by Jane Fonda
As Dr. Schnarch writes, “If sexual intimacy has to do with disclosing yourself through sex, people who can let themselves be known have more potential for profound sexual experiences.”4 It took me longer than some, perhaps, but I know that because I have finally become my own person now—with a lot of work, on my own and in therapy—I am also a better, more sensuous lover than when I was younger. I’ve kept my body in pretty good shape, but there is no way that a woman in her seventies can have as taut and toned a body as a younger woman. Gravity takes its toll; the skin loosens. Still, when I think back to the time when, physically, I was at my peak, neither my pleasure nor the pleasure I gave was as deep as now or as much fun. As Dr. Schnarch writes, “It’s not about how your body looks or how you position it, it’s about your frame of mind and emotional connection with your partner. It’s not about frequency of sex; it’s about eroticism. It’s not about technique; it’s about integrating your head with your genitals.”5 Language, self-confidence, and self-awareness permit us to bring meaning to sex beyond just the knee-jerk reaction of lubrication, erection, orgasm. We can talk to each other, gaze into each other’s eyes. “The brain,” says Dr. Schnarch, “is our biggest sex organ.”6 He also points out that “emotional stimulation is often a more powerful determinant of genital function and satisfaction than is touch.”7 Happily, this coincides with the age-related changes in sexuality that can be offset, to an amazing extent, by a shift from the biological drive to thoughts and feelings as determinants of our sexuality.
Freed of the need to “perform,” men who have trouble getting erections may be able to experience a whole new type of sexual intimacy that has no boundaries. The entire body becomes sexualized, and the experience can last for hours. Just what women have longed for! Now, when both women and men need more tactile stimulation—touching, massaging, stimulation with hands and mouth—we need to get comfortable about asking for what we want instead of thinking that “if he really loved me, he would just know.” Our partners aren’t mind readers, and what may be good for them may not do the trick for us. He might love knowing how to please you more. Tell him. Show him. Teach him. Read the books. Read them together. Ask him to tell you what he likes, and then implement what he asks for. This will encourage him to do the same for you. Don’t leave out his nipples. Many men’s nipples are highly sensitive, and suckling on them may be just what he needs to get aroused.
We must not assume that lack of erection means the man is not attracted to us or is unable to provide exquisite pleasure. “Remove the belief that sex is intercourse,” writes Dr. Marty Klein, “and all those non-erect penises become non-problematic.… That’s what modern older people need—a new way to think about sex so that they can be sexual regardless of physical capacity.” 8
I like what Gail Sheehy writes in her book New Passages: “The mature man is ready to graduate from adolescent ‘racing-car sex’ to ‘body-surfing sex.’ Imagine riding the waves of love, moving up with the swells of pleasure when sexual energy is high and down with ebbs of intensity, when love and stroking can be enjoyed, then up on the next pleasure wave, and down in the rest cycle, when partners just lie there breathing and holding each other and whispering love, until they feel the next wave of sexual energy starting to rise again.”9 This requires trust and the investment of time. It means giving up the performance-oriented striving for orgasm. If orgasm does come, it will be much more profound, because the body is so ripe with sexual energy. Whether or not there is orgasm, whether or not the penis is erect, this approach to lovemaking demonstrates the matured power of the man to give and receive pleasure and love.
Erica Jong, the author of twenty-one books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including the acclaimed novel about women’s sexuality Fear of Flying, told me that when her husband takes medications to keep his blood pressure down, it makes sex difficult.
“So,” Erica explained, “we’ve discovered tantric sex, which I always thought didn’t exist. Boy, was I wrong. It took a long time to get there, but we have amazing sex when we can stop running around and arrange to be alone together.”
In her original Passages book, Gail Sheehy postulates that the holding back of orgasm so as to extend pleasure, what is called tantric sex, was developed by the Chinese because, unlike Western culture, age is venerated in that culture, so they want us to keep having fun!10
“How did you discover tantric sex?” I asked Erica.
“We started to do oral sex and touching and looking at each other, and he discovered he could have an incredibly intense orgasm when I came through oral sex.”
I asked my friend Dr. Bill Stayton, the sex therapist I wrote about in the previous chapter, how he would define a really good lover. “The best lover,” Stayton answered, “is the one who really enjoys the process of lovemaking without it having to have a certain goal—the old orgasm goal-oriented model. The process is what’s very exciting. The process is making love. When you’re orgasm-oriented, everything is the orgasm, the erection. Think of all the fun you have getting there.” Lucky Erica Jong. Clearly her husband fits Stayton’s description of the best lover.
“One of the things we know is that as a man gets older, he has less need to ejaculate,” Dr. Stayton explained. “It is important that men know that erection, orgasm, and ejaculation are three separate events and are not dependent upon each other. You can have an orgasm without an erection or an ejaculation. You can have an ejaculation without an erection or an orgasm.”
There’s no doubt that the sexual landscape will continue to change as those in the huge cohort of baby boomers enter their Third Acts. Age simply isn’t going to get in the way of their interest in and enjoyment of an active, robust sex life. After all, numerous studies have shown that, in addition to providing pleasure, an intimate, satisfying sexual relationship reduces the risk of heart disease, depression, migraine, arthritis, and stress, and boosts the immune system. My friend Reverend Debra Haffner (who is also a sexologist and a boomer) puts it this way: “Boomers will change how the culture thinks about sex and aging. We think we discovered sex, and we’re not going to give it up easily. With new medications such as hormone replacement therapy, Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, et cetera, our knees and backs will give out before our genitals do!” Tell me about it!
Match.com, the world’s leading online dating service, claims that people over fifty are the fastest-growing age group using its site. And X-rated films showing older women and men are reputed to make up the fastest-growing area of the video porn market!
Reverend Debra Haffner.
Women’s Bodies
Alongside men’s age-related changes, there are plenty of changes happening to women’s bodies, and we do well to anticipate and understand them.
There will be less vaginal lubrication, and lubrication will take longer.
The lining of the labia thins and becomes more apt to tear.
The vagina loses some elasticity.
We experience fewer uterine contractions with orgasm and, because of a drop in estrogen, the pressure sensors deep in the cervix will lose some of the sensation of thrusting. This may be remedied with estrogen replacement, which I will discuss further in the next chapter.
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation report, the aging process itself seems to increase women’s susceptibility to infection … possibly due to thinning of the vaginal walls and abrasion resulting from insufficient lubrication.
If you have been celibate for a long time and then begin a new love affair, be aware that your vagina is likely to need some attention. You would do well to have a gynecologist to turn to for answers to your questions and for prescriptions for such things as bladder, urinary tract, and yeast infections and tears in the vaginal walls.
Some women find that intercourse is painful because their vagina has shrunk. I interviewed gynecologist Dr. Michelle Warren, medical director at the Center for Menopause, Hormonal Disorders, and Women’s Health at Columbia University Medical Center New York. She told me, �
�I had a patient the other day who has just remarried; she is in her seventies. She called me from Florida and said, ‘Even with the vaginal estrogen you have given me, I just can’t have intercourse, and I don’t know what to do.’ I sent her some vaginal dilators, a series of progressively larger plastic molds that you insert into the vagina for twenty minutes to an hour a day and gradually they expand the vagina, and she came back and said, ‘Oh, you saved my life!’ She used the dilators along with the estrogen and she was able to resume an active sex life.” Conversely, the vagina may have stretched so that the man’s penis doesn’t experience enough friction to cause ejaculation. In this case, regularly performed Kegel exercises that strengthen vaginal and pubococcygeus muscles are helpful. I explain these exercises later in this chapter. If, because of childbearing, these pelvic muscles have been badly torn, an operation can be performed to repair and tighten them. Such an operation requires about six to eight weeks of recovery before intercourse can be resumed.
Just because our culture assumes that women want to be sexual only in the context of a monogamous love relationship shouldn’t cause us to ignore the possibility of recreational sex with a partner of any age—or even without a partner.
The most important message in keeping sexually active is keeping sexually active. Use it or lose it. A broken arm atrophies. Penises that aren’t being used have more problems with erectile dysfunction. Vaginas that aren’t being used have more problems with elasticity. As a result, if you are experiencing any of these problems and want to prepare yourself for an active sex life, all the experts I have talked to recommend masturbation. This can be with your hand, your partner’s hand, or a vibrator.
Masturbation
A 1995 study by the National Opinion Research Center showed that fewer than half of all women in the United States masturbate; even fewer do so regularly. Dr. Louann Brizendine, a pioneering neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, and the founder of the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic, says, “Studies in nursing homes have shown that a quarter of women age seventy to ninety still masturbate.”11 Dr. Michael Perelman told me, “I think it would shock some of your younger readers the extent to which older individuals will use sex toys and enjoy them. Again, that is another wonderful adjunct and it can be done by people of all ages merely to help create variety, or it can be something that can help as an assistance, much in the same way someone would use a cane. A vibrator provides more stimulation, and especially as people age, the use of these toys could be quite helpful, and I think the next generation is probably more likely to do that than the current generation of very elderly people.”
Obviously, a loving relationship of mutual pleasure-giving is preferable to solo masturbation, but that is not always an option. If we want to stay ready for love, it is good to keep our sensual selves tuned up—you never know what will happen a week, a month, a year or two from now. As I said earlier, I was celibate for seven years after my marriage to Ted Turner and thought that was the end of it. I was wrong!
If you are not used to masturbating and your own hand is not sufficient to excite you, I recommend that you buy a vibrator and some of the newest lubricants, make yourself comfortable, maybe even try reading a book while you masturbate so you are more relaxed and forget about what you’re hoping will happen. This is no time for performance anxieties! Please try to get over any concerns you have about the appropriateness of pleasuring yourself. Think of masturbation as a medical necessity: You may find that it will not only improve the health of your vagina but your general disposition, as well.
There are so many different kinds of vibrators. Almost any good pharmacy sells the long, white, plug-in vibrator called the Magic Wand, made by Hitachi, with two intensities, high and low. It is sold as a body massager. The Eroscillator, which has been highly recommended by Dr. Ruth Westheimer, oscillates rather than vibrates, and does it at thirty-six hundred oscillations a minute. The sensation is gentler, faster, and feels like the wings of a flying hummingbird. It has five interchangeable attachments and comes with a book written by Dr. Ruth that explains how to use the attachments.
Then there is the Rabbit, a vibrator that became famous when it was featured in an episode of Sex and the City. It is so named because a little rabbit resides at the end of a rotating and vibrating shaft with about 5 inches of penetration. The ears of the Rabbit vibrate against the clitoris while the shaft is whirling around and stimulating the erogenous places in the vagina.
The most high-end, cutting-edge sex toys I’ve found on the market today are made by two companies, LELO and Jimmyjane. They are apparently made from medical-grade silicone, and must be used with water-based lubricants only. Using silicone lubricant with a silicone-based sex toy will eventually ruin it. If cared for properly, good sex toys can last for many years.
At the end of this chapter are the names of two sources of sex products for women; both companies will send you their catalogs. From either one, you can get two classic books about masturbation, Sex for One, by Betty Dodson, and For Yourself, by Dr. Lonnie Barbach. These have been in print for thirty-five years, proof that women continue to view masturbation as a loving ritual.
In the old days, K-Y Jelly was all you could get, but today a wide variety of lubricants are available. Some are more viscous than others. Lubricants come in two basic types: silicone-based and water-based. Silicone-based lubricants are known to last longer and provide greater stimulation and, as a result, are used primarily for intercourse. Water-based lubricants come in a variety of flavors and are used more for oral sex and when using sex toys. The lubricants that I have heard recommended most often are Pjur (pronounced pure), which is made in Germany, and Sliquid. These apparently do not contain glycerine and sugar, which can encourage yeast infections. Both companies make both silicone- and water-based lubricants. Sliquid comes in a variety of flavors such as green apple tart and blue raspberry.
Try things out until you find what works best for you. With or without a partner, lubricants are the friends of Third Acters, and you should take their use for granted.
During my interview with psychologist Dr. Michael Perelman, he said, “I think one of the tricky things, because of the politics of our time, is to understand how well being selfish in bed can work; that everybody needs to take care of themselves a little bit. You want to be a sensitive lover, but you also want to make sure that you are not worrying so much about pleasing your partner that you fail to please yourself. It is kind of a paradox; the more you can lose yourself in experiencing pleasure with the other person, actually the more pleasure they are going to get from realizing how desirable they are and how sexy they are, because look at how excited you are getting. If you worry too much about just pleasing the other person, and not getting excited yourself, you are actually depriving them of having that same reaction from you.”
Practical Suggestions
Here are some practical suggestions for achieving a more satisfying sex life:
• It’s critical to try to resolve any issues you have with your partner. Anger and resentment are surefire libido killers. Talk things through, or find a good couples counselor or sex therapist and be brave enough to work through it.
• Besides anger, boredom can take a toll on sexuality, so try doing new things with your long-term partner, both in bed and out in the world. In bed, masturbating together can be a delicious new way of revving things up. Explore other parts of your bodies and discover new ways to give each other pleasure, especially a man’s nipples. Many if not most men need this particular stimulation now more than ever.
• Learn about the G-spot. The G-spot, named in honor of Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg, a prominent figure in early- twentieth-century gynecology, is a small region of the female anatomy many regard as an erogenous zone responsible for intense orgasms. The G-spot, which is commonly considered an element of the female prostate, is located on the front vaginal wall, approximately two or three inches inside the vagina. When the are
a is stimulated, powerful sexual arousal and female ejaculation may occur. There is ongoing controversy over the physiological structure and exact location of the G-spot, but recent research utilizing ultrasound imaging does provide information with regard to the G-spot’s location and how it relates to erogenous stimulation in women who have orgasms during intercourse.
• Try reading sexy books together or watching sexy videos. Whereas the older erotic videos were made primarily to stimulate men, today there are videos made by and targeted for women (though men can enjoy them as well). The Psychiatric Annals mentions Candida Royalle (Femme Productions) and Jane Hamilton (also called Veronica Hart) as good examples of producers.12 The couples in this new genre of erotica seem more loving and genuinely turned on, and it is the women who initiate sex. Videos showing tantric sex are more woman-friendly. And a growing number of videos feature older couples being erotic. By the way, if your partner likes to watch erotic pictures or videos during lovemaking, don’t feel it means he finds you unsatisfying. Just keep in mind that men respond more to visual stimulation than women do and that older men in particular need more stimulation. Instead of letting it upset you, think of it as his way to be a better, more aroused lover for you. The very fact that you are the one to bring home a new video and propose watching it changes the dynamic, and puts you in charge, and you may find that you enjoy watching as much as he does. A sex therapy video series, Guides to Sexual Pleasure, was created by three of this country’s top sex therapists: Reverend Dr. Bill Stayton, Dr. Herb Samuels, and Dr. Joy Davidson. The videos are done in segments that show real, loving couples engaging in loving touch, then techniques of foreplay, and, finally, intercourse. I find the videos very exciting, but they are also a therapeutic tool. Each one has a “therapy choice” where suggestions are made about how to view each segment, followed by suggestions on what a couple can do after watching the video. (See the end of this chapter for more information.)