Originally published 12/31/2022
Controversial? I don't think so. Read on!
All jokes apart, sex doesn't have to end after 70.
The Joys (and Challenges) of Sex After 70
Sex can drop off in our final decades. But for those who keep going, it can be the best of their lives.
Before David and Anne married, they hadn’t ventured beyond touching.
It was 1961. She was 21, he was 22 and they were raised in conservative Catholic homes. “Thursday and Friday, sex is a sin, then you get married on Saturday,” David said. “What’s a clitoris? I didn’t know about that.”
David and Anne are in their 80s now, and they recently told me that at this stage of life, sex is the best it has ever been. But getting there took effort.
In the late 1970s, he read a magazine article about a “girl’s best friend,” a vibrator called a Prelude. He bought one for Anne.
Aging has diminished them physically: Anne had colon cancer; David has spinal stenosis and uses a walker. But in these later years of life, they’ve consciously held on to their intimacy by creating a different kind of sexuality than when their bodies were strong and lithe.
Most Sunday mornings, after coffee and fruit, David goes to their bedroom. He pops a Viagra, straightens out the bed cover, showers and, when he’s ready, calls for Anne.
Their phones remain in the kitchen, the dog outside the bedroom door. They cuddle and touch each other. Sometimes they mutually masturbate, which they just started doing in the last decade. (Anne still has her Prelude, which David has rewired over the years, along with a few other vibrators that they use regularly.)
Sex is more relaxed than it was in their 20s and 30s, when they had so much responsibility and little time. And it’s deeper because they feel more connected.
It’s not surprising that sex can diminish with age: Estrogen typically drops in women, which may lead to vaginal dryness and, in turn, pain. Testosterone declines for women and men, and erection problems become more commonplace.
In a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine study of a representative sample of the U.S. population, Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, a professor of obstetrics-gynecology and geriatrics at the University of Chicago, and colleagues surveyed more than 3,000 older adults, single and partnered, about sex (defined as “any mutually voluntary activity with another person that involves sexual contact, whether or not intercourse or orgasm occurs”). They found that 53 percent of participants ages 65 to 74 had sex at least once in the previous year.
In the 75-to-85 age group, only 26 percent did. (Lindau notes that a major determinant of sexual activity is whether one has a partner or not — and many older people are widowed, separated or divorced.) In contrast, among people ages 57 to 64, 73 percent had sex at least once in the previous year.
There’s a poignant paradox about older people and sex. As our worlds get smaller — work slows down or ends, physical abilities recede, traveling gets more challenging, friendship circles narrow as people die — we tend to have more time and inclination to savor the parts of our lives that are emotionally meaningful, which can include sex. But because bodies change, good sex in old age often needs reimagining, expanding, for example, to include more touching, kissing, erotic massage, oral sex, sex toys.
Older people get little guidance about any of this.
Few senior-living communities offer much — if any — sex information for residents or training for staff. A sex educator told me about one older woman looking for information on sex and aging at a senior center. She couldn’t access it on the computer because the word “sex” was blocked, most likely to prevent people from getting on porn sites.
A subset of older people who are having lots of sex well into their 80s could help shape those conversations and policies. In the New England Journal of Medicine study, though just over a quarter of participants ages 75 to 85 said they had sex in the last year, more than half that group had sex at least two to three times a month.
And almost one-quarter of those having sex were doing it once a week — or more. Along with pleasure, they may be getting benefits that are linked to sex: a stronger immune system, improved cognitive function, cardiovascular health in women and lower odds of prostate cancer. And research — and common sense — suggests, too, that sex improves sleep, reduces stress and cultivates emotional intimacy.
Another researcher, Jane Fleishman, the author of “The Stonewall Generation: L.G.B.T.Q. Elders on Sex, Activism and Aging,” told me she sees signs of greater interest in older sexuality from academics, therapists and others who work with older people.
Many of the older people I interviewed told me they wish they had invested in sex earlier in their lives, including through better communication, more intimacy and overcoming sexual anxieties.
Reingold is aware that society’s paternalism around aging can create roadblocks to intimacy and sex. “We in the field have an obligation to do everything we can to preserve whatever pleasures we can for older people who have lost so much,” Reingold says. “If they want more salt when they are 95, give them salt. Same with sex.”