We have a certain image of the elderly which, perhaps, is more innocent that we’d like to believe. You might think of slippers and cardigans, knitting and golf, but what about their sexual wellness? Surely, after a certain age, you stop thinking about sexual health and crack out the Werther’s Originals, right? Fortunately for them, more and more senior citizens are discovering that just because they’re older doesn’t mean their sex life is over. They’re not dead yet, so why should their sex life be?
According to Ron Yap, director of male urologic health program at Concord Hospital Centre for Urologic care, the World War II generation was more accepting of getting older and becoming impotent as they aged. He notes, ‘They feel like, this was life, and they sucked it up.’ However, the succeeding generation, who came of age in time of free love and the Sexual Revolution, is less inclined to lose their libido.
This has been backed up by a survey, published in the 2007 New England Journal of Medicine, which looked at the bedroom behaviours of over 3,000 57- to 85-year-olds in the US. Up to three-quarters of respondents were found to still be sexually active, which was about the same frequency of sexual activity as was reported by the 18- to 59-year-olds in the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey. Yap comments, ‘Clearly, the myth that as people age they naturally lose interest in sex is being debunked.’
Society and the media have appeared to get on board with seniors getting back in the saddle. Modern medicine and lifestyle pharmaceutical drugs have made leaps and bounds in helping the elderly to have the staying power of youth, movies such as Something’s Gotta Give have explored older people dealing with their sexuality, and now there is even a burgeoning number of online dating services geared towards those over a certain age (discounting that shockingly awful one on The Apprentice!) As Yap states, ‘My job is to keep guys in the game as long as possible. For some people sexual vigour means so much to them. We don’t try to qualify it.’
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