Why women over 70 are having hotter sex than in their 20s.
If you’ve ever spent more than seven minutes with an elderly lady, you know that they are living the dream. The lack of fucks these women give is palpable, whether they’re playing rummy with their girls, wearing this, or noting, as my 89 year-old Granjea recently did, “the doctor says I can’t drink anymore, but he didn’t say anything about pot." In her new book, journalist Iris Krasnow finds that in addition to all of these perks, many women this age are also having the best sex of their lives.
After researching the sex lives of over 150 women age 20 through 90, Krasnow found that people over 70 were the most confident and content with their sexual relationships. As she writes in Slate, a common theme with all of them was an increased sense of comfort and intimacy, with one woman Shirley noting, “After 70, there comes a sweetness about making love. We go slowly, there is no rush anymore. When you’re younger, it’s all about the orgasm, then it’s over.”
In the past, it had been assumed that hysterectomies (the surgical removal of the uterus) and a lack of vaginal lubrication are major obstacles for septuagenarians in leading a fulfiling sex life, but Krasnow found that is not the case. As one woman Libby notes, “This business that every woman over the age of 70 or 80 doesn’t lubricate is nonsense.” Of her late husband she said, “I guess people today would call us sex addicts, because we made love so often and thought about it every day. We would spend hours in bed, and we would talk and laugh and roll around. To maintain a long physical attraction the relationship also has to be a mental and emotional connection.”
According to book Sex Matters For Women, "Sex in a woman’s 60s [and above] is free of time demands. Not only do women make time for themselves to exercise and pursue personal interests, but they also spend time masturbating and increasing their erotic focus." A woman they interviewed noted an increased sensuality in her relationship that came with age, "We’ve been reading erotica out loud to each other…To be honest, I think you have to be at least 65 to be erotic.”
It makes sense that older sex is better sex. As you age, the societal push toward physical perfection lessens exponentially. Questions like, “I wonder what my stomach looks like from this angle” are no longer relevant. You know what it looks like: wrinkly. And so is your partners. And that’s natural.
In The Secret Lives of Wives, sex therapist Marilyn Charwat advises, “Don't believe what you read about little old ladies. At one of my recent sex workshops for seniors the most vibrators we sold were to women between 70 and 94. The oldest customer told me that she had never used one and it was 'high time to liberate myself!'" And liberate, they will.
Image via.
