How do people stay sexy as they age?
I want to tell you something. Contrary to the too often espoused belief that it is natural to get too old for sex, all the evidence suggests that people stay sexually active into their 80’s or more. Does this mean that they are as turned on as they were when they were 20? Probably not, but it does mean that they remain interested and periodically make love. So how do they do that? When it’s reported that one in five marriages are virtually sexless, how is it that some people maintain an active sex life throughout their marriage. I’ll tell you their secret.
First of all, let’s talk about why people stop having sex. I believe it is largely because they are responding to harmful mythologies about intimacy. Most of us carry around some of these mythologies with us. We believe that there are people who are really good at sex and others who are not, for example, and we fear that we fall into the latter category. If you believe that you have to be proficient or exceptional in lovemaking in order to please your partner, you will likely become less and less interested in intimacy.
Perhaps we worry about our physical appearance, our lovemaking style and most of all, whether we will perform adequately and reach the desired conclusion. The desired but mythological conclusion might include non-stop, multiple, bedroom-damaging orgasms. We may even have mistaken ideas about how these magical orgasms should occur. For example, surveys have shown that women tend to believe that they should be able to reach orgasm through penetration alone and without additional stimulation or lubrication. This sets the bar extremely high, and here’s the kicker, the more anxious you are about these performance issues, the less likely it is for you to lubricate appropriately and to feel real pleasure during intercourse.
Men, of course, struggle with size and performance issues as well, and they often also have the idea that there is some skill or romantic prowess at which they are simply not proficient. I have lost count of the number of men who have complained in my office that they are simply not the romantic or touchy-feely types. They seem to think that romance is a mysterious language they never learned. However, at some point they elicited their partner’s interest and this remains possible.
Of course, the problem is that the more one focuses on performance and questions of whether he or she is “good enough” the less pleasure they experience. When you focus on what feels really good and when touch is pleasing, you are more likely to be generous in offering pleasing touch to your partner. It’s really not that challenging. If you and your partner focus on pleasure rather than some ideal of sexual performance, you will likely enjoy each other.
So here is the secret. I suspect that those couples that are still enjoying sex into their later years have attained a magical quality in their lovemaking. They like each other.
Such couples may have also learned very early on that sex means paying attention to their own and their partner’s bodies. They have discovered that sex isn’t always perfect and it doesn’t have to be. Once in a while, one of them gets distracted. He loses his erection. She starts to worry about the grandkids. Whatever it is, they don’t see this as a lack of affection or as a failure, and with this understanding, they simply assume that they will again touch each other and play together and they will have their chance next time.
Irdonferguson's Blog 