Sex over 60 – without the pictures

Cloud 9 is a German film that follows a sixty-something grandmother named Inge while she jumps into a passionate extra-marital affair with Karl, a 76-year-old man. Within minutes of meeting, the two are tossing around on Karl's living room floor. In the movie, Inge is also shown going at it with her late-in-life husband of 30 years in a battered bed. Although he insists that the film is really about love, German filmmaker Andreas Dresen admits his intention is to break a taboo about age-based assumptions with Cloud 9 and show his audience that seniors are sexual beings too.

The taboo that Dresde is talking about prevails in society nowadays.

“It seems as though people - particularly young people - think by the time you are sixty you can’t have any desire left,” says Stephen Barry, a sixty-something musician, leader of the Stephen Barry Band, who still has an active career in the music industry.
Barry believes desire for sexual contact doesn’t go away with age.

For Barry, one of the disadvantages of being over sixty is what he calls “ageism” in society, which he describes as a taboo about an older man having sex, even more so if it is with a younger woman.
Nevertheless, Barry says the physical does matter a bit since our bodies change with the aging process.
“Unless you stay really fit, people tend to put on weight as they get older. In my opinion that’s less attractive,” he says.

But the physical aspect of aging goes further than skin deep when talking about sex, according to Stephen.
“Sexual desire in women changes after menopause. A man changes too. Your sexual drive is less when you’re sixty. Too bad, but there it is,” he says.

Dr. Irv Binik, director of the Sex and Couples Therapy Service at the McGill University Health Clinic and Faculty Member at the Department of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, says medical issues might arise during sex due to the bodies’ natural aging process.
“For women, the most common problem is the lack of lubrication which is thought to be one of the side effects of menopause,” he says.

Dr. Binik goes on to explain that males might also encounter certain problems. “For males, by far the most common problem is erectile dysfunction or ED,” he says.
When asked if this is due to hormones, he states he doubts it is.
“I think it is due to blood flow problems that come with aging. The arteries in the penis get clogged like other arteries in the body,” he says.
Dr. Binik says psychological issues might also reduce sexual activity as people grow older.
“People might experience reduced feelings of attractiveness, stress related to aging, marital problems, lack of available partners, fatigue. You name it, it is there,” he says.

But Dr. Binik agrees with Barry and with filmmaker Dresde on one thing.
“The misconception is that sex ends over 60. There is a tremendous amount of data that says a large proportion of people over 60 are having sex and are interested in having sex. The end of sex life does not end after 55 or 60,” he affirms.

According to a 2007 survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine about sexuality among older adults in the United States, the majorities of older adults are engaged in spousal or other intimate relationships and regard sexuality as an important part of life. According to the same study, even though sexual activity declines with age, a substantial number of men and women engage in vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and masturbation even in the eighth and ninth decades of their lives.

The study found certain differences between men and women.
The effect of age on the availability of a spouse or a partner is marked among women. A total of 78% of men 75 to 85 years of age, as compared with 40% of women in this age group, reported having sexual relations.

Daira, who wants to be referred to by her artistic name, Intense Yellow, is a 60 year-old poet and artist.
She says she has a very active sexual life and is still very interested in having sex.

“In my late fifties I started having more sex,” she admits with a certain pride.
Intense Yellow explains that in her mid-fifties, she stopped having sex for a while.
“I was fed up of sex. I don’t think it was hormonal. For me, the sexual appetite is not lost with hormones but after losing the joy of life,” she says.
She recovered the joy of life after experiencing one of the most romantic relationships in her life.

Intense Yellow used to be a teacher and at a reunion, she saw students she had taught twenty-five years previously.
She saw a man that she says was “unattractive with a huge belly”. At the beginning she thought she didn’t know him, but then she realized she did.
“It was this student who used to have a giant crush on me,” she says.
Soon enough, they were tossing and turning in her house.

“He was telling me 'I love you professor. I have always loved you. Now teach me professor' and I knew he was telling me the truth,” she says.
She told him she couldn’t lubricate well and he was sweet and understanding.
For her, the lack of hormones has nothing to do with sexual desire.
“It has more to do with society. Not everybody is willing to go for it because they let others dictate what is proper for their age,” she says.
Intense Yellow characterizes her life in general and her various sexual experiences as atypical.

According to Barry, her sexual drive is indeed out of the ordinary for her age.
“We see Viagra ads showing happy couples but I can think of some women who are not happy about it. They are just tired of having sex with their husbands,” he says.

Nevertheless, Barry is still interested in sex and, like Intense Yellow and Binik, believes that it is a misconception to think that older people are not.
“With age your body changes, but your mind doesn’t. Desire for sexual contact doesn’t go away altogether,” he says.
Barry also says that you can have highly romantic and passionate relationships after sixty.
For him, passion in relationships is about more than just sex, and this factor is ageless.
“It’s never only about physical attraction. It’s something more, closer to your heart. It is the vibe of their soul, a sympathetic vibration that doesn’t have any age,” he says.

For Intense Yellow, age has nothing to do with sex - or the lack of it.
“Age has nothing to do with enjoyment, with feeling goose bumps, with perceiving smells and sensations. The problem is that you start getting cornered. Children and grandchildren cannot fill that void,” she says.

Dr. Binik believes nothing special happens after 60 when sex is involved.
For him, no age number can predetermine our sexual life.
“Sexuality changes and develops during our lifetime. There is a continual process of development. Sexuality changes and develops as people grow older,” he says.

Although not many people over sixty were willing to talk about their sex life for this article, if those who answered can give us an insight into the amount and quality of sex their contemporaries are getting, then people over sixty are getting a lot.
When there is interest and desire, it seems as though age will not stop older people in their search for pleasure and romance.

Age does not seem to determine if they have the passion and spice in their lives.
For according to them, they do.

Veronica Islas was born in Mexico, but studied Communications, Cultural Studies and Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada where she completed a Graduate Diploma in Journalism; she is currently finishing a Master's Degree in Public Policy and Public Administration. She volunteers with several human rights groups, has a radio show that focuses on human rights and the environment, and can be heard on CJLO, the Concordia University Radio Station. Ms. Islas currently lives in Ottawa, where she is doing an internship with the Public Health Agency of Canada as a Policy Analyst. As if she is not busy enough, she is also working as a freelance journalist for several publications, including Retirement News Today.