Daniel J. DeNoon authored a wonderful compilation of information on the WebMD website, entitled Romance After 60. “When it comes to sex, use it or lose it” says a noted sex educator. “You should continue to have good sex for the same reason you should continue to get good exercise. It’s taking care of yourself. Do it whether you feel like it or not. ”
The chaste older person.
The dirty old geezer.
The horny old broad.
Stereotypes all!!!
“The stereotype is grim” says Walter M. Bortz II,MD, author of WE LOVE TOO SHORT AND DIE TOO LONG. “The reality is that older people are a lot sexier than younger people think. The common notion is that when you are old you don’t-maybe shouldn’t – have sex. Our studies show that older people are sexier in attitude and performance than they have been credited for.” And that performance has some interesting documentation.
“You must realize that in the US the biggest use of prostitutes is on the day Social Security checks come out” says John Morley MD, director of the division of geriatric medicine at St Louis University.
“People who are older get very little support from the younger generation about sex” says Joani Blank, MPH, author of STILL DOING IT: WOMEN AND MEN OVER 60 WRITE ABOUT THEIR SEXUALITY. “Young people identify everyone in the next generation with their parents, and of course, they don’t have sex.” The danger is that people come to accept these stereotypes as true. They then risk losing one of the most important parts of their lives and their health.
“Sex is good for you.” says the 63 year old Blank, a sex educator for more than 25 years. “You should continue to have good sex for the same reason you should continue to get good exercise. It’s taking care of yourself. Wake up your body again if it has been shut down. Do it whether you feel like it or not.”
Bortz, a specialist in internal medicine at the Pala Alto Medical Clinic in California and a clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, goes even further. “We should as a moral responsibility continue to be sexually active” he says. “Is it OK for a 75 year old widow to say “Sex is not on my agenda anymore?” I would challenge that and say “Maybe you should make an overt effort to make the rest of your life as full as you can.” And that includes being daring, flaunting the stereotypes!
I was reading about hope today, maybe to cheer up as I had a cold and the weather was wet and gray, and I was surprised at what I read. It was an article in the Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine by Terry Drew Karanen. She discusses how Ernest Holmes, the founder of the Science of Mind philosophy, thought that hope isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. To quote Holmes: “Hope is good; it is better than despair, but it is a subtle illusion and is an unconscious compromise, and has no part in an effective mental treatment.” You probably wonder about ‘effective mental treatment’ and that is a topic for another blog, but for now, let’s just say Holmes is referring to a method of changing our attitudes in a positive direction. What Holmes was saying is that we need to move far beyond mere hope-assured or not- to unshakable faith in Power that is greater than us and to which we have direct access. So I considered that for a moment, that hope is an unconscious compromise, and saw his point. Hope is saying, well, maybe things will get better, maybe not. I ‘hope’ so. In that context hope seemed sort of timid. So I was walking around in the rain, hating the weather, hoping it would get better and the sun would come out, when I decided to quit hoping the weather would get better. I decided to close my eyes and imagine the weather i wanted right in that moment. I pictured it in my minds eye. And do you know that when I opened my eyes after those few moments, the leaves and trees I was walking by took on an entirely new color, they seemed brighter, the world appeared beautiful, and for a moment, I saw what Holmes meant.
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