kind man, but I am suffering. Everybody’s got their cross in life to bear. I figure this is mine.

I often get emails and blog comments like the two above. One spouse is longing for sex, and the other doesn’t want it anymore and thinks that’s normal and fine from now on. The partner who still desires sex feels left behind, sometimes anguished and bitter.

How do you bring sex back into a relationship? Obviously, you have to communicate. It’s important to know why your relationship has become sexless, and your partner (or you) may be reluctant to reveal the truth about that.

Of course we fear the worst: our partner doesn’t find us sexy, doesn’t love us, is having an affair, or wants out of the relationship. One or more of these may be true. Or it may be a health problem, physical discomfort, or diminished sexual function that’s getting in the way, with the emotional repercussions of these problems. It may be anger in the relationship. Or it’s a combination of any of these.

Getting a counselor involved to negotiate the tricky path to disclosure can be the key. Especially if the real issues have been under wraps for a while, don’t expect that one good conversation will make it all better again. That’s not a reason to give up—it’s a reason to seek out a counselor or sex therapist who has the skills and experience to help you.

Which do you choose: the rest of your life with this partner without sex? Or taking a risk and doing the work to go after the possibility of more satisfaction and a closer relationship? If you do nothing, nothing will change.

My husband and I have been married for fifteen years and have basically been in a sexless marriage for the last seven years. What contributed to the lack of passion? So many things, including his chronic illness and ED. My desire and passion still burn strong at fifty, and it is killing me to think that my vitality is being wasted. I know the options, but I am paralyzed by the possible consequences of leaving the marriage. I know I cannot continue to live this way for much longer without being touched and experiencing the joy of physical connection with a person who is equally as passionate, spiritual, and creative as I am.

A MESSAGE FROM A PHONE SEX OPERATOR

CONT.

Many of these men would be happy with some shared sensuality, like just hugging or holding hands or giving their wives a massage, or even just talking, perhaps while masturbating. These men tell me that they love their wives’ bodies, not in spite of but because of the changes that their bodies have gone through. Some will say, “Her body is so powerful—and the changes remind me of how beautiful and strong she is, and our history together.”

Some of the men crave prostate stimulation, and they claim their wives would never consider the use of a sex toy, even if she didn’t need to be involved with it, like a butt plug. I don’t believe anyone should have to consent to sex they don’t find enjoyable, but I do think we can learn a lot by being open to our partners.

I wish there was some way that I could reach out to the partners of my callers and tell them what amazing, loyal, giving, and loving husbands they have, and how they could do some very small things to reinstate closeness with these men.

I have never lost my desire to have sex, and I think about it often. I also often think about seeking a divorce, but that appears so selfish and disloyal to someone I have been with so long. To divorce for sexual desire, is that crazy? Honestly if I could have a sexual surrogate, I would. I know convention and society do not approve of such thoughts or actions. It is certainly no fun to be unilaterally relegated to celibacy!

If you and your partner are a monogamous couple, yet one of you wants sex and the other doesn’t want it and doesn’t want to work on it, the relationship is in trouble. When the sexual intimacy of a bonded couple shuts down and the decision is nonconsensual, many fears, needs, and regrets surface, such as these:

• Loss of intimacy

• Loss of trust

• Fear of abandonment

• Confusion

• Emotional pain

• Sexual frustration

• Avoidance of touching and affection

• Avoidance of communication

• Blaming oneself

• Blaming the partner

• Sadness

• Despair, depression

• Resentment

• Questioning whether to stay in the relationship

• Getting needs met outside of the relationship

• Suspicion

• Loneliness

• Lack of self-worth

• Estrangement

• Magical thinking: it will be all right tomorrow

Any and all of these lead the relationship to the brink of dissolution. Even if the couple stays together, there’s no harmony, no connection, and one or both of you stay unhappy.

The first solution is to work with a counselor or sex therapist to find out what the real issues are that are disrupting the relationship, repair them if possible, and figure out whether you’d be happier apart or together. This might not be quick or comfortable, but the growth and understanding can’t be underestimated. Definitely do this. If your partner won’t go, go on your own.

Once you’re satisfied that you understand the issues and have some tools for resolving them, you may decide to stay together—or not. If you do, you may agree to work on becoming sexually connected again. Or you may agree to stay together without sex and relax your monogamy agreement, so that the partner who still wants to enjoy sex can do so.

The other solution may be to dissolve the relationship to let both partners find happiness separately. It will hurt horribly, but down the road, you may realize that it gave you the best chance for happiness in the future.

I met my current husband when we were in our fifties. The experimental sex during our dating was very unsatisfactory. I had explained to him that I was very sensual and enjoyed sex as often as possible. He did not believe in sex before marriage, but after the “I dos” it would be fine. It wasn’t fine. After only a year into marriage, and after trying several drugs for ED that did not work, he gave up trying.

Oral sex had been the only way I could climax. Now, he won’t kiss me or touch me, or even flirt. He thinks that all that leads up to sex, and he feels like a failure with sex. I have tried to explain the intimate things I needed. We love each other and respect each other. But I continue to climb the walls with sexual frustration.

I do occasionally use a vibrator, but not in my husband’s presence as he stated he is not comfortable with that. I feel stuck sexually and wonder how I will live the rest of my life without sex. I have contemplated an affair. I remain conflicted and frustrated.

We never saw this coming. My wife had multiple surgeries that ended sex abruptly. Her last surgery left her paralyzed from the waist down. I became a primary caregiver, and this has destroyed my own health. Sex is just a thing of the past. I feel like all I am good for is fighting battles and meeting needs. I have suffered great depression and resentment because of the hand life has dealt me. I love her just as I promised her I would forty years ago, but I live in depression and despair, with little to offset the aftermath of this nightmare.

No, we never see this coming. But as psychotherapist Larry LeShan, PhD, says, “You come to what all human beings face sooner or later. Everybody faces this when they get old enough.”¹⁸ LeShan, who has had much experience with people and families in extreme physical distress, recommends getting professional help, both to cope with the depression and loneliness and to see how you can create a life with your partner that nurtures both of you.

A good therapist will help you, support you, give you coping strategies for the suffering that both of you are experiencing, and help you go forward in a more positive way.

Some couples agree that in case one person no longer desires or is capable of sexually fulfilling the other, sex outside the marriage is permitted. Other couples have no such agreement, although one person wishes for it, and the other wishes that the whole subject of sex would go away.

Let’s say that you want to stay in a sexless relationship because in other ways, it’s a good one. When cheating seems to be the best option, I encourage you first to try to negotiate a compromise. Try expressing something like this in your own way: “You say you’re done with sex. I’m not! I want to stay with you, but I am not willing to give up my sexuality. Let’s see a therapist together to explore ways that we can bring sex back into our life together.” If your partner says no and just repeats that she or he is done with sex, you might add this, if it’s the way you feel:

“If you are not interested in working this out together, the only way I see that we can stay together is if I get my needs met elsewhere, discreetly and safely, with no upheaval to our relationship. I promise not to fling this in your face, not to embarrass you, not to tell you anything that you don’t ask me—and to be honest with you if you do ask me.

“Would you please think about whether you can agree to that? When you’re ready, let’s talk about what boundaries you need me to respect so that you feel loved and secure going forward.”

Realize that this is the beginning of a whole new conversation, not the ending. Your partner may say, “Do what you need to do, but I don’t want to know about it,” as some do; if so, planning and discretion are essential. If your partner wants to know, carefully discuss what should or should not be revealed. Be sure you understand each other. Surprises here are relationship killers. (Please read chapter 6, Stretching Boundaries, and don’t skip the part about setting up rules and boundaries. Then read Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino.)

My wife’s severe medical conditions ended the intimate side of our marriage many years ago. I have not been able to make love or even romantically hold my wife for roughly the last twenty years. I have found outside sources—a local massage parlor, and a couple of times I had sex with someone I met on Craigslist. But to have actually made love to a woman or really enjoyed it, I have to say no. I have these urges now and then, and yes, I give in to them, but I would much rather have my wife back. Since that’s not possible, then someone close in age, who either lost her husband, or is tending to him at home and in a similar situation, wanting intimacy but not wanting to give up her husband.

I can think of about a dozen women who kept their marriage but stepped out with me to have their sexual needs fulfilled. One woman said she and her husband had not had sex in eight years, and she missed it. I’ve also met ladies online who did leave their sexless marriage then went online to meet a man to solve that drought situation. They tell me the husbands had lost any desire for sex. No clue whether that is a physical thing or something from the relationship dynamics. It seems all too common.

If your sexual needs are not being met, and you can’t get your partner to work on changing that, and your partner refuses to give you a pass to go outside the relationship for sex and insists that you honor your monogamy agreement, you feel stuck. If it’s a bad relationship for these and other reasons, get counseling on your own to help you decide whether leaving would be better than staying. A clean, honest break is usually better than living a life of deception and fear that you’ll get caught. And you probably will get caught.

I endured a sexless marriage for ten years or so, then stepped out but kept the marriage. She found out, we separated, reconciled with her determined to be more sexual—and was. But she couldn’t live with my betrayal, and we divorced after twenty years.

If you want to stay in the relationship because it’s good for other reasons, though, you may find yourself deciding that cheating is a better solution than sexless misery. Readers: don’t come down on me for this viewpoint—I’m not condoning infidelity if you have an agreement of exclusivity, but I know from your emails that it sometimes comes to that. Some of my readers have told me that going outside the relationship for unmet sexual needs lets them stay with a partner whom they love very much.

Let me pass the buck to Dan Savage, whose skin is thicker than mine if you get angry at the idea that it’s ever okay to cheat:

The rules for cheating spouses—the circumstances under which a spouse has a right to cheat (or isn’t entirely in the wrong to cheat)—are fairly limited. Cheating is permissible when it amounts to the least worst option, i.e., when someone who made a monogamous commitment isn’t getting any at home…and the sex on the side makes it possible for the cheater to stay married and stay sane. An exception can be made for a married person with a kink that his or her spouse can’t/won’t accommodate, so long as the kink can be satisfied safely and discreetly. Someone who meets the criteria and cheats is merely a cheater (with cause); someone who doesn’t and cheats anyway is a cheating piece of shit (CPOS).

—Dan Savage, in his column at www.slog.thestranger.com ¹⁹

There is no communication—he wants it and expects it with no frills. No warning, no tenderness, no talk, no way. For me, it has been horrendously painful—mentally and physically. He says he loves me, that he wants sex—but I need tenderness, time, and touch. Without those, attempts at sex cause pain. When one person needs a change, the other’s dismissal is one mass of pain and profound loss.

Most of this chapter has been about relationships without sex, but sometimes it goes the other way: there is plenty of sex—maybe good sex, maybe bad sex—but the rest of the relationship is a shell of what you want.

Our long marriage was not a happy one for me as he was manic-depressive, rarely took any meds, and emotionally abused me. But he enjoyed having sex, and we had it almost daily, sometimes several times a day. Most of the time, I just did it to keep the peace. On good days he was a good lover and helped satisfy me. Most of the time, though, I just wanted the session to be over.

The bottom line is what I frequently say: if not now, when? If the relationship isn’t loving and nurturing, if there’s no emotional connection, if you’re being abused or neglected, you deserve better. A counselor can help you retrieve your self-esteem and the courage to leave your relationship, if this would be better for you.

A THERAPIST’S ADVICE: WHEN NOTHING SEEMS TO WORK

By David M. Pittle, PhD, MDiv

If one person’s needs are being ignored in the sexual realm, it’s likely that they’re not being met in most other parts of the relationship as well. Both people need to be meaningfully open to change to meet the other’s needs if there’s to be any hope for a loving relationship.

When the relationship is unfulfilling and the other person won’t work on it, your choices are to continue living in an unsatisfactory way or to bring the problem to a head. Be aware that this may lead you to a single life—which may happen anyway, if your partner is also dissatisfied.

Take these steps first:

1. Inventory your needs which are not being met. Accept that your partner is not targeting you to make you miserable. Your partner probably does not understand your needs—he or she may get the words, but not the emotions. Begin with the expectation that he or she would be glad to fulfill your needs once fully understood. This allows you to begin engaging from a position of alignment, not opposition. You’re aiming to engage your partner in a new learning process.

2. Confront your partner with honesty and without rancor or anger, and expect the same in return. The surest way to sabotage the process is to allow either person to treat the other with a semblance of contempt, or to assign blame.

3. Recognize when you are digging yourself into a hole. Then stop digging. It sounds so simple, but it isn’t. Quite often, you’ve each dug yourself into a hole of vituperation, anger, hurt, and sadness by now, and it will be difficult to get out of the hole.

4. Negotiate changes. It is almost always the man who has the most difficulty acknowledging the justice of the woman’s point of view, her needs.

Counseling is almost an imperative at each stage of this process. First, it is difficult, if not impossible, for either person to truly hear the other and negotiate changes without help from a professional. Second, whether this results in an improved relationship or a decision to end the relationship, either or both of you will need help restructuring your lives.

—David M. Pittle, PhD, MDiv is a therapist in San Rafael, CA, who has been helping people with sexual and other issues for over thirty years.

I didn’t realize how unhappy I was until my husband dropped the bomb on me. I had asked a question about our closeness as a couple, and the answer, after a long, uncomfortable pause, was, “I don’t love you anymore.” Don’t ever do it the way my husband did, which was to begin an affair at work and keep it and his feelings hidden until I started to realize something was amiss, and then deny the affair while pretending to work on the relationship at counseling.

At this point my ex is dating the woman who broke up our marriage and family. My grown children are having one hell of a time adjusting to that, while my ex seems blissfully unaware of their pain. If he had waited to date until after everything was final, there would be much less of a problem. So finish what you started—properly, legally—and try to understand how the relationship met its demise. Do the homework before moving on to a new relationship.

• I feel lonelier when I’m with my partner than when I’m alone.

• We keep rehashing the same issues and nothing ever changes.

• I feel like I’m wasting my life.

• I’ve known for years that our marriage was a mistake.

• I’m happy only when my partner isn’t with me.

• My partner is emotionally abusive—tries to make me feel worthless.

• My partner is verbally abusive—insults me and demeans me.

• My partner is physically abusive—hits me, injures me.

• My friends and family have advised me to leave my partner.

• My partner isolates me from my friends and family.

• I get a sick feeling in my gut when my partner approaches me.

• I am afraid of my partner.

• I am staying with my partner only because I’m afraid to go.

• I am staying with my partner only because I don’t have the means to support myself.

• My partner engages in self-destructive behavior.

• My partner engages in behavior that’s destructive to our relationship.

• My partner is addicted to drugs or alcohol and won’t get help.

• My partner’s pornography habit is out of control.

• My partner lies to me.

• I keep catching my partner in deceptions.

• My partner engages in behaviors that are causing us financial ruin.

• My partner insists that he or she will change but keeps repeating destructive patterns.

• I want to hurt my partner.

• I engage in behavior that’s destructive to our relationship.

• I deceive my partner.

• Sex with my partner is demeaning.

• Sex with my partner is nonconsensual.

• I dread sex with my partner.

• I feel worse after sex with my partner than if we don’t have sex at all.

• Sex with my partner is nonexistent.

• My partner doesn’t love me anymore.

• My partner is in love with someone else.

• We’ve been in therapy, but nothing changed.

• I’m in love with someone else.

• I don’t love my partner enough to work on this relationship anymore.

• I don’t love my partner anymore.

If you find yourself agreeing to items in this list—or if your eyes fill with tears just reading it—consider moving out of the relationship. If there’s still a connection between you, be sure you’ve exhausted all attempts to fix it first, especially therapy. But if you know that the love is gone, the bonding is over, and a future with this person fills you with dread or despair, then the best option for you is to get out.

After twenty-eight years of marriage, I moved out this past week. At sixty-six, I finally admitted to myself how unhappy I’d been for years. Unfortunately, inertia had kept me in place and, perhaps, fear of the unknown, loneliness, and financial problems. But because I’d had a recurrence of breast cancer, I realized that however many years I have left to live are very precious to me. I didn’t want to waste any more time feeling trapped in a bad situation.

If there is abuse, violence, or fear in your relationship, consult a domestic abuse hotline or your local police to learn your options and get immediate help. Do not stay in an abusive relationship, hoping it will get better. It will get worse instead.

Many people, particularly women, cling to a bad relationship out of fear of the unknown. Please don’t let that be you. Your self-esteem may be so damaged that you don’t think you deserve better, or can ever find better. Getting therapy on your own will help you rebuild your feelings of self-worth and create a vision of a new life that allows the joy to enter.

It’s also true that many times, what we see as problems in the relationship are actually problems within us. Until we fix them, we’ll take those problems with us out on our own and into the next relationship. That’s even more reason to work with a therapist.

I’m thirty-five years into a marriage. My wife was always orgasmic. But by menopause, she was totally without libido and had multiple medical problems. Masturbation is all there is for me if I want to stay in the marriage.

But now, after sixty, I’m educating myself about all things related to older women: vaginal dryness, hormone therapy (not an option for us), and sex therapy. Communication, it seems, was where I dropped the ball. I didn’t want to bother her due to her numerous miseries. Big mistake! Now, we’re talking about seeing a sex therapist and doing the intimacy exercises that are not sexual, but that bring intimacy back between us. I feel we can find common ground and achieve some level of sexual fulfillment together.

I’ve joined a gym, exercise at home, too, and walk two miles a day. I have a huge amount of energy. Before, I was too tired and depressed to even think I could find intimacy. All of us should focus on getting ourselves into our best physical condition when dealing with stressful aspects like this. More self-respect equals a better chance of success.

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