I learned some interesting facts about the sexual habits of women 50+ from the polls we started taking on FabOverFifty during the last couple of months. One of the numbers that stood out is that 40 percent of us have sex with a partner fewer than four times a year.
Although the poll didn’t ask whether women care about their limited sexual experiences with partners, I would venture to guess that they don’t care much. As one 60+ woman told me a few years ago, “If my husband died, I wouldn’t mind if I never had sex again.”
Does that sadden you? It doesn’t me, not for a moment. I, for one, had the greatest sex of my life throughout my forties, with Edgar, the man from Mississippi. We met on a plane traveling from Atlanta to New York, when I was returning from a sales trip. Although it wasn’t July 4th, fireworks went off the very moment we set eyes on each other on that fateful Delta flight.
Edgar and I met when I was 41 and he was 55. We’d often have sex three or more times a night, for the first few years, and I thought it was unlikely that any woman could possibly have sex as great as I was having. I literally saw stars. It wasn’t just intoxicating. It was otherworldly, I swear!
While I guess it wouldn’t be half bad to experience the same sexual feelings I had 27 years ago, I simply don’t need to experience them at this point in my life. Raging hormones have a place in our lives, for sure, but I’d probably drop dead of a heart attack if I had the same kind of sex as I had then.
It’s a scientific fact of life that when our estrogen and testosterone leave our body, they take our libido with them. I’ve read that from 50 to 75 percent percent of women, aged 45 to 58, report a significant drop in sex drive. That accounts for the reason most FOF women aren’t waxing poetic about their sex lives, even if they adore their partners.
The good news is that’s it’s still possible to become aroused, even if it doesn’t happen quite as quickly as it did on my flight years ago. Besides estrogen therapy, there are great vibrators, for example, that help move the process along, whether or not you have someone with you.
When a woman close to 60, let’s say, tells me sex has become “more satisfying” than when she was younger, because she’s more comfortable with who she is at this stage of life, I genuinely think: “Good for you.” But I never yearn for the same thing. I got more than my share with the man from Mississippi.