by Jane Fonda
“There’s no question that for marital longevity, there needs to be romance. Nat and I work to keep our romance alive,” Jewelle told me. While Jewelle has narrowed her professional life and looks to bring her skills and energy to her work with international women’s organizations, Nat has unleashed his long-hidden passion for music. He always wanted to be a composer but, knowing that his strict, emotionally remote father would never support that ambition, he set it aside for the law.
“All my life what I have done is play the piano for myself and make up things,” Nat confided, and I could hear the timbre of his voice change and the desire bleed through. “Music is my passion.”
Option to Renew
In Chapter 16 I will talk about my friends Eva and Yoel Haller, both seventy-seven years old when I interviewed them and married for twenty years. It’s his third marriage and her fifth. She calls her first three go-rounds her “training bra” marriages. Between them they have ten children and fifteen grandchildren.
They were each fifty-seven years old when they met in the back of a bus going from the famous Rancho La Puerto spa in Tecate, Mexico, to San Diego. “By the time I got off the bus,” Yoel told me, “I knew I was going to marry her.”
Eva hadn’t really wanted to get married again, feeling that it was too much of a commitment, but he pressed her and they married six months later. Now, as she looks back, she’s glad they did. She noted, “There is something about that deeper commitment—that we will spend the rest of our living days together.”
She told me that as a widow, what she missed most about being married was the “conspiracy.” When I asked her to explain, she said, “I missed a partner with whom I could share the conspiracy, the delicious nonverbal conspiracy. You know, in the midst of a party, the quiet look between us which assures us that we are together. This, for me, is the essence of togetherness, of love.”
Both Yoel and Eva evidence another characteristic of successful aging—what George Vaillant calls “future orientation: the ability to anticipate, plan and hope.”15 Yoel explained, “We sold our big home in Santa Barbara. We want to scale down. We don’t want to think about stuff.” But they have invested in a retirement home there that includes total care, for when that time comes. “We may never go there,” Eva said, “but we have it just in case. I never thought I’d live to be eighty, but then I realized that’s only two and a half years from now, so I’ve revised the formula. I now want to think of five years—a five-year plan.”
To which Yoel added, “We have a thirty-year marriage contract with an option to renew.” So that means that in ten years, at eighty-seven, they’ll draw up a new contract. My guess is they’ll have a big party—and I’ll be there!
CHAPTER 13
The Changing Landscape of Sex When You’re Over the Hill
On seeing a beautiful woman, a ninety-something Oliver Wendell Holmes is said to have commented, “Oh, to be seventy again!”
I DON’T THINK THAT 101-YEAR-OLD, BANJO-PLAYING BEN BURKE, whom I wrote about in Chapter 11, lamented over not being seventy anymore. When I interviewed him at an attractive condominium for seniors in Atlanta, Georgia, he told me about his girlfriend, Jocelyn.
“She’s got to be ninety-five and a half years old,” Ben said. “We were friends while she was living independent, like me, but one day she fell and wound up upstairs in the assisted living department of my condominium.”
“Ahh. I knew there was another reason you were going up there besides playing music,” I said, gently poking him in the ribs.
“You bet. I’ve known this lady for, I guess, over three years. As soon as I saw her, I thought, I know my beautiful (late) wife will forgive me, but I got to have a little friendship and she looks like she might supply it. I got her phone number up there and called her. I asked, ‘Do you mind if I come by again and share some animal crackers with milk and have a wild time?’ She was a little hesitant, but she said, ‘Okay, you can come on up.’ First time we met, I was a totally perfect gentleman. I cut a banana, two-thirds for me, one-third for her, and we just talked about our background, our life. Her background was Columbia, Alabama. My background was the ghetto of Manhattan. It is like a million miles apart. But it shows you if folks care about each other’s company, it don’t matter where you come from.”
Ben and I had been talking about sex, so I asked him if they had a physical relationship.
“After I had seen her a few times up there, I say, ‘You know, Jocelyn, I wonder if we could get a little more intimate.’ Was that the right thing to say, Jane?”
“Sure.”
“Instead of undressing her like a madman?”
“I’m real proud of you, Ben. That was the right move.”
“You know what she says? ‘I think it is a little too late.’ So I say, ‘Well, let’s give it a shot.’ Now, this is the God’s honest truth. The next time I came by to visit her, she was in her pajamas. I said, ‘Ask no more.’ We got kind of friendly. I says, ‘So you’re wearing your pajamas?’ She was kind of shy. I just started to undress her inch by inch. The first thing is we wound up in the bedroom. We got into bed as is. Like you mentioned before, you can have a great time without penetration. It was like cementing us together as good friends.”
“That is so beautiful, Ben.” I’d been talking with him about what a shame that all the emphasis is on penetration when there are so many other ways to give and receive pleasure later in life.
“Yeah. She liked it, just the whole experience.”
“Skin on skin,” I added.
“Yeah.”
Ben’s not alone in experiencing late-life sensuality. Evelyn Freeman was a licensed therapist, artist, and jewelry maker when, in 1980, she started the Peer Counselor Program at the Senior Health and Peer Counseling Center for Healthy Aging. In 2007, the center merged with WISE Services to become WISE & Healthy Aging, an agency that provides a variety of support services for people fifty-five years and older.
Retired at eighty-nine, Evelyn was a remarkably beautiful ninety-one when I interviewed her.
“I never expected to be ninety-one,” she told me. “So many things I didn’t expect. I never expected to be turned on at this age. My husband walks in now, from the pool, nude, and I get sexually turned on. That’s such a bonus.”
“And can he respond?” I ask.
“Well, not in the way we responded fifty years ago, but he responds with feelings and we touch a lot. But we’re not able to be as fully sexual as we were.”
I loved hearing these stories from Ben and Evelyn. They fill me with the hope that with any luck, a modicum of health, and a willingness to remain open to its potential, the deliciousness of sensual intimacy can continue right to the end.
Interviewing Evelyn Freeman at the WISE & Healthy Aging center.
MARLENA ROSS, WISE & HEALTHY AGING
Collecting Dividends
Dr. Johnnetta Cole, president emerita of Spelman College and Bennett College for Women, the two historical black colleges for women, was seventy-one when I interviewed her in her Atlanta home, and she vibrated with joy and energy. She married her third husband, James David Staton, Jr., at seventy; he is seventeen years younger than she. “In the Third Act sex can be very special,” she told me. “While it will probably not be as energetic, as experimental, or as frequent as in the Second Act, it has the possibility of being an important and satisfying part of life now.”
Dr. Johnnetta Cole.
“Why?” I asked.
“You can collect dividends from what you’ve learned in the First and Second Acts to use in the Third. A woman may well know her body better, and she may be at greater peace with her body. In fact, in the Third Act, a woman may become more assertive about sex because she knows what she needs, she knows what she wants, and she is not shy about asking for it. And if a woman in Act III is fortunate enough to have a partner who is also at ease with his or her body, then intimacy, if not sex, can be very special. In my case, how fortunate I am to have a
husband who has a deep, nurturing way about him. The way he is no doubt comes from years of being a caretaker for his younger siblings and from being a single parent. I was listening to an NPR story the other day,” Johnnetta continued, “and it was talking about aging and sex and how difficult it is for children to imagine their parents in a sexual act. The older the parents are, the more trouble children have with this. The person doing this particular story talked about a woman who was in her late eighties, not in good health, and when asked who should be contacted in a circumstance where somebody needed to be there and be there quickly, she lied. What she really wanted to say was the name of her lover. But she was afraid that her children would find this disgusting, immoral, or bizarre. I think it’s really unfortunate that we have so distorted the aging process that we insist on separating growing old from sex … something wonderful that many folks in the Third Act can and do enjoy.”
I know, of course, that many Third Acters have chosen to pack it in sexually a while ago—for some women, maybe after menopause. For women with low libidos, sex was never an important part of their lives. Chances are, that won’t change in this last act. In fact, some women are undoubtedly relieved when, either because of widowhood or a lessening of their own or their partners’ sexual drive, they can close the book on that chapter of their lives. In such cases, the man’s decision to use sex-enhancing drugs just when his partner thought she’d seen the last of that demanding protuberance can cause anger and resentment. The painful ending of a love affair can also make us want to close up shop. Many widows who had loving, satisfying marriages feel no need or desire to crank it all up again with someone new. There’s the story of the elderly couple who had begun dating, really enjoyed each other, and decided it was time to move in together. They discussed finances, their adult children, their living arrangements, and finally the man asked, “How do you feel about sex?” She responded, “Well, I’d have to say I like it infrequently.” He paused and then, ever hopeful, said, “Was that one word or two?”
Clearly, a life of stimulating friends, interesting travel, work (paid or volunteer), grandchildren, and hobbies can be wonder-ful—with or without sex; and none of us should feel we’re copping out if this is our choice. This chapter, however, is mainly for those who are still sexually active or would like to be. If you’ve loved before, you can love again, and the same is true for sex. If there was a time in your life when you enjoyed sex, you can recover that pleasure—if you want to—because Cupid’s bow is undeterred by age. In fact, it may fly truer and land deeper. How many times in the last decade have I said that I was through with lovers, wasn’t even thinking about relationships anymore? “That part’s over for me,” I would announce. My women friends would invariably smile and say, “Yeah, okay, Jane, but ‘never’ is a big word.” I was so certain—and then along would come love, and let me tell you (though you can probably imagine), love and good sex are the best rejuvenators, better than any face-lift. And don’t think for a minute that older folks aren’t getting it on. According to the most comprehensive national survey ever done of sexual behavior among older adults, a lot of us are still doing it. As reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, 84 percent of men from ages fifty-seven to sixty-four reported having had some sexual contact with another person in the last year, compared with 62 percent of women in the same age group. The numbers dropped to 38 percent and 17 percent, respectively, in people seventy-five years and older. But among those seniors who were sexually active, about two-thirds had sex at least twice a month into their seventies, and more than half continued at that pace into their eighties.
There are, however, definite age-related changes. Nearly half of those in the study who were sexually active reported at least one sexual problem, with 43 percent of women reporting diminished desire and 39 percent vaginal dryness; 37 percent of men reported erectile difficulties.
In this chapter I hope to address these changes and perhaps help you manage them. Knowing what to expect of your own body and what to expect of your partner’s can make all the difference. Some of the changes are positive, and almost all can be dealt with by giving yourself more time to have sex. Other things that can help include patience, communication between partners, appropriate use of sexuality-enhancing drugs, and some basic knowledge.
Men and Health
There is nothing about aging in and of itself that gets in the way of our having sex. Health problems and medications are the key impediments—more so in men than in women. Only 10 percent of women report that their cessation of sex was due to their own illness or lack of interest. Mainly it is due to scarcity of appropriate partners (for every fifty-one men aged seventy-five and older, there are one hundred women!), illness of the spouse, or inability of the spouse to have intercourse. Dr. Michael Perelman, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry, reproductive medicine, and urology at Weill Cornell Medical College and codirector of the Human Sexuality Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital, told me that the health of the male partner is probably the strongest determinant in whether or not a couple continues to have sex. His failure to perform as he has in the past can become so bothersome to him emotionally that he will develop a pattern of avoidance that is as damaging as the lack of erectile function itself. Avoidance can become a habit and cause the man to pull back from giving or receiving any form of affection, for fear that he will be expected to follow up by performing sexually.
In New Passages, Gail Sheehy cites the Massachusetts Male Aging Study: “51% of normal, healthy males aged 40 to 70 experience some degree of impotence,” caused by medications, heart problems, diabetes, or anything that impedes blood flow to the penis. The effects of these health issues on sexual performance vary greatly from man to man, but generally they result in:
Taking longer to get erections and requiring more direct manual stimulation.
Erections are less firm and harder to maintain because of changes in blood flow.
The penis starts to get smaller with age.
Taking longer to reach orgasm (just what women have always wished for!).
If there is orgasm, the force of ejaculation is reduced.
There are fewer contractions.
More time is needed between erections.
Peyronie’s disease is a condition that affects approximately 10 percent of older men, causing their penis to shorten and curve during erection.
Diabetes is the most common cause of male impotence, yet, interestingly, 80 percent of diabetic women do not lose their sexual desire or ability to orgasm. In The Fountain of Age, Betty Friedan conjectures that the explanation for this disparity might “simply be that male sexuality is equated with ‘erectile capacity,’ and not with total sexual responsiveness, which remains unimpaired in female diabetics.” Friedan wonders, as do I, whether, if we moved the focus of male sexuality from a preoccupation with the erection to a more all-over sexuality, diabetic men wouldn’t remain sexual the way their female counterparts do.1
Erections
We pay way too much attention to the importance of an erect, hard penis. More accurately, men pay too much attention to this, and, all too often, if erectile dysfunction (ED) inhibits their erections, they will lose confidence and interest in sex. Some will blame their older wife and seek out younger partners; however, this doesn’t always work out. A younger woman may be more physically attractive, but she may be expecting the youthful, phallic model of sexual intimacy, even though a sizable percentage of women (if not most) are unable to experience orgasm from intercourse alone and require extended clitoral stimulation. A confident older woman can bring more to the bed: experience, empathy, and understanding—especially an understanding of her own sexuality and the reality that her pleasure is not exclusively dependent on penile penetration. The late Dr. Helen Kaplan was a world-famous sex therapist and the director of Human Sexuality Program at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center. When interviewed by Betty Friedan for The Fountain of Age, she said, “The older woman w
ho is loving and sure enough accommodates herself to these age-related changes—they have oral sex. Do it in the morning, whatever.… The paradox is the older woman is likely to be much more accepting of his reality and his vulnerability.… A man can have a million dollars but his penis is still sixty-eight years old. An older man can be a wonderful partner, a wonderful lover, if they both can get away from that obsession with the penis and the performance.”2
If men insist on trying to repeat the youthful model of sexuality in the Third Act, they will miss out on discovering the pleasure and intimacy that can occur later in life, when the slowing down and showing up of two mature, trusting, fully realized people allow for a deeper intimacy and more holistic sensuality. Older women have a greater potential for sexual agency, claiming their pleasure without fear of being too forward, while, conversely, older men are freed to experience a deeper connection and intimacy. At last, perhaps, the two genders can come together with greater sexual compatibility than ever. For most of us, this doesn’t just happen. It takes working at it with courage, humor, and intentionality.
Differentiation
In Passionate Marriage, Dr. David Schnarch writes, “Sex isn’t a natural function—at least, not intimate sex. Intimate sex is a natural potential that requires development for its fulfillment.’ ”3 Part of the development that Schnarch writes about is “differentiation”—that is to say, when an individual stands on their own two feet and becomes a whole, more confident, self-validated person, unafraid to claim their desire. “Differentiation” is another name for what Carl Jung called “individuation,” which I discussed in the last chapter. Many older women, myself included, were raised feeling that “good girls” didn’t show desire. We were recipients of the desire of others, pleasers who dared not ask for what we needed for sexual fulfillment. This harmful double standard is still all too prevalent today, and girls are harmed because of it. As I wrote in the last chapter, women in their Third Acts tend to gain confidence, self-understanding, and self-control, and become more able to stay in relationship to themselves while in a relationship with a partner. When we feel confident, we are more able to reveal all of ourselves to a partner. Intimacy requires a stable identity.
