August 10, 2006
ST. LOUIS - It’s happy hour at Brio Tuscan Grille in St. Louis, and Susan is at the bar sipping a glass of white wine and chatting with a friend. She looks tanned, fit and trendy in her straw cowboy hat and skin-tight blue jeans. You might guess her age at 43, but she’s 50.
“I work out with a trainer several times a week, I watch what I eat and do other healthy things,” says Susan, who lives in Kirkwood, Mo., and is engaged to be married for the first time. Her fiance, 14 years her senior, is across the bar, having drinks with his friends.
“I don’t want to be a hot mama; I just want to be who I am,” she says, declining to give her last name. “I want to feel good, and I don’t feel any different than I did when I was 35.”
And, yes, she admitted, her youthful philosophy encompasses sex.
Susan is not alone in her views. She’s a baby boomer - one of 77.7 million who came of age during the 1960s and saw the Pill and the sexual revolution. Last year, the AARP conducted a study of the sexual attitudes and practices of Americans 45 and older and found they’re creating a second sexual revolution.
“It’s a revolution in spirit and attitude about sexuality in mid-life, and at its core is the assumption that health- and age-related physical problems should be treated and overcome rather than accepted as part of growing older,” Susan Jacoby wrote in AARP The Magazine.
Dr. Bradley Stoner, an associate professor at Washington University School of Medicine who teaches infectious diseases and anthropology, calls it a social phenomenon.
“We live longer and stay fitter, so it makes sense that sex is an important part of our lives for longer,” he says. “Now, people who are 60 years old are having normal sexual relationships that in many cases will extend far into their later years.”
Of course there are some boomers who have low libidos or simply place a low priority on sex. Many of them would just as soon or already have let their sex lives fizzle.
But Dr. John Morley, an endocrinologist and geriatrician at St. Louis University School of Medicine, has been running sexual dysfunction clinics for 25 years, and he isn’t at all surprised by the findings since about 98 percent of his patients are over 50.
The quest for treatment has “definitely moved to an older population,” he says, recalling how 20 years ago people believed that less frequent sex - or even abstaining - was an inevitable part of growing old. Suddenly, he says, men are aware that they can fix problems such as erectile dysfunction, waning libido and fatigue.
“If I come from a generation where I believe having sex once a month is fine, that’s OK,” Morley says. “But if I come from the ’60s and think I should have it every day, that’s not OK. It may not be physiologically possible, but it is pharmacologically.”
Dagmar, 60, of Dallas, is also having a drink at Brio when she echoes those thoughts and adds that she and her contemporaries view themselves differently than their parents and grandparents did.
Boomers “look different, they feel different and they take better care of themselves,” says Dagmar, who doesn’t want her last name used. “When my mother was 50, she looked like she was 90 and she felt like she was 90. Now, she’s 80 and she feels like she’s 50, and that’s because I won’t let her get old.”
Bob, a pseudonym, is a 60-year-old lawyer. He’s not sure how women today are handling their sexuality, but many of his male friends take Viagra and have active and fulfilling sex lives.
“There’s a saying and it’s very true,” he says, “and the saying goes, ‘You have to get older, but you don’t have to get old.’ ”
STILL READY TO TRY NEW THINGS
Niecy Dusaune has been a distributor for Slumber Parties, Inc. for the past five years. In that time, she’s seen numerous middle-age and older women show up for her company’s in-home lingerie and sex-toy parties. It used to surprise her but not anymore.
“Every now and then you’ll have a younger woman who invites older co-workers. Or her mom shows up. A lot of times, the older women break off and have their own parties later,” she says. “After all, everyone wants to have fun, and now they’re at a time in their lives where they’re more relaxed and ready to try new things.”
Dusaune knows more men are taking Viagra and wondered aloud if the two go hand-in-hand.
According to the AARP, the answer would be yes. Its study found that women of all ages get more sexual pleasure from their partners’ use of such drugs, dispelling a widely held belief that they don’t welcome their partners’ newfound ardor.
Bob, the lawyer, believes the media have also played a large role in the shifting sexual landscape among boomers. He recalls when society rarely, if ever, broached the topic of sex.
“Now, when you watch TV, you see ad after ad for Viagra and those other drugs,” he says. “They bombard you with it. There was a time when you wouldn’t even see two (married) people in the same bed together on TV, like Lucy and Ricky.”
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Stoner agrees. Sex, he says, is more in the public sphere, which alleviates the embarrassment that comes with talking about it.
“For that reason, I think people in their 50s are aware of it as an important component of their relationships,” he says. “I think, before, it was there, but people didn’t talk about it.”
In Munich, Germany, where Dagmar grew up, it isn’t unusual to see people of all ages shopping in sex shops. Europeans, she says, have always been more open about sex and Americans are finally catching up.
“It’s not an embarrassing subject any more,” she says. “And any physician worth his salt will ask his or her patients about their sex lives. They should be asking ‘How is your sex life?’ It should come from the doctor. They shouldn’t wait around for the patient who’s hemming and hawing.’ ”
HEALTH WORRIES
Impotence and lagging libidos aren’t the only health-related issues boomers must deal with when it comes to sex. Single, dating boomers must now worry about AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.
Stoner, who also serves as medical director of the STD clinic for the St. Louis County Department of Health, says the number of people age 50 and older getting screened for STDs has increased in recent years.
“We’re seeing people who are newly single because of divorce or because they’re widowed, who want to make sure that in their new relationships they don’t contract an STD or pass one on,” he says.
Some experts believe that, as we age, we’re more susceptible to STDs and AIDS than when we’re in our 30s and 40s. (Teens, though, remain the most susceptible to STDs overall.)
Stoner hasn’t seen this but he agrees that older tissue is more easily ruptured during vigorous sexual activity and that those types of injuries could put people at higher risk for some STDs.
Adding to that risk, is a realm of dating that didn’t exist a decade ago: the Internet.
In her book “Sex and the Seasoned Woman,” author Gail Sheehy wrote that people over 50 are Match.com’s fastest- growing segment, with a 300 percent increase since 2000. Some sites, like PrimeSingles.net, cater specifically to the over-50 crowd.
Samantha, 59, of Chesterfield, Mo., doesn’t want her last name used. She has single friends her age who use such Web sites for dating and Samantha is sure that at least one of those friends is sexually active.
“If he’s cute and she likes him, she will have sex,” Samantha says. “You have to understand, most of my single friends are looking for husbands.”
Her friend Pat, who also doesn’t want her last name used, is 10 years older and of a more conservative generation. She seemed shocked to hear this.
“And she thinks that will get her one?” a bewildered Pat asks. “I don’t think that’s right. I’m wondering sometimes if women are so career-oriented in their younger years, then they start thinking, ‘What am I going to have when I’m 55?’ ”
Whatever the case, Samantha hopes that her friends all protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases - another aspect boomers must think about.
“When you meet somebody online, you don’t know who they’ve slept with. They could have slept with a 100 people before you,” she says.
At his clinic, Morley’s deals with a whole other set of health issues. Some of his patients - married and unmarried - want to continue having sex in ways other than the missionary position. That, says Morley, can pose problems if the patient has arthritis, incontinence or bruises easily because of medications such as Coumadin.
“Remember, those of us who went through the ’60s wanted to try everything. Some of these baby boomers have grown accustomed to certain activities that they don’t want to give up just because they’re getting older,” he says.
Twenty years ago, Morley didn’t see patients like that, but he believes he’ll see more of them in the next 20 years. And some them will be married. Some won’t.
“It used to be that we would see older unmarried people getting ready to get married,” he says. “Now we’re seeing more married people as well as more divorced and widowed people who are entering the dating scene. Quite often it’s a man who is dating and thinks he needs to be able to do something. That doesn’t mean he will do something, he just likes to know he could.”
For Susan, who’s about to married for the first time, sex is rather simple. To her, it’s less about age and more about self-confidence.
“We’re so caught up in youth and trying to be something we’re not, rather than just being who we are and enjoying ourselves,” she says. “You know when you lose yourself and you’re unhappy, sex becomes a foreign language. I think our parents were that way. But we were raised in a generation to go for it, to embrace life in general with sex as a part of that.”—
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