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Great Sex
By Susan Jacoby, Modern Maturity, September-October 1999
What's age got to do with it?
Special report: The 1999 AARP/Modern Maturity survey on sexual attitudes and behavior
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Americans read sex studies for one reason, the influential sex therapist
Helen Singer Kaplan once told me. "They want to know, 'how am I
doing?' " she said. "They suspect that somewhere out there,
someone else is having more fun in bed."
The desire for comparisons engenders the often meaningless, occasionally
comical generalizations that greet each new sex study. One of the most widely
publicized sex reports in this decade stunned the world by revealing (who
knew?) that Americans' favorite sex act was plain intercourse. Pundits
concluded that tradition (and the missionary position) reigned supreme in the
bedroom.
This year, AARP and Modern Maturity commissioned a study of the
sexual attitudes and practices of Americans 45 and older—the first such
nationwide inquiry to span midlife to old age.
Earlier polls may have underestimated the sexual activity of healthy older
adults by lumping together people who have a regular partner with people who
don't. The AARP/ Modern Maturity Sexuality Study didn't make
that mistake—and the results don't lend themselves to easy
generalizations (comic or otherwise).
What emerges is not one big picture but a series of closeups, illuminating
the physical and emotional complexity of sex in midlife and beyond. Among the
most significant snapshots:
- About half of 45- through 59-year-olds have sex at least once a week, but
among 60- through 74-year-olds, the proportion drops to 30 percent for men and
24 percent for women.
- While frequency drops with age, more than 70 percent of surveyed men and
women who have regular partners are sexually active enough to have intercourse
at least once or twice a month.
- About two thirds of those polled were extremely or very satisfied with
their physical relationships.
- With advancing age, any gender gap in behavior is overshadowed by a partner
gap between the haves (men of every generation) and the have-nots (half of
women 60 through 74 and four out of five 75 and older). More than 50 percent of
men and women with partners—but less than half of 1 percent of women and
only 6 percent of men without a regular partner—have intercourse at least
once a week.
- The generation gap in sexual attitudes between those who came of age in the
1960s and their parents is as apparent today as it was then—especially
among women—and may foreshadow a more active sex life for the younger
generation as it ages. Women 45 through 59 are much more likely to approve of
sex between unmarried partners and to engage in oral sex and
masturbation—and less likely to believe that "sex is only for
younger people"—than women 60 and older. Older men also espouse more
conservative values than younger men, but the gap is much narrower.
- Only a small proportion of men—5.6 percent—are currently trying
new treatments for impotence, but half of those taking some form of medication
are taking Viagra. More significantly, the majority of the men and their
partners said that the drug had increased their enjoyment of sex.
- Americans 60 and older believe that better health would do more to enhance
their sexual pleasure than any other life change. Nevertheless, more than half
of men and 85 percent of women say that their sex lives are unimpaired by
illness—even those age 75 and older.
"The falloff in frequency begins with the aging process. All drugs,
disease, and relationship problems get added to this basic evolutionary
shift," emphasizes Stephen B. Levine, M.D., clinical professor of
psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland,
Ohio, and the author of Sexuality in Mid-Life. "We used to treat
older people as though sex was not possible, but now we've flip-flopped and
transmitted the message that everyone is supposed to be having fantastic sex
forever. Over age 50, the quality of sex depends much more on the overall
quality of a relationship than it does for young couples."
Levine's observation is borne out in the AARP/Modern Maturity
Sexuality Study. The proportion of those rating their physical relationship
with their partner as "extremely " or "very"
satisfying—67 percent of men, 61 percent of women—is quite close to
the percentage who reported high satisfaction with their emotional relationship
(70 percent of men, 62 percent of women).
Perhaps the saddest truth embedded in the numbers in this study is that for
most (though not all) older widows, the loss of a husband translates into the
end of sex.
At 75 and older, when more than four out of five women are widowed (compared
with only one out of five men), the percentage of women who had gone six months
without intercourse or "sexual touching and caressing" was virtually
identical to the percentage of widows.
Still more painful to read was that two thirds of 75-and-older women had
also been deprived of sensual kisses and hugs. "A 75-year-old widow who
says she has no interest in sex may really be saying she has no opportunity for
sex," says Shirley Zussman, Ed.D., a couples therapist in New York City
and past president of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and
Therapists. "She looks for connectedness to the world in other
ways."
Women of all ages consider close friendship and family ties more important
than fulfilling sex. Among 45- through 59-year-olds, more than two thirds of
women—but only 41 percent of men—regard friendship and family bonds
as very important to their quality of life.
But men value their friendships more highly as they age. Of those 75 and
older, nearly 60 percent of men attribute great importance to ties with friends
and family.
AARP: Assistance and Information for People 50 and
Over
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At every age, though, sex does seem to hold greater importance for men than
women. Nearly 60 percent of men—but only about 35 percent of
women—say sexual activity is important to their overall quality of
life.
The gap in attitudes between women over and under 60 suggests that Baby
Boomer women, the oldest of whom are in their late 40s and early 50s, will be
much less likely than their mothers' generation to accept celibacy as the
natural outcome of widowhood. "These women came of age believing they had
a right to sexual pleasure," Zussman says, "and that belief isn't
going to evaporate at age 65 or 75."
About 5 percent of men 75 and older—but more than 35 percent of women
in that age group—say they would be quite happy if they never had sex
again. Among women in their 40s and 50s, only 9 percent are sanguine about such
a prospect.
Only about one third of women under 60 agree that "people should not
have a sexual relationship if they are not married"—compared with
half of women 60 through 74 and two thirds 75 and older. At no age do a
majority of men declare that sex outside marriage is wrong (a finding not
likely to surprise women). The study did not ask about adultery—which
presumably would have elicited much stronger disapproval from men and women of
all ages.
There's an obvious connection between a woman's attitude toward
nonmarital sex and her sex life after widowhood. For a woman who might want a
man in her life but does not wish to remarry—the position of many older
widows—the belief that sex outside marriage is morally wrong is likely to
pose an insurmountable barrier to any erotic relationship.
Older women are also more conservative in their attitudes toward
masturbation. Under age 60, approximately a third had masturbated on occasion
in recent months, while more than 90 percent of women 75 and older said they
had not. Overall, a majority of men without partners said they masturbated,
while more than 77 percent of women didn't.
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