Sex at 75?
by This year I turn 55 and celebrate the 40th anniversary of losing my virginity. In 20 years I will be 75 and I really want to know if I will still be enjoying having sex. So today was the day I did a bit of research to find out what the chances are.
You can’t imagine how good I felt when I typed my search into Google “Sex in seventies” and the first article that came up said “A Swedish study has found seventy year olds are bonking more than ever, and enjoying it more”. As I surfed my way through the Google results it became obvious that this is a well studied area of sexuality. Clearly I am not the only one who wants to know the answer to this question.
Teenagers are going to be puking as they read this article but there are those of us who will be celebrating this news well into our nineties according to the research.
ABC Health and Wellbeing reports most men and women in their 70s were highly satisfied sexually, according to a study undertaken by Swedish researchers.
Dr Petra Boynton, a doctor who specialises in this area really gets the discussion going. She is reviewing the same research as reported in the ABC Health and Wellbeing article. Dr Boynton says
” sex was defined in a very narrow fashion and in a problematic way. It ignores solo or mutual masturbation, oral sex, using sex toys or other erotic activity. If the definition of sex had been more flexible the reported sexual activity may well have been far higher than this study indicates.”
OMG – what are the teenagers thinking now! My guess is we are blowing their stereotypes right out of their heads. This Swedish research has been well examined by experts in the field of sex in the elderly. But we all know about those Swedes – they have always had a reputation as sexually avant garde. So lets get out of the European scene and look a little closer to our more conservative cultural roots (ooops, pardon the pun).
According to MyLifetime.com, “the New England Journal of Medicine found that a significant proportion of Americans still have sex well into their 80s. Specifically, 73 percent of men and women between 57 and 64 reported having had sex recently”.
The video at this link – New York News and Features - is a bit of a mind opener. Swingers from the seventies are still engaged in orgies “somewhere within the five burroughs” even till today. A nightclub that was well known for orgies and swinging in the 70s (the 1970s that is) – Plato’s Retreat – apparently still has a following from nearly 40 years ago! And they are still up to the same antics!
The Australian ABC news has a headline that says: more than 75 percent of American men aged 75 to 85 and half the women of the same age are still interested in sex according to a University of Chicago survey. The University of Western Australia Health in Men study has similar results for Australian men.
And to top it all off there was a very helpful webpage with the headline: Sex and Older Bodies: Tips Tools and Tricks that Work!
So armed with all this wonderful knowledge and reassurance I think I’ll just go and find my gorgeous 58 year old husband and see what the comes up this afternoon! (Oh dear there I go again!)
Older people and sex - video
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