Sexuality and Aging…YES we are talking about Sex in Retirement!
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sex as you age this is a serious topic and it's also a sensitive one for sure it also lends to some difficult conversations with many couples not for us this is easy right that's why we're doing it [Music] well the fact that it is difficult we've wanted to talk about this for a while because we have so many clients that bring to us this issue of sex as they age we certainly couldn't do it alone so we're so excited to have nancy lucas with us today who is a therapist here in essex that specializes in relationship issues marital and pre-marital issues and sex therapy so what an exciting job that you have i guess at times yeah i would imagine it's exciting at times and just remember it's an important issue especially as retirement is getting longer and we're aging longer and hopefully healthier and we are not sex therapists especially mark is not a sex therapist nancy is and we're excited to explore this topic with her nancy's going to share three tips or strategies or suggestions on better sex and intimacy with your partner and you have to stay to the end because at the end nancy's gonna give us an exercise or an activity that we can do with our partner to open the conversation about sex and to embark on a journey of exploration together this is going to be great so make sure you stay till the end welcome nancy yeah thanks so much for being with us today thanks for having me um so yes i i do have a very um it's a privilege what i do and i and i do love my job and this is a sensitive and important topic and it's one that we really don't get to explore very often um i think that there's just not enough research being done about sex as we age and um we need more but we do have some facts i'd like to share with you guys that that's okay and that is that um being intimate with our partner and exploring ourselves sexually can last into our 90s which is which is great and that's kind of new information that we're just finding out um but for instance um 50 of people and we should be having more this should be a higher percentage 50 of people who are 65 to 70 are still reporting to be sexually active um and then once we hit age 71 to 75 40 and then by the time we get to age 76 to 80 25 but the good news is that 20 of people who are in their 90s are reporting to still be sexually active so um so that's something that's good news but i think we can all be doing better i was going to say i mean i think i think those numbers i wonder if our audience would say those numbers are where i thought they'd be or i thought they'd be better or some may say i thought they'd be worse but i think the point is we need to be doing more research because people are living longer and they're living healthier and sex is a really big part of healthy life and let me ask this question too because i remember seeing a fact as we started to do a little research on this and realized we couldn't do this without you but there's a a large percentage of men i think perhaps 40 of men are the are the ones that's that stop having sex with their partner and it's really their fault because they just i don't know is that true fault i don't think you should say fault well but they i don't know i just remember seeing something is there yes there is something so look we have the little blue pill now which is something that has really helped um helped couples stay active but it really is men often that can stop even though they want to be sexual it's men that often make the decision to stop being sexual as partners because of performance issues and so that's hopefully something that we can talk a little bit more about too at some point um but i like to deal with with some of my clients um you know it's really the the fact is that it's not about performance but there are all different kinds of sex that people can have um sex is something that brings us closer that is intimacy it doesn't have to always be about the erogenous zones it doesn't always have to be so goal oriented so that people are you know it's about you know having orgasm or having the kinds of sex that we think it should be there's all different kinds of sex and if it makes you feel close with your person and if it makes you feel intimate and you know let's face it if we're in our person we're in this relationship with them and we do things with them that we don't do with anyone else so and that's what separates friendships from our partnerships yeah and the first strategy that you that you want to talk about was communication and we talk so much on our youtube channel about communication and it really especially with spouse partner or significant relationships and the more amount of time that you're spending about together in this phase of life and how important communication really is and we have clients that don't have sex and they don't talk about it with their partner right so let's talk a little bit about communication what are some things people can do what are your thoughts on the idea of communication well of course i'm a shrink so communication is the most important thing that we talk about um but communicating with your partner about intimacy can be really hard and it becomes sort of this thing where you know it doesn't get talked about and then it continues to not get talked about and then it just sort of builds and builds and builds and because and becomes the elephant in the room so um so communication is of course extremely important and around like what feels good like what really does feel good for us now and that can change as we age our bodies change our erogenous zones can even change um all of that is something that we need to be talking to our partner about um also just being able to schedule that's another thing that i talk about well can i ask a question before you go on to the scheduling because that is important but communication so there's there's people watching this now and either husband a wife or a partner and they're watching it alone and they're really not sure what to do they're yeah i have a problem we're not having sex how do i bring it up with my partner what's the safest way to to start a conversation around the fact that you know instead if we hadn't had sex for five years what are you gonna do about it versus you know what's it what's an easy three-step process to start a conversation well of course the what we always start as therapists with is the i statements if you approach somebody with how you feel i feel disconnected i feel like we're not as close as we used to be i miss you i mean those things are not going to throw up someone's defenses right and that's what really gets in the way of talking about very delicate subjects like this like intimacy and that is that you know look we're vulnerable these are things that we have strong feelings about so when somebody comes to us we can you know throw our guard up and be defensive but when you start out with i and with the no with the feeling i miss you i you know i miss our closeness this is something that i'd like to try um i think that's a really good way to approach sounds so sweet it does sound like i'm missing it as opposed to the you like right who you yeah right well that's good so so having a good strategy path of communication to bring it up in a nice thoughtful caring way you know like you said would be great and respecting the fact that your partner may not have been raised for example to talk about sex and what feels good right everyone no matter how long you've been together or how old or mature your relationship is when you're brought up differently as a child i would assume that that comes forward you know so i i you know i know a lot of the women that i talk to it's it's they want to provide safety in the conversation because if they're the ones bringing it up they don't want their um heterosexual partner their male partner to feel you know immediately back on his heels right right so i love the i statements and this idea of creating some safe space and then the next thing that you that you um talk about and we talk about this is scheduling your intimate time what is that what is so so you add an opening conversation and then you say well next sunday afternoon you and i are gonna get together we're gonna maybe do the exercise so don't forget to stay till the end to learn about this exercise but actually scheduling and it feels weird at first to think about it but you schedule everything else so why not right well a lot of people when i bring this up with my clients you know right away have this reaction like what isn't it supposed to be so natural and we're supposed to be you know preparing dinner and all of a sudden we look into each other's eyes and then we throw ourselves down on the floor and it becomes this passionate thing and i'm sorry that's not the reality i live in and probably not the reality that you live in either we're all very very busy and unfortunately um the idea of scheduling is look if you schedule it it happens right you guys know this so i do recommend that you schedule sex for a couple of reasons um or intimate time and that is that first of all you it'll happen and that's the most important thing is that it takes place and that it happens second of all you have some time to prepare either to look forward to it or make sure that you're in a good mental place to really be you know intimate and vulnerable and together with your person so those are the reasons why that scheduling really really works you know it's funny too um and not to get too personal but you know i'm not a big fan of the whole go out and eat this massively wonderful great dinner and have a drink and a bottle of wine and and then come home and you know how i feel not so sexy i'm ready to go to sleep and mark's exhausted so i think you're right because as younger people and and maybe younger is not the right word but you know earlier in our lives um you know that was kind of the you know you had your date you had your date night you had a nice dinner you had a cute margarita maybe a glass of wine and then you were both kind of you know metabolizing food a lot quicker by the way and you know feeling a little bit better and i love this idea of scheduling it because if you don't feel right and the time is you know upon you it's always a bit of a push and so i love the idea of scheduling it and communicating when you feel better well yeah and the other thing is i remember this fact i looked up before nancy i brought it up in the beginning but i had it wrong i believe what i read was and this is for the men out there you know you're not going to bring up sex in a conversation you're not going to schedule it if you have performance issues and if you do have performance issues you need to go see your doctor because like you said in the beginning the little blue pill there are pills that you can take to help you with that but i think 40 of men have erectile dysfunction and only 10 of them get help so the other 30 are just not having sex for that reason which is really not fair to you or your partner no or your relationship as a whole yeah yeah because look um intimacy in that way like i said earlier that's what separates your relationship from all your friendships so it can be the glue that really keeps you together right and i think that brings you really to your third point because sex doesn't always have to be perhaps what everyone traditionally is visualizing in their head or thinking about what sex might be and your third point you know being open to different types of sex or intimacy i think is a really big one to explore um yes so again the more narrow we make sex um the more narrow and vanilla and kind of boring it's going to be if it's something that feels good and brings you close to your partner then i say that that's sex let's call that sex it's um there's all kinds of intimacy there's and look i can go on about other types of sex there's there's makeup sex right there's sex that's more holding and more intimate and then there's you know more passionate passionate sex but anything that brings you close to your partner i say you know we shouldn't be narrowly merely defining it so much that it's really there's all different kinds and if it involves touching and intimacy and something that makes you feel good and close sometimes just holding each other in that way when you're both naked that i think can be defined as sex so if it brings you close it doesn't have to be what we traditionally think of sex as being it's funny because um you know as a mom you know when you have a baby the first thing that a lot of doctors do is hand you your naked baby for that skin-to-skin sensation yes that is so enriching and fortifying and you know um just such a game changer for this little person who just came in the world and it's funny that we don't think about that longer and harder as we move through our life how important that skin-to-skin contact really is for our sense of being absolutely you know as moms you know we of course want to we think of that with our children we're you know usually wanting to hug them or hold them and like you said that starts it in infancy but we don't really think about that as much with our partners right no it's just as important that's foundational to us as humans so well we've we've talked about communication how important it is to start a conversation and the second thing was scheduling scheduling it so you've had a conversation you scheduled it you're now thinking uh different types of sex maybe you're not really sure what that really means but even just hugging like you said is good but that might be a good segue into the bonus activity that you want to talk about for those listeners as a place to start where it's so why don't you go through that because that was pretty intriguing when you talk to us about it yes so i'm going to talk about the gold standard and this actually was um these exercises came about as a result of the research that masters and johnson did long ago so and that is sensei exercises so that is really getting to know our person what kind of touch they like what kind of touch we enjoy and so this is the exercise so you can do this either semi-clad you know with some clothes on or no clothes at all naked but basically the exercises that you get in a quiet place you're ready you feel like you've you know you schedule it again you're in that mindset you go to a quiet place where you can be alone and you take turns 15 minutes each um just touching each other no erogenous zones none of those usual places that we think about when we think about sex everything but and the other thing is after you're done with the exercise you cannot have sex oh he didn't tell us that [Music] no the whole point is that to really get back into the fact that sex it doesn't have to be goal oriented it's not always about orgasm it's about closeness and about feeling good so for 15 minutes you take turns one person is the toucher and the other person is receiving the touch and the toucher just focuses on what it's like the skin of your partner what does that skin feel like what does it feel like on their hair what does it feel like you know in the inside of their elbow or the back of their knees how is this the skin different and all you do is focus on how that feels on the tips of your fingers the person who's being touched just enjoys and can tell communicate can use some of the communication with their partner oh i'd like you maybe to use your your flat hand or maybe just your fingertips maybe your fingernails maybe a massage maybe i mean there's all sorts of types of touch just like you know how the eskimos have like i forgot like you know 100 different words for snow um we should have 100 different words for touch and how we how we experience each other i love that i think that's a great i think that's it i think this has been marvelous as a you know is our first video on sex as you age right yeah i think the the whole it's it sounds safe and it's starting with the communication and then scheduling it and and then doing this exercise really is a safe way to get it's almost like when you were your first date my first day took me forever to well to get where i had to go where are we going with this yeah but i mean when you're when you're first a young you know teenager it's a teenager well 19 20.
yikes let's talk about this in the car ride home anyway i i thought this was great i don't know if if you have any closing thoughts i mean this is this was fantastic well i i you know what i love most about what we talked about today is that you know sex is doesn't always just have to be that act that you see or that is you know in the news or you know in video or on paper it's it's really about the intimacy and the close the closeness and um the love that you want to share and express and i i think that's really what sex as you age can become and it can actually it feels like it can become bigger and better yeah yeah i love you you know you're no longer maybe having sex to procreate right so it you know you don't have the goal there that that pressure that was there i mean we don't have that anymore um you know we have a lot more time on our hands and we're alone a lot more often which would lend itself to you know more exercises like we just talked about you know for me as i as i think think of some of the clients that we have and some of the people that we've talked to it's it's sad that while they used to have sex because they have children and they they talked about how they used to have sex and they're not now because they're not even talking about it it really is a shame and it doesn't have to be that way and i think that's the point that maybe we're trying to get across as you age you can have sex and intimacy and intimacy so this was fantastic um nancy i don't know if you have any closing comments or thoughts suggestions just to remember that it's a cornerstone of your relationship and it doesn't have to diminish as we age right so and we need more research and we'll we'll put some of nancy's information in the next in the notes below and you're open to hearing from people that might uh want to hire you i have some some availability okay all right all right they're gonna have to get in line behind me so we will leave all of these uh information and notes but we hope you guys enjoyed this we we really did we learned a lot and we want you to share it with your friends and also subscribe by clicking the subscribe button uh down below and finally join our free facebook community the link is also in the notes below thanks for listening and being here today and we look forward to being back with you again soon and thanks again nancy this was great thank you so much for having me
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