What Age Do Men Stop Being Sexually Active?

When Do Men Stop Having Sex? – There’s no specific age at which most men stop having sexual intercourse. That is because physical health and libido vary widely in every individual. That said, most men have a sexual life expectancy — an estimated age at which they will stop engaging in sexual activity regularly.

At what age do men slow down sexually?

Can low testosterone cause low libido? – Male testosterone levels peak in the late teens and the initial drop does not usually have any significant physical effects before the age of 30. Between the ages of 30 and 40 a man’s testosterone levels fall by about 1% every year; whilst high enough to be measured, the effects are rarely a concern.

Is a 70 year old man still sexually active?

Senior sex: Tips for older men – What you can do to maintain a healthy and enjoyable sex life as you grow older. By Mayo Clinic Staff As you age, sex isn’t the same as it was in your 20s — but it can still be enjoyable. Unlike some myths suggest, sex isn’t just for the young.

At what age does a woman stop being sexually active?

– Sexual activity and intimacy are essential throughout life. Many older females continue to be sexually active in their 70s and 80s. While bodily changes and health challenges can affect how older adults perform sex, many strategies can help individuals maintain a satisfying and enjoyable sex life.

Are 40 year old men still sexually active?

Medically Reviewed by Nayana Ambardekar, MD on November 03, 2021 It seems like a simple question, but scientists still can’t agree on exactly what makes up sex drive or how to measure it in men or women. While hormones play a role, it’s not always clear how much of a difference they make. But other factors – psychological, social, and physical – also work together to create your libido, Testosterone, a hormone men need for sexual arousal, is typically high in your 20s, and so is your sex drive. But it’s also a time when you could be anxious about sex because of inexperience. That might be part of why 8%, and possibly more, of men in their 20s report erectile dysfunction (ED). You’re likely to be more fertile from your teens to late 20s than you are in the years that follow. This may make you choosier about if and when you have sex, though it’s not clear exactly why. In fact, scientists think that female desire might go up just as fertility starts to decline toward the end of your 20s. Many men continue to have a strong sex drive through these years, though testosterone starts to slowly decrease around age 35. It typically goes down by about 1% per year, but it could be faster for some men. This could have some effect on your sex drive. Plus, for many men, the stress of work, family, and other commitments can affect how interested you are in sex. This time of life may be when your sex drive is strongest. One study showed that women between 27 and 45 had more frequent and more intense sexual fantasies than younger or older women. They also had more sex and were more likely to have it sooner in a relationship. At any age, pregnancy and childbirth have a big impact on your sex life, but it’s different for everyone. Your body and hormones change throughout pregnancy. That may mean a boost in libido at times, especially during the second trimester, and a lack of desire at others. If you’re in good physical and mental health, there’s no reason you shouldn’t continue to enjoy your sex life as you get older. ED does become more common as you age. Your erections may happen less often and may be less firm. But it’s not age itself that causes the problem as much as health problems that become more common with age, like heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity, and the drugs that treat them. Around age 50, an “empty nest” or less worry about getting pregnant might make some women more interested in sex. But as you head toward menopause, estrogen levels drop, which might cool your libido down a bit and lead to vaginal dryness. Hot flashes, anxiety, weight gain, and sleep problems also can make you less in the mood. You need some testosterone to get aroused, but it’s not clear how much. It may vary from person to person. And though it’s true your levels decline with age, scientists don’t know exactly how this affects sex drive. Some men with “low” testosterone show normal sex drive, while others with high levels have sexual problems. Talk to your doctor about any issues with your sex drive, as they could be a sign of a medical condition. If your physical response is the problem, your doctor may prescribe hormones that can increase overall sex drive (estrogen for women, testosterone for men), or drugs that boost sexual arousal: sildenafil (Viagra) and tadalafil (Cialis) for men, and bremelanotide (Vyleesi) andflibanserin (Addyi) for women. Ask your partner about their needs and desires, and talk about yours, too. Don’t be afraid to try new things as your bodies evolve and your stage of life changes. This can help keep you and your partner engaged and interested in sex. Be honest about your physical and emotional satisfaction. It might even be a good idea to set aside certain times to be intimate.

At what age do men struggle to stay hard?

About a quarter of men said that erection problems started between age 50 and 59, and 40% said they started between age 60 and 69. Having chronic diseases and other risk factors matter with respect to ED, too.

Do older men last in bed?

At What Age Does a Man Stop Ejaculating? – There’s no specific answer to this question. Many men ejaculate when they are stimulated — even those above 70. Unlike popular belief, the link between sexual dysfunction and age isn’t as strong. Individuals can maintain a strong and efficient sexual performance in their old age with the correct habits.

How often do most 60 year olds make love?

Frequency of Sex in Older Adults – As people age, they tend to have sex less frequently. This may be due to age-related hormonal changes, long-standing illnesses, and changed priorities, among other factors. A 2011 study of people ages 44 to 72 found that females had less sex after 60 because they were outliving their partners.

Females reported having sex an average of 4.68 times per month between the age of 40 to 59, dropping to 1.74 times per month between the age of 60 to 72.Males reported having sex an average of 6.18 times per month between the age of 40 to 59, dropping to 3.13 times per month between the age of 60 to 72.

Interestingly, the introduction of Viagra (sildenafil) in 2010 had no impact on the frequency of sex in males who took the erectile dysfunction drug compared to those who didn’t. Similarly, studies show that while menopause affects sexual function in older females, it doesn’t affect the frequency of sex when comparing women treated with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to those who were not treated.

How often do couples in their 70s make love?

Listen to This Article – Audio Recording by Audm To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android, 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.

1. Thursday and Friday, sex is a sin, then you get married on Saturday,” David said.
2. What’s a clitoris? I didn’t know about that.” From the outset of their marriage, the two explored sex together.
3. David was more lustful and eager; Anne was more hesitant, at times leaning toward accommodation rather than enthusiasm.

A few years after their wedding, they had their first child, and David began traveling half the month for his job. Over the next five years, they had two more children, and Anne sometimes felt exhausted, managing homework, schedules, driving, emergencies, meltdowns.

She loved David and liked sex with him, but it often fell lower on the list of what she needed: a good night’s sleep, an arm around her shoulder, no expectations. Anne also never fully escaped the feeling that sex was taboo: “We weren’t allowed to even think about it,” she said about her parents’ approach to sex.

In the early part of her marriage, she felt horrified about oral sex and struggled to have orgasms. “I don’t think I was what David had hoped for,” she told me. 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.

1. But getting there took effort.
2. David, a curious, gregarious bear of a man, always believed sex was important to happiness, and he regularly sought out tips for improving it.
3. In the late 1970s, he read a magazine article about a “girl’s best friend,” a vibrator called a Prelude.
4. He bought one for Anne.
5. She asked me to use her middle name to protect her privacy; David asked to be identified by his first name.) It didn’t go so well at first: For Anne, it was a reminder of what she saw as her own deficiency.

She imagined that other women orgasmed more quickly, while she needed mechanical intervention. But David encouraged her to try the vibrator on her own, and they began occasionally using it during sex. Sex was great at times, like when Anne took a human-sexuality class one summer, by which time the kids were teenagers and more independent.

• In the evenings after class, she and David sat on their front stoop overlooking a park, and she shared what she was learning about desire and the physiology of sex.
• It became their foreplay.
• But soon, David began working longer hours, and Anne started a job in the evenings.
• Their busy schedules pulled them back to the routine of discordant desires.

At the lowest point, sex dropped to a couple of times a month — far too infrequent for David. “We were going through the motions,” he said. By the time David was in his 50s, he had had two affairs — in large part because the women made him feel desired.

• Anne also had a brief affair, in response to his cheating.
• Then, in his 60s, David retired from a career that had defined him, where he was surrounded by co-workers who loved him.
• Anne, meanwhile, was increasingly out of the house, volunteering in their community.
• Eager for more attention and affection than Anne was able to give him, David had a third affair, this time a more emotionally involved one, with a woman who was as enthusiastic about sex as he was.

He never had to hint that he wanted it. He never had to ask. She was game for pretty much anything. Anne was furious when she found out, but still, she didn’t want to lose him. She pushed him to end the relationship; the other woman told David he had to choose.

At the precipice of separation, Anne and David went to therapy, and slowly they became more honest with each other. Anne talked about her anger over the affairs and her withholding of sex because of them. David expressed his hopes that he could bring the kind of sexual excitement he found outside the marriage into their relationship.

If she wanted to hold on to him, Anne decided, she needed to try opening up. David worked to be less expectant. And slowly, in their 70s, they moved toward more intimate and compelling sex. “The affair was the best and worst thing that happened to us,” David told me one afternoon last fall.

1. I’m not so sure about that,” Anne said.
2. We were speaking over Skype on their 60th wedding anniversary.
3. The couple sat side by side at the kitchen counter in a house they designed together 30 years ago, overlooking a lake.
4. As they talked, Anne occasionally put her head on David’s shoulder.
5. Behind them was a bank of windows and, in one corner, a vase of dried sunflowers.

Anne, who has bright blue eyes and a sweep of silver hair that falls onto one side of her face, has a measured way of talking. She is a private person, but honest and searching. “We needed a jump-start somehow,” she said, before pointedly adding, “but that wasn’t the only way to do it.” Aging has diminished them physically: Anne had colon cancer; David has spinal stenosis and uses a walker.

1. 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.
2. Most Sunday mornings, after coffee and fruit, David goes to their bedroom.
3. 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.) Even with Viagra, David can’t always have a full erection, but they usually have intercourse regardless; sometimes he has a dry orgasm, where he doesn’t produce enough semen to ejaculate.

• The missionary position no longer works for them — David has put on weight and would be too heavy.
• Instead, he often lies behind Anne and puts one leg between hers, the other to the side.
• They explore and try new things.
• Last summer they began doing what’s known as edging.
• During oral sex, David stops just when Anne is on the verge of climaxing.

He repeats it a couple of times to build up the intensity before she finally has an orgasm. 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. “We nearly lost each other,” Anne said.

She emphasizes that their relationship is far from perfect; they argue plenty. But she has overcome some of the sexual barriers from the past and feels more present during sex. Much of it is related to their awareness that time is running out, which makes intimacy feel more sacred. Now, at the end of sex, one of them says a version of: “Thank you, God, for one more time.” Then they make brunch and talk about the kids, the grandkids, their plans to move into a smaller home.

They know that sex might not stay the same as they continue to age. There will come a time, David wrote me in an email, “when one of us will say, ‘I’m sorry, but would you be hurt if we just cuddle?’ The spirit is willing, but the flesh is getting weaker.” 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. Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times 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. Realistic portrayals in the media are rare, especially in the United States. Some couples therapists don’t talk about sex with their clients.

Many primary-care doctors don’t raise the topic either. The American Medical Student Association says 85 percent of medical students report receiving fewer than five hours of sexual-health education. (The University of Minnesota is an outlier, requiring 20 hours.) If a man complains of erectile problems, doctors often offer drugs like Viagra and Cialis.

• But these can have side effects and are contraindicated with some medications.
• Plus, prescribing them presumes intercourse should be the goal.
• For women, the medication Addyi does very little to increase sexual desire and is only for premenopausal women.
• And while doctors may offer women cream or vaginal rings with estrogen, few provide tips about sexual alternatives to penetration when it hurts.

“Most physicians don’t ask questions and don’t know what to do if there’s a problem,” says Dr. June La Valleur, a recently retired obstetrician-gynecologist and associate professor who taught at the University of Minnesota’s medical school. “They think their patients are going to be embarrassed.

In my opinion, you cannot call yourself a holistic practitioner unless you ask those questions.” 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. But as baby boomers, who grew up during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, age — the oldest are about 75 — many sex experts expect they will demand more open conversations and policies related to their sex lives.

Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times 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. Over the last three years, I spoke with more than 40 people in their late 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s who have found ways to shift and improve their sex lives. Some sought out sex therapists, who, among other things, help people broaden their definition of sexuality and take the focus off goal-oriented sex — erections, intercourse, performance.

Others deepened their sex lives on their own. In 2005, Peggy J. Kleinplatz, a professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa and a sex researcher, began interviewing people who have built rich and intimate sex lives. For decades, much of sex research focused on dysfunction.

In contrast, Kleinplatz, who directs the Optimal Sexual Experiences Research Team at the university, explores the aspects of deeply fulfilling sex that hold true regardless of other factors: age, health, socioeconomic status and so on. (Her work also includes L.G.B.T.Q. couples, polyamorous couples and people who are into kink and B.D.S.M.) Her 2020 book, “Magnificent Sex: Lessons From Extraordinary Lovers,” with the co-author A.

Dana Ménard, is based on research involving people whose sex lives grew better and better over time. Forty percent of the participants were in their 60s, 70s or 80s. “Who better to interview about fulfilling sex than people who have practiced it the longest?” Kleinplatz said.

Some of these “extraordinary lovers” said when they reached their 40s and 50s, they realized that their expectations for sex were too low. If they wanted significantly better sex, they knew it would require a commitment of energy and effort. “It takes an investment to be more vulnerable and trusting when you’ve been together for decades,” Kleinplatz told me.

“It takes so much willingness and courage to show yourself naked, literally and metaphorically.” Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times In the interviews, people noted that they had a better sense of what they wanted as they aged and matured and were more willing to articulate it to their partner.

They expanded their views of sex and addressed anxieties that had been fostered by mainstream media and porn that made sex seem fast and easy. And while one might assume that certain health problems limit sexuality, Kleinplatz’s interviewees had a wide variety of them: heart disease, strokes, multiple sclerosis, spinal stenosis, hearing loss, incontinence.

In some cases, it was a disability that allowed them to set aside assumptions and preconceptions about sex. People who are not disabled, as one person told Kleinplatz, sometimes “hold themselves to standards that get in the way of open-mindedness and experimentation.” One man who suffers from a degenerative disease told Kleinplatz that his illness allowed him to accept that his previous definitions of sex weren’t working.

Instead, he became more open to experimenting, communicating and responding to what his partner wanted. And even though he wasn’t having erections or orgasms himself, he said “sex was much more intense than it ever was before.” People of all ages said they tried to be in sync with their partners and “embodied” during sex, which they described as slowing down and being fully engaged.

“You are not a person in a situation,” as one man said, describing what embodiment during sex feels like. “You are it. You are the situation.” Couples also talked about the importance of creating a setting for sex: turning on music, putting away laptops, taking showers, cleaning the room.

1. It’s not about aiming to have the ultimate experience all the time.
2. Even extraordinary lovers have merely satisfying sex at times.
3. What matters overall is having “sex worth wanting,” Kleinplatz says.
4. Another researcher, Jane Fleishman, the author of “The Stonewall Generation: L.G.B.T.Q.
5. 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.

She offers sex-education trainings — including about sexually transmitted infections, which have been on the rise among older people — at senior-living communities and to professionals. When I first met her, in 2019, she was invited to only a smattering of places.

Now she speaks more frequently at geriatric conferences and at clinical grand rounds in hospitals. There are small inroads in the media, too. Several years ago, the TV show “Grace and Frankie” devoted a season to Jane Fonda’s and Lily Tomlin’s characters creating and marketing ergonomically correct vibrators for older women.

And last year, Ogilvy UK created a pro bono ad campaign, “Let’s Talk the Joy of Later Life Sex,” for one of England’s largest providers of relationship support. The campaign features 11 people ages 65 to 85. Five of them are couples — straight, gay — and one is a widowed woman.

• They sit on a couch in plush white robes.
• As we get older, we get more experimental,” one woman says, sitting next to her husband.
• A man talks about his feet touching his husband’s feet in bed.
• It’s moments like that that are important to you, as much as, you know, banging each other’s brains out.” Image Credit.

Marilyn Minter for The New York Times On a Thursday evening, inside a sleek concrete house in the San Fernando Valley in California, I stood next to Joan Price, who is 78, isn’t quite 5 feet tall and wore pink sneakers, a black lace top and a silver ring in the shape of a clitoris.

This was more than two years ago, before the pandemic, and Price, a sex educator, was watching the filming of “jessica drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex: Senior Sex.” Several feet in front of her, a 68-year-old man named Galen, dressed in a black T-shirt and boxers, kissed the face and neck of a woman, also in her 60s, as she lay across a king-size bed.

While the cameras rolled, Galen moved his right hand down her body and pulled aside her one-piece lingerie to touch her vulva. A minute into the touching, Price’s typically perky face dropped. “He’s not using lube,” Price whispered to drake, the film’s director, who nodded.

1. That would be uncomfortable for 80 percent of us.” Price, the film’s co-creator, was talking about women in their 60s and 70s and older, who, along with men of that age, were the audience for the educational film.
2. Her collaborator, drake (who uses lowercase letters in her name), is 47 and a well-known porn actress and director; she also makes instructional sex films and is a certified sex educator.

Both women wanted the film to convey that people can have great sex throughout their lives and to offer tips to make it happen. The camera wouldn’t avoid sags, cellulite, stomach rolls, flaccid penises. And the accouterments that help with older-age sex — lube, as well as vibrators and other sex toys — would be integrated into the scenes as though they were no big deal: just everyday sex aids.

“For now, cover her back up,” drake told Galen warmly. “We aren’t ready to see it. We’ll get there, I promise. We are going to do some body pans and following of the hands.” The day before, Price sat in a white leather armchair, wearing a Pucci top and low-heeled sparkly silver shoes, for the narration of the film.

She offered tips and advice. She explained that many older people (like those of any age) experience responsive desire, in which arousal springs up in response to pleasure and stimulation, such as touching or being touched, rather than spontaneously. And she encouraged people to push their doctors — or find a new one — for help with any physiological impediments to sex.

1. Several years ago, Price approached the founders of Hot Octopuss, a sex-toy company, after finding that their products worked well for aging bodies but noticing that the photos on their home page were of the “young and tattooed,” as she put it.
2. It was a real sit-up-and-think moment for us,” Julia Margo, a Hot Octopuss co-founder, told me.

In 2020, the company, with Price’s help, added a section called “Senior Sex Hub.” It includes resources like videos with Price talking about sex and aging, along with photos of people in their 60s and 70s and Hot Octopuss’s products for people with “older vulvas” and “older penises,” including a penis vibrator that can be used without an erection.

Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times Price got into the sex-education field after years as a high school teacher and a second career as both an aerobics and line-dance instructor and a writer on health and fitness. She was in her late 50s and long divorced when Robert Rice walked into her dance class.

He was lean, comfortable in his body, a trained dancer in his mid-60s with a head of white hair. When Price saw him, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. They started getting together for dancing, walking and talking — foreplay, Price would later say — and nine months later, they had sex.

When Price worried aloud to Rice that he might get bored with how long it took her to climax, he said: “It can take three weeks as long as I can take a break sometimes to change positions and get something to eat.” They tantalized each other on the phone, talking about what they’d like to do together.

He also wanted her to have orgasms with him during intercourse, but Price knew her body: It wasn’t going to happen without a vibrator. Rice was initially reluctant; it seemed mechanical, not natural. “He had this idea that the vibrator would take over,” Price told me.

1. She convinced him otherwise, and “from then on, we were a threesome.” They also discovered sex worked best if they did it before a meal, not after, so blood flow went to their genitals instead of toward digesting food.
2. Joan, I’m starting the rice cooker,” he would announce.
3. And then Price would slowly peel off her clothes.

They married about five years after becoming a couple, and Price used her knowledge and excitement to write her first senior sex book, part memoir, part celebration of older sex, “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty.” Soon, people were emailing her, stopping her at the grocery store, at the gym.

• They’d say something along the lines of: It’s great that you’re having spectacular sex, but that isn’t going on in my life.
• They told her stories of so-so sex and bemoaned the things that didn’t work.
• They had lots of questions about how to make it better.
• She tried to address them in her next book, “Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex,” which delved into research on sex and aging, enlisting doctors, sex therapists and other experts for advice.

Before she even started writing the second book, though, Rice was diagnosed with cancer. He died seven years to the day after their first kiss. It would be years before Price could work through her grief enough to date again. When she ventured back out, she was in her late 60s and signed up for OkCupid.

She created rules for herself. She would not lie about her age. A date was an audition only for a second date, not for a lifetime partner. If she wanted to have sex with someone, she first made sure they both could talk openly about what they liked and didn’t like and agree to have safe sex. Five years ago, she met Mac Marshall, a retired anthropologist, who is 78.

Like Price, he talks freely about sex and is open to new experiences and ways to work around their ailments and creaky joints. She introduced him to different kinds of vibrators, including ones for his penis, and a variety of lubricants, which are now a regular part of their sex lives.

1. They plan for sex, sometimes a day or more in advance, fantasizing about it beforehand.
2. And when the time arrives, it’s a ritual of frank talk, pleasure and awareness of their old bodies.
3. On a winter afternoon in Quincy, Mass., I met with Stephen Duclos, a family, couples and sex therapist, in his office, before his evening patients arrived.

Art hung on the walls, the windows stretched almost from the floor to the ceiling and carefully arranged books lined his shelves. Duclos, an intent listener with close-cropped gray hair and green eyes, has been a therapist for more than 48 years and a certified sex therapist for more than 20.

He also teaches sex therapy to therapists and psychologists-in-training. And as he has aged (he’s now 72), younger colleagues have sent many of their older couples his way. Among the thousands of clients he has seen, several hundred have been in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Often, when couples arrive at Duclos’s office, it’s because sex has dropped off over several decades.

The relationship may be warm and high functioning, but sex is dormant. Or the couple is gridlocked, living separate lives without much connection, emotionally or sexually. Sometimes they come to see him because medications or cancer treatments have affected sex.

Or the couple is contemplating a change in their relationship. A man has had an affair or is considering one. A woman wants to open the marriage or engage in sexual fantasies that she’s never been able to express. Some of this, Duclos notes, is driven by our fear of “not being sexually relevant anymore and losing that part of our identity.” Image Credit.

Marilyn Minter for The New York Times When couples have been together 40 or 50 years, it can be harder to address sexual issues than for those earlier in their relationship. “We make all sorts of concessions to each other in marriages over the decades, including with sex,” Duclos told me.

Let’s say there’s a 1-to-10 sexuality scale. One is really bad, and 10 is a spiritual tantric thing. Most of us don’t have much of 1 or 10, but we settle on 5 to 6, if we are lucky. We know what to do. And that’s what we do. There may be some minimal discussion about doing something different, but it almost never amounts to much.” For some people, that feels like enough.

Or they don’t care about sex anymore; they are worn down by disease or just done with that part of their lives. If people in a relationship have discussed it and agree they no longer want sex, there’s no issue. But one of the most frequent complaints among couples is a discrepancy in desire.

A small discrepancy is fine. However, when one person is initiating sex 95 percent of the time, she may feel unwanted, while the person who says no — and therefore has the ultimate control over whether consensual sex happens — often feels guilty. (The pandemic has only exacerbated sex issues because many couples have so little differentiation and little time away from each other, Duclos notes.

Enmeshment mutes desire.) And a mediocre sex life that was tolerable when life was consumed by children may feel the opposite as you have more time in your final years. The concessions people make around sex, as Duclos puts it, “can feel like a 1,000 paper cuts.

• You don’t notice any of them until you are really bleeding.” In therapy, Duclos calls it “accumulated sadness.” Clients weep upon hearing the term.
• It feels so true, so familiar, so entrenched.
• 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.

“I think we were both lonely,” said Marie (who asked me to use her middle name to protect her privacy), referring to decades of often lukewarm sex with her husband. “At one point, I didn’t care if I never had sex again,” she said. “We were like brothers and sisters, with an occasional romp.” Then about six years ago, Marie, who is 70, and her husband, 74, drastically changed their diets and lost about 50 pounds each.

And something about that triggered their ability to see each other afresh and to begin a process of reimagining sex. Now foreplay often starts in the morning with texts about what they want to do with each other. During sex, they talk and act more openly than in the past. And afterward, they tend to sit with coffee and talk by the fireplace.

For a man named Patrick, too, intimacy and sexuality have deepened over the years, in his case both with his partner and, when it comes to sex, outside his relationship. A retired therapist in his mid-70s, Patrick, who is gay, has been with his partner more than 30 years, and over time they developed a ritual in which they trade off every Sunday: One person gives a massage one week, the other the next, followed by kissing, touching and oral sex.

Though Patrick wanted to have anal sex, his partner was no longer interested. So years ago, he posted on a gay dating website for older people, writing that he was seeking men for anal sex. (His partner gave his blessing and took the profile photos.) And now, every so often, his partner leaves the house, and one of a few men arrive for sex.

As a gay man, Patrick said, “one of my intentions in life is that coming out is not an event, it’s a process. Every day I try to find a way to come out more.” Having the variety of sex he desires is “my sense of carpe diem. It’s integrating pieces of myself I’ve pushed aside.” One therapist I spoke to, Sabitha Pillai-Friedman, said that some of her older clients also wanted to expand sex by doing something “more edgy.” So Pillai-Friedman, who is a relationship and sex therapist, as well as an associate professor at the Center for Human Sexuality Studies at Widener University, began suggesting that they consider role playing and using mild restraints and blindfolds.

• Those who tried it told her it unleashed a playfulness between them.
• When bodies are not cooperating,” as Pillai-Friedman told me, “why not eroticize their minds?” Image Credit.
• Marilyn Minter for The New York Times Kleinplatz made playfulness a part of a sex-therapy program she created several years ago.

More than 150 couples, including some older people and some who hadn’t had sex in at least a decade, have gone through the eight-week group therapy. Along with doing exercises in empathic communication, the couples learn to be vulnerable and trusting, even during conflict.

And an instructor of massage therapy teaches them how to stay “absorbed and engaged,” Kleinplatz says, while the partners touch each other. According to a study by Kleinplatz’s team published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2020, couples — heterosexual and same-sex, young and old — continued to experience significantly improved sex for at least six months after finishing the program.

Those positive outcomes were due, in part, to the sexual wisdom of older couples. Kleinplatz’s team based the group-therapy program on lessons they learned from her in-depth interviews with “extraordinary lovers” — almost half of whom were over 60. A few years ago, Ann greeted me at the door of her home in a pink turtleneck sweater, pants and knee-high boots.

1. She was in her late 80s and returning from a morning exercise class.
2. Several years earlier, Ann (who asked me to use her nickname) moved into a retirement community, expecting that, among other things, her sex life had come to an end.
3. Her first marriage was sexless long before her husband died.
4. When she remarried several years later, for a while the sex was great.

But as she reached her 70s, her vaginal walls became dryer and sex hurt more. Her husband, who hadn’t let her use lube before, did not want her to start now. He felt insulted and hurt that she needed lubrication, Ann said, as if his own sexuality wasn’t enough to turn her on: “He thought I didn’t love him.” Eventually they divorced for other reasons, and she spent several years in a warm, sexually satisfying affair with a married man.

When Ann finally moved into the retirement community in her 80s, most of the residents were women, and the men she met were either married or unappealing to her. But one afternoon, someone introduced her to Lee. He was round-faced and warm, with the look and manner of a kindly school principal, curious and eager to chat.

They flirted, they went to the symphony together, they shared a love of politics and the arts. One night, Ann fretted that she had been too bossy with him. She called to tearfully apologize, fearful that she may have pushed him away. Lee showed up at her door, hugged her and gave her a kiss on her cheek.

I’d like to hold you for hours,” he said. As much as Ann wanted to be with him, the thought of exposing her body to someone new felt terrifying. The first time they were together in bed, Ann and Lee lay down with their clothes on and hugged for a long time. The next time they did the same, only naked, with the covers over them, lights out.

“You want to die,” Ann told me, remembering that night and her self-consciousness about her wrinkled skin and belly rolls. “Who is going to want me looking like this?” It helped that Lee was in his 80s, too. It helped that she really liked him. At some point that night, she thought to herself: Screw it.

• This is who I am.
• And she realized there was something about being in her 80s, feeling lucky to be alive, lucky to find a new partner who made her feel so good.
• It smoothed the edges off her vanity; she couldn’t have done at 75 what she was able to do now.
• The biggest hurdle was that Lee was married to a woman who had end-stage Alzheimer’s — she was largely unaware of her surroundings — and lived in a memory-care facility.

Lee, who visited her often, struggled to tell Ann he loved her out of loyalty to his wife, and Ann initially felt uneasy that he was married. Though some residents gossiped and seemed to judge Ann for being with a married man, her friends and family, along with Lee’s, were supportive.

• They could see how happy the couple was and wanted them to be together.
• As Ann thought to herself: Who, after all, were they really hurting? Since then, Lee’s wife has died, and he and Ann have moved in together.
• It’s very important to us that we never go to sleep without intimacy,” Ann told me a couple of months ago.

Sometimes it’s oral sex or intercourse. Often, it’s hugging, kissing and holding hands. And that, Ann and Lee said, is more important to them than ever before. Years ago, at Hebrew Home, a nonprofit nursing home overlooking the Hudson River on the northern tip of New York City, a nurse walked in on two residents having sex.

1. She immediately went to Daniel Reingold, then Hebrew Home’s executive vice president.
2. What should I do? she asked.
3. Reingold, who has told this story often, replied, “You tiptoe out and quietly pull the door closed.” Reingold used the incident as an impetus to establish what’s recognized as the nation’s first sexual-expression policy — and still one of the few — for residents of senior-living facilities.

The policy promotes consensual sexual intimacy as a human right, regardless of sexual orientation, and requires staff to “uphold and facilitate” residents’ sexual expression. Reingold put the policy on Hebrew Home’s home page because the facility may not be the right culture “if you have a problem if your widowed mother becomes intimate with another man,” he said.

We need to “act like adults when it comes to intimacy,” said Reingold, who has worked at Hebrew Home for more than 30 years and is now the president and chief executive of RiverSpring Living, which operates the nursing home. “The boomer population is about to come into this new world. We need to blow it up.” Reingold’s staff comes from almost three dozen countries and practices many different religions, but they are prohibited from bringing their personal, religious or moral values related to sex to their job.

(Long-term care facilities can be unwelcoming of L.G.B.T.Q. people, who sometimes have to “come out” again — or choose not to — when they move in.) Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times At Hebrew Home, staff members make an effort to seat romantic couples together at dinner.

• They are also expected to pick up prescriptions for Viagra, just as they would any medication, or a tube of lubricant — and to do so “without smirking,” Reingold noted — and, if needed, help a resident access porn on an iPad if the Wi-Fi isn’t working.
• I asked if the policy would include, say, giving a resident her vibrator if she was unable to reach it.

It not only would, Reingold said, but the staff should ensure that the batteries work. “It’s no different than making sure the batteries work for a resident’s hearing aid.” And if a woman is having a consensual affair with another resident, it’s not the staff’s responsibility to intervene.

1. Reingold is aware that society’s paternalism around aging can create roadblocks to intimacy and sex.
2. 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.
3. If they want more salt when they are 95, give them salt.

Same with sex.” But dementia complicates sex — and the prevalence of dementia in nursing homes complicates administrators’ treatment of it. People with dementia are more vulnerable to sexual assault and sometimes behave sexually inappropriately. And if they are nonverbal, gauging consent is challenging.

Many nursing homes take a conservative approach: avoid the problem by creating barriers to sex. In contrast, Reingold expects his staff to enable intimacy for all residents, including those with dementia, while also protecting people from unwanted touch. Staff members typically know the residents very well, he said, and can assess what nonverbal residents do and do not want.

Gayle Appel Doll, the author of “Sexuality and Long-Term Care” and a former director of the Center on Aging at Kansas State University, where she is an associate professor emeritus, says there are several ways to assess nonverbal consent. Does a resident express pleasure around her partner? Does she avoid the partner or look uneasy? “What happens if you can’t say no? Then you can’t say yes either,” Doll says.

“Your life is decided by other people.” Sometimes, as she notes, the need for sex lasts longer than some cognitive functions. And the need for touch never leaves us. Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times The organization End of Life Washington has created a 23-page dementia advance directive.

Among other things, the document allows people who have very early dementia or believe they might develop it one day to delineate their preferences for intimate relationships when their cognitive and verbal skills decline. Do you want to continue having sex with your partner, even if you can’t verbally affirm it? Do you give your partner consent to have sex with another person if you have advanced dementia? Or would that violate your “in sickness and in health” vow to each other? And what about your sex life in a facility? Do you want to be able to have a relationship with another resident even if you are married? Justice Sandra Day O’Connor lived with this issue as her husband, John, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and became progressively worse.

• In 2006, she retired from the Supreme Court to take care of him.
• But he began wandering from home so frequently that she feared for his safety and reluctantly moved him into an Alzheimer’s facility in Phoenix.
• Though he seemed sad at first, he soon met another woman with Alzheimer’s.
• They became a romantic couple; in a TV interview, one of the O’Connors’ sons likened his father to “a teenager in love.” O’Connor was relieved that her husband found someone who so clearly made him happy.

When she visited John, she often found him with his new girlfriend, holding hands. O’Connor would join on the other side of her husband and take his free hand, the three of them sitting together. For her 80th birthday, Roslyn received a gift from her daughters: a box with a big red bow and a vibrator inside.

Roslyn was amused but put it in a closet and didn’t think much about it again. Her sexual life, she thought, was long over. As with many older women, Roslyn’s husband had died. And though there were men afterward, none were long-term relationships, and none, she said, involved much sex. She didn’t think much about the vibrator again until several years later, when she saw a segment on a TV morning show about women and vibrators.

Roslyn, a retired schoolteacher, was in her mid-80s by then and had given up so much of her physical life. When family members worried that she would fall off her bike and break her bones, she stopped riding. She quit tennis after straining muscles. She was anxious about using a vibrator: “I didn’t want to hurt myself.

This is a very delicate part of your body.” And she wasn’t thrilled with the one she’d received for her birthday. But by then, her daughters, one of whom runs female-sexuality retreats, had given her a few others. She tested them out until she found the right one. “I didn’t think I had it in me anymore,” Roslyn said.

“I was amazed at what it did to me.” She could feel the sensations from her toes to her scalp. Vibrators and masturbation can be important for older women, given that they are far less likely than men to be partnered. While 78 percent of men between 75 to 85 in the New England Journal of Medicine study had a partner, only 40 percent of women did.

• Older women in the United States are single at higher rates than men and less likely to remarry; they also live, on average, five years longer.
• The most consistent sex will be the love affair you have with yourself,” Betty Dodson, a feminist sex educator who taught masturbation workshops until she was 90, wrote in “Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving,” a how-to book that was translated into 25 languages.

“Masturbation will get you through childhood, puberty, romance, marriage and divorce, and it will see you through old age.” Roslyn is 95 now, and though she notes that, for her, nothing replaces an intimate relationship with a man, she said her vibrator makes her “feel alive.” While parts of her body have weakened — she has some hearing and vision problems — her sexual response turns out to work well.

1. Given her own experience, Roslyn, who at age 92 attended one of her daughter’s sexuality retreats, wondered why so few people talked about vibrators and masturbation.
2. Her doctors certainly didn’t.
3. People she knew didn’t.
4. Then one night several years ago, she was in a restaurant with two friends after they attended a Broadway show.

As the women talked about their sleep problems, Roslyn brought up her vibrator. She told them when she wakes up in the middle of the night, it helps her fall back to sleep. They looked embarrassed, even shocked, as Roslyn talked. “Roz, that’s too intimate,” one of them said.

• She wasn’t hurt by their dismissal of vibrators.
• Instead, Roslyn felt sorry for them; she wished they understood what she knew.
• In their waning days and with aching bodies, they were missing out on a chance for easy, deep pleasure.
• Stylist: Montana Pugh.
• Hair: Alex LaMarsh and William Schaedler.
• Makeup: Vicky Steckel.

Manicure: Roseann Singleton and Kuniko Inoue Maggie Jones is a contributing writer for the magazine and teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She has been a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and Senior Ochberg fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.

Do men stop ejaculating as they get older?

As men age, contractions of orgasm are less intense and less numerous (5). Thus orgasms are more brief, and the ejaculate is expelled with less force. The volume of semen in the ejaculate is also diminished (5). Furthermore, older men may not experience ejaculation every time they have intercourse (5).

How often do men get hard daily?

How many times does a man get erect in a day? – The average man has 11 erections each day, as well as many more when they are asleep. On average, a healthy man has three to five erections during a full night’s sleep.

Is it embarrassing when a guy can t get hard?

The Right Way: Talk to Your Doctor – If you are concerned about erectile dysfunction, talk to your doctor! Whether you’re experiencing erectile issues for the first time or it has been happening for a while, your doctor can help you determine whether the problem is temporary or if it is something that should be explored in greater depth.

1. Related read: How Long does Temporary Erectile Dysfunction Last Even if it turns out to be a short-term issue, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that that is the case.
2. If your erectile issues are related to an underlying medical problem or some psychological issue, talking to your doctor is the first step toward diagnosis and treatment.

In order to diagnose erectile dysfunction, your doctor will need to perform a physical exam and you’ll be asked questions about your medical history as well as your symptoms. Additional tests such as blood tests, urinalysis, and ultrasound may also be an option if your doctor wants to rule out medical causes for your ED.

Once your doctor has determined the cause for your problems, you’ll be able to discuss treatment options which may include oral erectile dysfunction pills (like Viagra ), psychological counseling, or dietary and lifestyle changes. Be sure you discuss all the options with your doctor before you make your choice.

No bones about it, erectile dysfunction is not something any man wants to experience. Unfortunately, you have a 25% chance of experiencing a failed erection before you reach the age of 40 and your risk only increases from there. In the face of these odds, it is important to control your reaction if and when you do have erectile issues – you don’t want to blow the problem out of proportion and inadvertently make things worse for yourself.

• When you have trouble achieving or maintaining an erection, take it in stride – consider the potential causes and have an open conversation with your partner (and your doctor) before you worry too much about it.
• You may just find that taking these simple steps resolves the problem for you.
• This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

The information contained herein is not a substitute for and should never be relied upon for professional medical advice. Always talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits of any treatment. Learn more about our editorial standards here,

Do guys stay hard all night?

If you have any medical questions or concerns, please talk to your healthcare provider. The articles on Health Guide are underpinned by peer-reviewed research and information drawn from medical societies and governmental agencies. However, they are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

You’ve probably heard about some celebrities claiming to have 7-hour sex sessions. You know you don’t last nearly that long, but what is a “normal” length of time to maintain an erection? We can tell you this off the bat: it’ll be nowhere near seven hours, and it’ll vary for every person. A penile erection can normally last anywhere from a few minutes to about half an hour.

On average, men have five erections a night while they’re sleeping, each lasting about 25 to 35 minutes ( Youn, 2017 ). Does that mean all of your erections should last that long? Read on to learn more about how long the average man can stay erect. An erection is the most obvious sign of sexual arousal for those with penises, and it’s important for a healthy sex life.

It’s a physical response to chemical reactions in the body. Erections are complicated—each one requires your heart, lungs, hormones, nerves, blood vessels, and mood to work together. One missed reaction in this chain can lead to erectile dysfunction or other problems with your sexual functioning. During sexual arousal, tiny blood vessels in the penis dilate, increasing blood flow.

Three tubes of spongy tissue (known as the corpus cavernosum and corpus spongiosum) fill with blood, and an erection occurs. After ejaculation, the extra blood drains away, and the penis reverts to its flaccid size and appearance. Then your penis enters a rest or refractory period before it can get hard again ( Panchatsharam, 2021 ).

• Age
• Health problems
• Side effects of medications
• Level of sexual stimulation or arousal
• Sexual activity—whether you’re masturbating or having sex
• Mental state—whether you are trying to become aroused vs. a surprise erection at work

There is a distinct upper end of the spectrum—erections can last too long. That’s a condition called priapism. If you ever have an erect penis that lasts more than four hours, seek medical attention to avoid permanent damage ( Deveci, 2019 ). Perhaps the best way to answer the question, “How long do normal erections last?” is with a question—why do you ask? If you’re concerned that your erections aren’t lasting as long as you like, read on.

• Reflexive erections happen spontaneously, without thinking about sex.
• Psychogenic erections occur in response to sexual stimuli, memory, or fantasy (Schmid, 2004).
• Nocturnal erections happen during sleep (i.e., “morning wood”)

If you find that you’re having difficulty getting an erection, your erections aren’t as firm as you’d like, or they don’t last long enough for satisfying sex, you might have erectile dysfunction or ED. ED is very common—it’s estimated that more than 30 million American men experience erectile problems ( Sooriyamoorthy, 2021 ).

Oral medications for ED are safe and effective, especially the phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibitors like sildenafil (brand name Viagra ), tadalafil (brand name Cialis ), and vardenafil (brand name Levitra) (Sooriyamoorthy, 2021). You might be having erection issues because your head isn’t in the game, or you’re not sufficiently in the mood.

Being stressed or distracted can affect the quality of your erections. Slowing things down and spending more time on foreplay might help. Your erections will be best when you’re healthy. Making simple lifestyle changes, such as getting regular exercise and eating a healthy diet, might be enough to improve ED (Sooriyamoorthy, 2021).

Drinking too much and using tobacco products can definitely affect the quality of your erections. Knocking back too many might lead to occasional incidents of “whiskey dick.” Smoking can also lead to blood vessel damage and ED. It’s best to drink in moderation and avoid tobacco altogether (Sooriyamoorthy, 2021).

Talking openly with your partner about your sexual likes, dislikes, and fantasies can keep sex in a long-term relationship more exciting. Try not to bring conflicts into the bedroom—relationship issues can certainly contribute to ED. ED can be more than a problem with your sexual health.

1. Devici,S. (2019). Priapism. In UpToDate. O’Leary, M.P., Hockberger, R.S., Givens, J. (Eds.). Retrieved from https://www.uptodate.com/contents/priapism
2. Panchatsharam PK, Durland J, Zito PM. (2021). Physiology, erection. In: StatPearls, Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513278/
3. Sooriyamoorthy T, Leslie SW. (2021). Erectile dysfunction. In: StatPearls, Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK562253/
4. Yafi, F.A., Jenkins, L., Albersen, M., Corona, G., Isidori, A.M., Goldfarb, S., Maggi, M., et al. (2016). Erectile dysfunction. Nature Reviews: Disease Primers, 2, 16003. doi: 10.1038/nrdp.2016.3. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27188339/
5. Youn, G. (2017). Why do healthy men experience morning erections? The Open Psychology Journal, 10 (1), 49–54. doi: 10.2174/1874350101710010049. Retrieved from https://openpsychologyjournal.com/VOLUME/10/PAGE/49/FULLTEXT/

Dr. Chimene Richa is a board-certified Ophthalmologist and Senior Medical Writer/Reviewer at Ro.

What age do men use Viagra?

Who can take sildenafil – Most men aged 18 and over can take sildenafil for erectile dysfunction. Most adults and children aged 1 year and over can take sildenafil for pulmonary hypertension.

How often do most 70 year olds make love?

Listen to This Article – Audio Recording by Audm To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android, 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.” From the outset of their marriage, the two explored sex together. David was more lustful and eager; Anne was more hesitant, at times leaning toward accommodation rather than enthusiasm.

A few years after their wedding, they had their first child, and David began traveling half the month for his job. Over the next five years, they had two more children, and Anne sometimes felt exhausted, managing homework, schedules, driving, emergencies, meltdowns.

She loved David and liked sex with him, but it often fell lower on the list of what she needed: a good night’s sleep, an arm around her shoulder, no expectations. Anne also never fully escaped the feeling that sex was taboo: “We weren’t allowed to even think about it,” she said about her parents’ approach to sex.

In the early part of her marriage, she felt horrified about oral sex and struggled to have orgasms. “I don’t think I was what David had hoped for,” she told me. 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.

1. But getting there took effort.
2. David, a curious, gregarious bear of a man, always believed sex was important to happiness, and he regularly sought out tips for improving it.
3. In the late 1970s, he read a magazine article about a “girl’s best friend,” a vibrator called a Prelude.
4. He bought one for Anne.
5. She asked me to use her middle name to protect her privacy; David asked to be identified by his first name.) It didn’t go so well at first: For Anne, it was a reminder of what she saw as her own deficiency.

She imagined that other women orgasmed more quickly, while she needed mechanical intervention. But David encouraged her to try the vibrator on her own, and they began occasionally using it during sex. Sex was great at times, like when Anne took a human-sexuality class one summer, by which time the kids were teenagers and more independent.

In the evenings after class, she and David sat on their front stoop overlooking a park, and she shared what she was learning about desire and the physiology of sex. It became their foreplay. But soon, David began working longer hours, and Anne started a job in the evenings. Their busy schedules pulled them back to the routine of discordant desires.

At the lowest point, sex dropped to a couple of times a month — far too infrequent for David. “We were going through the motions,” he said. By the time David was in his 50s, he had had two affairs — in large part because the women made him feel desired.

• Anne also had a brief affair, in response to his cheating.
• Then, in his 60s, David retired from a career that had defined him, where he was surrounded by co-workers who loved him.
• Anne, meanwhile, was increasingly out of the house, volunteering in their community.
• Eager for more attention and affection than Anne was able to give him, David had a third affair, this time a more emotionally involved one, with a woman who was as enthusiastic about sex as he was.

He never had to hint that he wanted it. He never had to ask. She was game for pretty much anything. Anne was furious when she found out, but still, she didn’t want to lose him. She pushed him to end the relationship; the other woman told David he had to choose.

At the precipice of separation, Anne and David went to therapy, and slowly they became more honest with each other. Anne talked about her anger over the affairs and her withholding of sex because of them. David expressed his hopes that he could bring the kind of sexual excitement he found outside the marriage into their relationship.

If she wanted to hold on to him, Anne decided, she needed to try opening up. David worked to be less expectant. And slowly, in their 70s, they moved toward more intimate and compelling sex. “The affair was the best and worst thing that happened to us,” David told me one afternoon last fall.

• I’m not so sure about that,” Anne said.
• We were speaking over Skype on their 60th wedding anniversary.
• The couple sat side by side at the kitchen counter in a house they designed together 30 years ago, overlooking a lake.
• As they talked, Anne occasionally put her head on David’s shoulder.
• Behind them was a bank of windows and, in one corner, a vase of dried sunflowers.

Anne, who has bright blue eyes and a sweep of silver hair that falls onto one side of her face, has a measured way of talking. She is a private person, but honest and searching. “We needed a jump-start somehow,” she said, before pointedly adding, “but that wasn’t the only way to do it.” 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.) Even with Viagra, David can’t always have a full erection, but they usually have intercourse regardless; sometimes he has a dry orgasm, where he doesn’t produce enough semen to ejaculate.

The missionary position no longer works for them — David has put on weight and would be too heavy. Instead, he often lies behind Anne and puts one leg between hers, the other to the side. They explore and try new things. Last summer they began doing what’s known as edging. During oral sex, David stops just when Anne is on the verge of climaxing.

He repeats it a couple of times to build up the intensity before she finally has an orgasm. 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. “We nearly lost each other,” Anne said.

She emphasizes that their relationship is far from perfect; they argue plenty. But she has overcome some of the sexual barriers from the past and feels more present during sex. Much of it is related to their awareness that time is running out, which makes intimacy feel more sacred. Now, at the end of sex, one of them says a version of: “Thank you, God, for one more time.” Then they make brunch and talk about the kids, the grandkids, their plans to move into a smaller home.

They know that sex might not stay the same as they continue to age. There will come a time, David wrote me in an email, “when one of us will say, ‘I’m sorry, but would you be hurt if we just cuddle?’ The spirit is willing, but the flesh is getting weaker.” 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. Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times 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. Realistic portrayals in the media are rare, especially in the United States. Some couples therapists don’t talk about sex with their clients.

Many primary-care doctors don’t raise the topic either. The American Medical Student Association says 85 percent of medical students report receiving fewer than five hours of sexual-health education. (The University of Minnesota is an outlier, requiring 20 hours.) If a man complains of erectile problems, doctors often offer drugs like Viagra and Cialis.

1. But these can have side effects and are contraindicated with some medications.
2. Plus, prescribing them presumes intercourse should be the goal.
3. For women, the medication Addyi does very little to increase sexual desire and is only for premenopausal women.
4. And while doctors may offer women cream or vaginal rings with estrogen, few provide tips about sexual alternatives to penetration when it hurts.

“Most physicians don’t ask questions and don’t know what to do if there’s a problem,” says Dr. June La Valleur, a recently retired obstetrician-gynecologist and associate professor who taught at the University of Minnesota’s medical school. “They think their patients are going to be embarrassed.

In my opinion, you cannot call yourself a holistic practitioner unless you ask those questions.” 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. But as baby boomers, who grew up during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, age — the oldest are about 75 — many sex experts expect they will demand more open conversations and policies related to their sex lives.

• Image Credit.
• Marilyn Minter for The New York Times 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.

1. And research — and common sense — suggests, too, that sex improves sleep, reduces stress and cultivates emotional intimacy.
2. Over the last three years, I spoke with more than 40 people in their late 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s who have found ways to shift and improve their sex lives.
3. Some sought out sex therapists, who, among other things, help people broaden their definition of sexuality and take the focus off goal-oriented sex — erections, intercourse, performance.

Others deepened their sex lives on their own. In 2005, Peggy J. Kleinplatz, a professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa and a sex researcher, began interviewing people who have built rich and intimate sex lives. For decades, much of sex research focused on dysfunction.

• In contrast, Kleinplatz, who directs the Optimal Sexual Experiences Research Team at the university, explores the aspects of deeply fulfilling sex that hold true regardless of other factors: age, health, socioeconomic status and so on.
• Her work also includes L.G.B.T.Q.
• Couples, polyamorous couples and people who are into kink and B.D.S.M.) Her 2020 book, “Magnificent Sex: Lessons From Extraordinary Lovers,” with the co-author A.

Dana Ménard, is based on research involving people whose sex lives grew better and better over time. Forty percent of the participants were in their 60s, 70s or 80s. “Who better to interview about fulfilling sex than people who have practiced it the longest?” Kleinplatz said.

• Some of these “extraordinary lovers” said when they reached their 40s and 50s, they realized that their expectations for sex were too low.
• If they wanted significantly better sex, they knew it would require a commitment of energy and effort.
• It takes an investment to be more vulnerable and trusting when you’ve been together for decades,” Kleinplatz told me.

“It takes so much willingness and courage to show yourself naked, literally and metaphorically.” Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times In the interviews, people noted that they had a better sense of what they wanted as they aged and matured and were more willing to articulate it to their partner.

• They expanded their views of sex and addressed anxieties that had been fostered by mainstream media and porn that made sex seem fast and easy.
• And while one might assume that certain health problems limit sexuality, Kleinplatz’s interviewees had a wide variety of them: heart disease, strokes, multiple sclerosis, spinal stenosis, hearing loss, incontinence.

In some cases, it was a disability that allowed them to set aside assumptions and preconceptions about sex. People who are not disabled, as one person told Kleinplatz, sometimes “hold themselves to standards that get in the way of open-mindedness and experimentation.” One man who suffers from a degenerative disease told Kleinplatz that his illness allowed him to accept that his previous definitions of sex weren’t working.

1. Instead, he became more open to experimenting, communicating and responding to what his partner wanted.
2. And even though he wasn’t having erections or orgasms himself, he said “sex was much more intense than it ever was before.” People of all ages said they tried to be in sync with their partners and “embodied” during sex, which they described as slowing down and being fully engaged.

“You are not a person in a situation,” as one man said, describing what embodiment during sex feels like. “You are it. You are the situation.” Couples also talked about the importance of creating a setting for sex: turning on music, putting away laptops, taking showers, cleaning the room.

1. It’s not about aiming to have the ultimate experience all the time.
2. Even extraordinary lovers have merely satisfying sex at times.
3. What matters overall is having “sex worth wanting,” Kleinplatz says.
4. Another researcher, Jane Fleishman, the author of “The Stonewall Generation: L.G.B.T.Q.
5. 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.

She offers sex-education trainings — including about sexually transmitted infections, which have been on the rise among older people — at senior-living communities and to professionals. When I first met her, in 2019, she was invited to only a smattering of places.

Now she speaks more frequently at geriatric conferences and at clinical grand rounds in hospitals. There are small inroads in the media, too. Several years ago, the TV show “Grace and Frankie” devoted a season to Jane Fonda’s and Lily Tomlin’s characters creating and marketing ergonomically correct vibrators for older women.

And last year, Ogilvy UK created a pro bono ad campaign, “Let’s Talk the Joy of Later Life Sex,” for one of England’s largest providers of relationship support. The campaign features 11 people ages 65 to 85. Five of them are couples — straight, gay — and one is a widowed woman.

• They sit on a couch in plush white robes.
• As we get older, we get more experimental,” one woman says, sitting next to her husband.
• A man talks about his feet touching his husband’s feet in bed.
• It’s moments like that that are important to you, as much as, you know, banging each other’s brains out.” Image Credit.

Marilyn Minter for The New York Times On a Thursday evening, inside a sleek concrete house in the San Fernando Valley in California, I stood next to Joan Price, who is 78, isn’t quite 5 feet tall and wore pink sneakers, a black lace top and a silver ring in the shape of a clitoris.

This was more than two years ago, before the pandemic, and Price, a sex educator, was watching the filming of “jessica drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex: Senior Sex.” Several feet in front of her, a 68-year-old man named Galen, dressed in a black T-shirt and boxers, kissed the face and neck of a woman, also in her 60s, as she lay across a king-size bed.

While the cameras rolled, Galen moved his right hand down her body and pulled aside her one-piece lingerie to touch her vulva. A minute into the touching, Price’s typically perky face dropped. “He’s not using lube,” Price whispered to drake, the film’s director, who nodded.

• That would be uncomfortable for 80 percent of us.” Price, the film’s co-creator, was talking about women in their 60s and 70s and older, who, along with men of that age, were the audience for the educational film.
• Her collaborator, drake (who uses lowercase letters in her name), is 47 and a well-known porn actress and director; she also makes instructional sex films and is a certified sex educator.

Both women wanted the film to convey that people can have great sex throughout their lives and to offer tips to make it happen. The camera wouldn’t avoid sags, cellulite, stomach rolls, flaccid penises. And the accouterments that help with older-age sex — lube, as well as vibrators and other sex toys — would be integrated into the scenes as though they were no big deal: just everyday sex aids.

For now, cover her back up,” drake told Galen warmly. “We aren’t ready to see it. We’ll get there, I promise. We are going to do some body pans and following of the hands.” The day before, Price sat in a white leather armchair, wearing a Pucci top and low-heeled sparkly silver shoes, for the narration of the film.

She offered tips and advice. She explained that many older people (like those of any age) experience responsive desire, in which arousal springs up in response to pleasure and stimulation, such as touching or being touched, rather than spontaneously. And she encouraged people to push their doctors — or find a new one — for help with any physiological impediments to sex.

1. Several years ago, Price approached the founders of Hot Octopuss, a sex-toy company, after finding that their products worked well for aging bodies but noticing that the photos on their home page were of the “young and tattooed,” as she put it.
2. It was a real sit-up-and-think moment for us,” Julia Margo, a Hot Octopuss co-founder, told me.

In 2020, the company, with Price’s help, added a section called “Senior Sex Hub.” It includes resources like videos with Price talking about sex and aging, along with photos of people in their 60s and 70s and Hot Octopuss’s products for people with “older vulvas” and “older penises,” including a penis vibrator that can be used without an erection.

Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times Price got into the sex-education field after years as a high school teacher and a second career as both an aerobics and line-dance instructor and a writer on health and fitness. She was in her late 50s and long divorced when Robert Rice walked into her dance class.

He was lean, comfortable in his body, a trained dancer in his mid-60s with a head of white hair. When Price saw him, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. They started getting together for dancing, walking and talking — foreplay, Price would later say — and nine months later, they had sex.

When Price worried aloud to Rice that he might get bored with how long it took her to climax, he said: “It can take three weeks as long as I can take a break sometimes to change positions and get something to eat.” They tantalized each other on the phone, talking about what they’d like to do together.

He also wanted her to have orgasms with him during intercourse, but Price knew her body: It wasn’t going to happen without a vibrator. Rice was initially reluctant; it seemed mechanical, not natural. “He had this idea that the vibrator would take over,” Price told me.

She convinced him otherwise, and “from then on, we were a threesome.” They also discovered sex worked best if they did it before a meal, not after, so blood flow went to their genitals instead of toward digesting food. “Joan, I’m starting the rice cooker,” he would announce. And then Price would slowly peel off her clothes.

They married about five years after becoming a couple, and Price used her knowledge and excitement to write her first senior sex book, part memoir, part celebration of older sex, “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty.” Soon, people were emailing her, stopping her at the grocery store, at the gym.

1. They’d say something along the lines of: It’s great that you’re having spectacular sex, but that isn’t going on in my life.
2. They told her stories of so-so sex and bemoaned the things that didn’t work.
3. They had lots of questions about how to make it better.
4. She tried to address them in her next book, “Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex,” which delved into research on sex and aging, enlisting doctors, sex therapists and other experts for advice.

Before she even started writing the second book, though, Rice was diagnosed with cancer. He died seven years to the day after their first kiss. It would be years before Price could work through her grief enough to date again. When she ventured back out, she was in her late 60s and signed up for OkCupid.

• She created rules for herself.
• She would not lie about her age.
• A date was an audition only for a second date, not for a lifetime partner.
• If she wanted to have sex with someone, she first made sure they both could talk openly about what they liked and didn’t like and agree to have safe sex.
• Five years ago, she met Mac Marshall, a retired anthropologist, who is 78.

Like Price, he talks freely about sex and is open to new experiences and ways to work around their ailments and creaky joints. She introduced him to different kinds of vibrators, including ones for his penis, and a variety of lubricants, which are now a regular part of their sex lives.

1. They plan for sex, sometimes a day or more in advance, fantasizing about it beforehand.
2. And when the time arrives, it’s a ritual of frank talk, pleasure and awareness of their old bodies.
3. On a winter afternoon in Quincy, Mass., I met with Stephen Duclos, a family, couples and sex therapist, in his office, before his evening patients arrived.

Art hung on the walls, the windows stretched almost from the floor to the ceiling and carefully arranged books lined his shelves. Duclos, an intent listener with close-cropped gray hair and green eyes, has been a therapist for more than 48 years and a certified sex therapist for more than 20.

He also teaches sex therapy to therapists and psychologists-in-training. And as he has aged (he’s now 72), younger colleagues have sent many of their older couples his way. Among the thousands of clients he has seen, several hundred have been in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Often, when couples arrive at Duclos’s office, it’s because sex has dropped off over several decades.

The relationship may be warm and high functioning, but sex is dormant. Or the couple is gridlocked, living separate lives without much connection, emotionally or sexually. Sometimes they come to see him because medications or cancer treatments have affected sex.

1. Or the couple is contemplating a change in their relationship.
2. A man has had an affair or is considering one.
3. A woman wants to open the marriage or engage in sexual fantasies that she’s never been able to express.
4. Some of this, Duclos notes, is driven by our fear of “not being sexually relevant anymore and losing that part of our identity.” Image Credit.

Marilyn Minter for The New York Times When couples have been together 40 or 50 years, it can be harder to address sexual issues than for those earlier in their relationship. “We make all sorts of concessions to each other in marriages over the decades, including with sex,” Duclos told me.

1. Let’s say there’s a 1-to-10 sexuality scale.
2. One is really bad, and 10 is a spiritual tantric thing.
3. Most of us don’t have much of 1 or 10, but we settle on 5 to 6, if we are lucky.
4. We know what to do.
5. And that’s what we do.
6. There may be some minimal discussion about doing something different, but it almost never amounts to much.” For some people, that feels like enough.

Or they don’t care about sex anymore; they are worn down by disease or just done with that part of their lives. If people in a relationship have discussed it and agree they no longer want sex, there’s no issue. But one of the most frequent complaints among couples is a discrepancy in desire.

• A small discrepancy is fine.
• However, when one person is initiating sex 95 percent of the time, she may feel unwanted, while the person who says no — and therefore has the ultimate control over whether consensual sex happens — often feels guilty.
• The pandemic has only exacerbated sex issues because many couples have so little differentiation and little time away from each other, Duclos notes.

Enmeshment mutes desire.) And a mediocre sex life that was tolerable when life was consumed by children may feel the opposite as you have more time in your final years. The concessions people make around sex, as Duclos puts it, “can feel like a 1,000 paper cuts.

1. You don’t notice any of them until you are really bleeding.” In therapy, Duclos calls it “accumulated sadness.” Clients weep upon hearing the term.
2. It feels so true, so familiar, so entrenched.
3. 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.

“I think we were both lonely,” said Marie (who asked me to use her middle name to protect her privacy), referring to decades of often lukewarm sex with her husband. “At one point, I didn’t care if I never had sex again,” she said. “We were like brothers and sisters, with an occasional romp.” Then about six years ago, Marie, who is 70, and her husband, 74, drastically changed their diets and lost about 50 pounds each.

1. And something about that triggered their ability to see each other afresh and to begin a process of reimagining sex.
2. Now foreplay often starts in the morning with texts about what they want to do with each other.
3. During sex, they talk and act more openly than in the past.
4. And afterward, they tend to sit with coffee and talk by the fireplace.

For a man named Patrick, too, intimacy and sexuality have deepened over the years, in his case both with his partner and, when it comes to sex, outside his relationship. A retired therapist in his mid-70s, Patrick, who is gay, has been with his partner more than 30 years, and over time they developed a ritual in which they trade off every Sunday: One person gives a massage one week, the other the next, followed by kissing, touching and oral sex.

• Though Patrick wanted to have anal sex, his partner was no longer interested.
• So years ago, he posted on a gay dating website for older people, writing that he was seeking men for anal sex.
• His partner gave his blessing and took the profile photos.) And now, every so often, his partner leaves the house, and one of a few men arrive for sex.

As a gay man, Patrick said, “one of my intentions in life is that coming out is not an event, it’s a process. Every day I try to find a way to come out more.” Having the variety of sex he desires is “my sense of carpe diem. It’s integrating pieces of myself I’ve pushed aside.” One therapist I spoke to, Sabitha Pillai-Friedman, said that some of her older clients also wanted to expand sex by doing something “more edgy.” So Pillai-Friedman, who is a relationship and sex therapist, as well as an associate professor at the Center for Human Sexuality Studies at Widener University, began suggesting that they consider role playing and using mild restraints and blindfolds.

Those who tried it told her it unleashed a playfulness between them. “When bodies are not cooperating,” as Pillai-Friedman told me, “why not eroticize their minds?” Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times Kleinplatz made playfulness a part of a sex-therapy program she created several years ago.

More than 150 couples, including some older people and some who hadn’t had sex in at least a decade, have gone through the eight-week group therapy. Along with doing exercises in empathic communication, the couples learn to be vulnerable and trusting, even during conflict.

And an instructor of massage therapy teaches them how to stay “absorbed and engaged,” Kleinplatz says, while the partners touch each other. According to a study by Kleinplatz’s team published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2020, couples — heterosexual and same-sex, young and old — continued to experience significantly improved sex for at least six months after finishing the program.

Those positive outcomes were due, in part, to the sexual wisdom of older couples. Kleinplatz’s team based the group-therapy program on lessons they learned from her in-depth interviews with “extraordinary lovers” — almost half of whom were over 60. A few years ago, Ann greeted me at the door of her home in a pink turtleneck sweater, pants and knee-high boots.

She was in her late 80s and returning from a morning exercise class. Several years earlier, Ann (who asked me to use her nickname) moved into a retirement community, expecting that, among other things, her sex life had come to an end. Her first marriage was sexless long before her husband died. When she remarried several years later, for a while the sex was great.

But as she reached her 70s, her vaginal walls became dryer and sex hurt more. Her husband, who hadn’t let her use lube before, did not want her to start now. He felt insulted and hurt that she needed lubrication, Ann said, as if his own sexuality wasn’t enough to turn her on: “He thought I didn’t love him.” Eventually they divorced for other reasons, and she spent several years in a warm, sexually satisfying affair with a married man.

• When Ann finally moved into the retirement community in her 80s, most of the residents were women, and the men she met were either married or unappealing to her.
• But one afternoon, someone introduced her to Lee.
• He was round-faced and warm, with the look and manner of a kindly school principal, curious and eager to chat.

They flirted, they went to the symphony together, they shared a love of politics and the arts. One night, Ann fretted that she had been too bossy with him. She called to tearfully apologize, fearful that she may have pushed him away. Lee showed up at her door, hugged her and gave her a kiss on her cheek.

• I’d like to hold you for hours,” he said.
• As much as Ann wanted to be with him, the thought of exposing her body to someone new felt terrifying.
• The first time they were together in bed, Ann and Lee lay down with their clothes on and hugged for a long time.
• The next time they did the same, only naked, with the covers over them, lights out.

“You want to die,” Ann told me, remembering that night and her self-consciousness about her wrinkled skin and belly rolls. “Who is going to want me looking like this?” It helped that Lee was in his 80s, too. It helped that she really liked him. At some point that night, she thought to herself: Screw it.

• This is who I am.
• And she realized there was something about being in her 80s, feeling lucky to be alive, lucky to find a new partner who made her feel so good.
• It smoothed the edges off her vanity; she couldn’t have done at 75 what she was able to do now.
• The biggest hurdle was that Lee was married to a woman who had end-stage Alzheimer’s — she was largely unaware of her surroundings — and lived in a memory-care facility.

Lee, who visited her often, struggled to tell Ann he loved her out of loyalty to his wife, and Ann initially felt uneasy that he was married. Though some residents gossiped and seemed to judge Ann for being with a married man, her friends and family, along with Lee’s, were supportive.

They could see how happy the couple was and wanted them to be together. As Ann thought to herself: Who, after all, were they really hurting? Since then, Lee’s wife has died, and he and Ann have moved in together. “It’s very important to us that we never go to sleep without intimacy,” Ann told me a couple of months ago.

Sometimes it’s oral sex or intercourse. Often, it’s hugging, kissing and holding hands. And that, Ann and Lee said, is more important to them than ever before. Years ago, at Hebrew Home, a nonprofit nursing home overlooking the Hudson River on the northern tip of New York City, a nurse walked in on two residents having sex.

• She immediately went to Daniel Reingold, then Hebrew Home’s executive vice president.
• What should I do? she asked.
• Reingold, who has told this story often, replied, “You tiptoe out and quietly pull the door closed.” Reingold used the incident as an impetus to establish what’s recognized as the nation’s first sexual-expression policy — and still one of the few — for residents of senior-living facilities.

The policy promotes consensual sexual intimacy as a human right, regardless of sexual orientation, and requires staff to “uphold and facilitate” residents’ sexual expression. Reingold put the policy on Hebrew Home’s home page because the facility may not be the right culture “if you have a problem if your widowed mother becomes intimate with another man,” he said.

We need to “act like adults when it comes to intimacy,” said Reingold, who has worked at Hebrew Home for more than 30 years and is now the president and chief executive of RiverSpring Living, which operates the nursing home. “The boomer population is about to come into this new world. We need to blow it up.” Reingold’s staff comes from almost three dozen countries and practices many different religions, but they are prohibited from bringing their personal, religious or moral values related to sex to their job.

(Long-term care facilities can be unwelcoming of L.G.B.T.Q. people, who sometimes have to “come out” again — or choose not to — when they move in.) Image Credit. Marilyn Minter for The New York Times At Hebrew Home, staff members make an effort to seat romantic couples together at dinner.

They are also expected to pick up prescriptions for Viagra, just as they would any medication, or a tube of lubricant — and to do so “without smirking,” Reingold noted — and, if needed, help a resident access porn on an iPad if the Wi-Fi isn’t working. I asked if the policy would include, say, giving a resident her vibrator if she was unable to reach it.

It not only would, Reingold said, but the staff should ensure that the batteries work. “It’s no different than making sure the batteries work for a resident’s hearing aid.” And if a woman is having a consensual affair with another resident, it’s not the staff’s responsibility to intervene.

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.” But dementia complicates sex — and the prevalence of dementia in nursing homes complicates administrators’ treatment of it. People with dementia are more vulnerable to sexual assault and sometimes behave sexually inappropriately. And if they are nonverbal, gauging consent is challenging.

Many nursing homes take a conservative approach: avoid the problem by creating barriers to sex. In contrast, Reingold expects his staff to enable intimacy for all residents, including those with dementia, while also protecting people from unwanted touch. Staff members typically know the residents very well, he said, and can assess what nonverbal residents do and do not want.

Gayle Appel Doll, the author of “Sexuality and Long-Term Care” and a former director of the Center on Aging at Kansas State University, where she is an associate professor emeritus, says there are several ways to assess nonverbal consent. Does a resident express pleasure around her partner? Does she avoid the partner or look uneasy? “What happens if you can’t say no? Then you can’t say yes either,” Doll says.

• Your life is decided by other people.” Sometimes, as she notes, the need for sex lasts longer than some cognitive functions.
• And the need for touch never leaves us.
• Image Credit.
• Marilyn Minter for The New York Times The organization End of Life Washington has created a 23-page dementia advance directive.

Among other things, the document allows people who have very early dementia or believe they might develop it one day to delineate their preferences for intimate relationships when their cognitive and verbal skills decline. Do you want to continue having sex with your partner, even if you can’t verbally affirm it? Do you give your partner consent to have sex with another person if you have advanced dementia? Or would that violate your “in sickness and in health” vow to each other? And what about your sex life in a facility? Do you want to be able to have a relationship with another resident even if you are married? Justice Sandra Day O’Connor lived with this issue as her husband, John, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and became progressively worse.

In 2006, she retired from the Supreme Court to take care of him. But he began wandering from home so frequently that she feared for his safety and reluctantly moved him into an Alzheimer’s facility in Phoenix. Though he seemed sad at first, he soon met another woman with Alzheimer’s. They became a romantic couple; in a TV interview, one of the O’Connors’ sons likened his father to “a teenager in love.” O’Connor was relieved that her husband found someone who so clearly made him happy.

When she visited John, she often found him with his new girlfriend, holding hands. O’Connor would join on the other side of her husband and take his free hand, the three of them sitting together. For her 80th birthday, Roslyn received a gift from her daughters: a box with a big red bow and a vibrator inside.

1. Roslyn was amused but put it in a closet and didn’t think much about it again.
2. Her sexual life, she thought, was long over.
3. As with many older women, Roslyn’s husband had died.
4. And though there were men afterward, none were long-term relationships, and none, she said, involved much sex.
5. She didn’t think much about the vibrator again until several years later, when she saw a segment on a TV morning show about women and vibrators.

Roslyn, a retired schoolteacher, was in her mid-80s by then and had given up so much of her physical life. When family members worried that she would fall off her bike and break her bones, she stopped riding. She quit tennis after straining muscles. She was anxious about using a vibrator: “I didn’t want to hurt myself.

This is a very delicate part of your body.” And she wasn’t thrilled with the one she’d received for her birthday. But by then, her daughters, one of whom runs female-sexuality retreats, had given her a few others. She tested them out until she found the right one. “I didn’t think I had it in me anymore,” Roslyn said.

“I was amazed at what it did to me.” She could feel the sensations from her toes to her scalp. Vibrators and masturbation can be important for older women, given that they are far less likely than men to be partnered. While 78 percent of men between 75 to 85 in the New England Journal of Medicine study had a partner, only 40 percent of women did.

• Older women in the United States are single at higher rates than men and less likely to remarry; they also live, on average, five years longer.
• The most consistent sex will be the love affair you have with yourself,” Betty Dodson, a feminist sex educator who taught masturbation workshops until she was 90, wrote in “Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving,” a how-to book that was translated into 25 languages.

“Masturbation will get you through childhood, puberty, romance, marriage and divorce, and it will see you through old age.” Roslyn is 95 now, and though she notes that, for her, nothing replaces an intimate relationship with a man, she said her vibrator makes her “feel alive.” While parts of her body have weakened — she has some hearing and vision problems — her sexual response turns out to work well.

• Given her own experience, Roslyn, who at age 92 attended one of her daughter’s sexuality retreats, wondered why so few people talked about vibrators and masturbation.
• Her doctors certainly didn’t.
• People she knew didn’t.
• Then one night several years ago, she was in a restaurant with two friends after they attended a Broadway show.

As the women talked about their sleep problems, Roslyn brought up her vibrator. She told them when she wakes up in the middle of the night, it helps her fall back to sleep. They looked embarrassed, even shocked, as Roslyn talked. “Roz, that’s too intimate,” one of them said.

She wasn’t hurt by their dismissal of vibrators. Instead, Roslyn felt sorry for them; she wished they understood what she knew. In their waning days and with aching bodies, they were missing out on a chance for easy, deep pleasure. Stylist: Montana Pugh. Hair: Alex LaMarsh and William Schaedler. Makeup: Vicky Steckel.

Manicure: Roseann Singleton and Kuniko Inoue Maggie Jones is a contributing writer for the magazine and teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She has been a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and Senior Ochberg fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.

Can a 70 year old man get a woman pregnant?

There’s no maximum age that stops a man from being able to have a baby. You can become a father long into your older years, but there are risks. When you get older, your sperm quality isn’t as great as it used to be. This happens for a few reasons, like:

Your testicles become softer and smaller.Your sperm becomes disfigured and slow,The blood supply to your genitals gets lower.You have lower testosterone levels.

For most men, these problems happen after the age of 50. Like women who have children when they’re older, there are risks for men who have babies at an older age. Your baby might have higher odds of getting a genetic disorder. As you age, you’re more likely to have gene changes, or mutations, in your sperm.

• If you have a baby at an older age, you have higher chances of passing on a genetic disorder,
• The baby’s risk for mental health or brain disorders may be higher.
• A father’s older age can cause schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or autism spectrum disorder.
• The chances of having a premature baby may be higher.

Some studies have shown that men who are 45 or older have a 14% chance of having a baby born early, Men who are 50 years or older have a 28% chance of their newborn baby staying in the neonatal intensive care unit. Your baby’s mother has a higher risk of getting gestational diabetes.

• Your age can also affect the mother’s health during pregnancy.
• When you’re older, she has a higher chance of getting high blood sugar while pregnant ( gestational diabetes ) and greater odds of needing a C-section.
• There’s a risk for low birth weight and problems at birth.
• Babies with older dads have higher chances of being born underweight.

Low birth weight can cause other health problems later in life. Your baby also has a higher risk of having seizures and needing to be put on oxygen. You might have trouble having a baby, As you age, you can have trouble with infertility. This is usually because your sperm quality isn’t great.

Be more established in your careerBe finished with schoolHave money saved and student loans paid offHave good housingHave a job with family benefits or flexible hours

On the other hand, there are reasons to think twice about having a baby when you’re older: Raising kids is expensive. Not everyone can afford to have a baby later in life, and the extra cost of raising kids might be stressful. You may find that planning for retirement and your child’s college tuition at the same time is hard.

Infertility is expensive. Trouble having a baby is more common when you’re older. If you need medical help to conceive, it can also be expensive. You’ll need to adjust to a busy household. While having a new baby is hard at any age, adjusting to the changes of newborns and young kids later in life can be challenging.

You may need to work longer, Having a baby when you’re older might change your retirement plans, If you’re planning to have a baby when you’re 60 or older, it’s a good idea to discuss it with your doctor. They can test your health and help you make the best decision.

What do men over 70 want in a woman?

As our generation gets a little older, a surprising number of us are putting on our dancing shoes and getting back in the senior dating game. After all, more women over 60 are single than ever before, whether that’s due to divorce or widowhood or just never having been married in the first place. Here is what older men want when dating older women:

Take Pride in Your Appearance – Wear clothes that make you feel good.Take Good Care of Yourself – A healthy body is key.Smile – Smiling makes people more approachable.Make Him Feel Like a Man – He’s not your best girlfriend in pants.Don’t Play Games – No one has time for drama.Don’t Be Too Serious – A good sense of humor is sexy.Be Yourself – Be yourself, everyone else is taken. Leave Your Baggage Behind – No one likes to be compared.Know What You Want – Make yourself a “deal-breaker” list.

As part of this singleton trend, more women over 60 are looking to meet men in their age group – but dating is different after 60 than it was in our younger years. Many single women over 50 are simply asking, “Where are all the older single men?” See also: our list of the 5 best senior dating websites.

1. It is a sad fact of life that men tend not to live as long as women, and as a result, many countries have significantly more women than men above the age of 65.
2. On average, women live longer than men – this is true for every country in the world.
3. This fact plays an important role in how the sex ratio changes with age through adulthood.

But as we move through adulthood, we see that this ratio is lower and lower. For 50-year-olds the ratio is close to 1-to-1; for 70-year-olds there are only 89 males per 100 females; and in the very oldest age bracket (100-year-olds) there are only 25 men per 100 women.” — Our World in Data Many women have been hurt or disappointed by relationships in their lives and are a little afraid to actively participate in looking for love.

1. However, if you really want to find someone special, you have to make an effort – you really have to want to find a quality relationship! Therapy can be useful for you if you have been hurt in past relationships and want to learn (or unlearn) patterns that keep you from finding love.
2. Online therapy sessions, like Better Help and Talk Space, can help you navigate your feelings and thoughts.

Check out the interview above I did for the Sixty and Me Show with dating coach Lisa Copeland. We discuss what is different about dating after 60 and how men and women our age often want different things from life, having different emotional needs and in many ways speaking a “different language.” You might need to re-learn how to flirt with men, how to make a man feel good about himself, and how to present your most confident and alluring self in the dating world.

Lisa reinforces that dating is a numbers game. You really cannot give up after just a few dates, that you have to relax, meet lots of guys, and enjoy the process. It is meant to be fun! This doesn’t mean you have to feel pressure! Senior dating should be fun, not stressful. The stakes of dating are not as high at this part of our life.

We’re not necessarily trying to find someone to marry and live with for decades. Many of us are looking for a companion or a friend or even a no-strings-attached lover. Fortunately, in some ways, there has never been a better time for women over 60 to be in the dating world.

The rise of divorce among “silver splitters” means there are more single older men – and there might be more great guys out there than you might expect at first glance, especially if you give them a chance. Read THE PROS AND CONS OF DATING AS A BOOMER WOMAN, And also, SENIOR DATING TIPS: WHY YOU SHOULDN’T GIVE UP UNTIL THE 6TH DATE,

It might help to know what men say they are looking for in a woman. Both dating coaches I have interviewed agree with this assessment. As we get older, the things we want out of life often change, and we have less time to play games and be superficial – this is a good thing! But it still helps to know about the emotional languages and occasional disconnects that come up between older men and women.

What percentage of men are sexually active after 70?

Sex After 65: Poll Finds Gender Differences, Lack of Communication Most older Americans are satisfied with their sex lives, but frequency varies by age, health and other factors. And not many consult their doctors about sex-related problems. May 3, 2018 7:00 AM Author | Kara Gavin A new poll challenges myths about the sex lives of older Americans — and it reveals gender- and health-related divides on key aspects of sexual health while highlighting the need for more people to talk with their health providers about sexual issues.

• MORE FROM THE LAB: Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Forty percent of people ages 65 to 80 are sexually active, according to new findings from the National Poll on Healthy Aging,
• Nearly three-quarters of people in this age range have a romantic partner; 54 percent of those with a partner are sexually active.

Whether or not they have an active sex life, nearly two-thirds of older adults say they’re interested in sex. More than half say sex is important to their quality of life. And when asked if they’re satisfied with their current sex life, 73 percent of the nationally representative sample of 1,002 people polled said they were.

The poll was conducted by the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and sponsored by AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center. The poll explored how older adults might seek help or advice for sexual problems and whether they’ve talked with their doctors about their sexual health.

Eighteen percent of older men and 3 percent of older women say they’ve taken medications or supplements to improve sexual function in the past two years. But only 17 percent of older adults said they have talked with their doctor or other health care provider about sexual health in the past two years.

1. Most who had engaged in such discussions said they brought the topic up, suggesting the need for more proactive conversations by clinicians with their older patients.
2. Sexual health among older adults doesn’t get much attention but is linked closely to quality of life, health and well-being,” says U-M’s Erica Solway, Ph.D., co-associate director of the poll.

“It’s important for older adults and the clinicians who care for them to talk about these issues and about how age-related changes in physical health, relationships, lifestyles and responsibilities such as caregiving affect them.” It’s important for older adults and the clinicians who care for them to talk about these issues and about how age-related changes in physical health, relationships, lifestyles and responsibilities such as caregiving affect them.