The Joy of Sex (10 page)

Physically, the important changes for men over the first seven decades are that
spontaneous erection occurs less often (a complete lack of erection is likely to be caused by ill health and should trigger an immediate doctor’s visit); ejaculation
takes longer to happen, which can be an advantage; and coital frequency tends to fall. It’s a good idea not to try for ejaculation every time, which will give more mileage and no less mutual pleasure. But given a supportive and receptive partner, decent general health, and an absence of the belief that one ought to run out of steam, active sex lasts as long as life.

If activity is low and you are both happy with that, fine; sex is not compulsory. But about half of all couples over the age of sixty-five make love on a regular basis – a higher percentage, incidentally, than when the first edition of this book appeared more than 35 years ago – and many of the others will have stopped because of physical or relationship fragility, not sexual problems per se. The things that stop you from having sex with age are exactly the same as those that stop you from riding a bicycle (bad health, thinking it looks silly, no bicycle). The difference is that these things happen later for sex than for bicycles. So don’t buy into the myth of age-limited performance – in any case, it’s often culturally based; 90 percent of French women of a certain age think sex is important, as compared with only 30 percent of their British counterparts.
Vive la France!

The most important thing is never to drop sex for any long period – if you do, you may have trouble restarting. Keep yourself going solo if you don’t, for the time being, have a partner. What helps at this point: having sex in the morning when his
testosterone levels are highest; making sure to keep a tube of
lubricant handy for her vaginal
dryness; her taking the lead and helping out with hand and mouth; him realizing that his hand and mouth may be just as acceptable as his penis; an easy ability on both sides to be experimental and broaden the repertoire.

Two warnings. Don’t stop using
contraception until she has been period-free for two years (if under fifty) or one year (over fifty). Moreover, don’t stop using protection if there is any doubt at all about sexual history – a sixty-year-old partner is actually more of a threat than a twenty-year-old because they are likely to have had a lot more experience (
see
safe sex
, and
birth control
).

But those warnings aside, the older you are, the more potential you have for true intimacy – the sort that’s not just based on hormonal surges but on a capacity to let go of your own insecurities and so deeply desire the other person. More confident, more knowledgeable, more experienced, you know what goes where and what to do with it; you know what works for you; you know what works for each other or – if you are newly come together – you know how to find out. Age brings patience and kindness, and an increased ability to both give and take; sex becomes more important, not less, as time goes on. As with so many things, later life is the time when you have tried everything and settle down to the things you like most – together. Some of the most spectacular and joyful sex imaginable is happening, right now, between people who would count themselves part of the “older generation.”

sex maps

We are all born sexual beings; fetuses have erections, and from the age of a few months infants touch their genitals. We don’t, however, grow up to become the same sexual beings:
John Money’s term “love map” – a mind template of the perfect lover – could be renamed “sex map,” and everyone’s sex map is different. Through early messages, through emotional events, through partner experiences, and through our culture’s rites of passage, we all end up with a unique idea of what a sexual partner should do and what the sex act should involve. We all know, instinctively, what compels us and what repels us. We all know what our fetishes are.

On one level this matters not a bit. An individual sex map doesn’t – or shouldn’t – influence one’s own self-value or a partner’s opinion; it’s unimportant whether one can swing from the chandeliers or not, whether one has had a queue of sexual partners or is a virgin.

On another level it matters enormously because sex maps underpin what we do and how we respond. They can get distorted; we may end up believing that all men get instantly hard on demand when they don’t; that good sex just happens spontaneously when it doesn’t. Plus, sex maps are often out of our awareness – we can fail to realize that we have unrealistic or unhelpful expectations, and so be doomed to disappointment. “Sex,” as actor
Shirley MacLaine once said, “is hardly ever just about sex.”

The answer to all this is knowledge. It’s never too late in life to find out just what sex is about for you. It’s also never too early in a relationship to get to know a partner’s expectations. Exploring each other’s sex maps is highly advisable for any erotic liaison and an absolute necessity for anything that’s going to last beyond the first night. Likes, dislikes, hates, fears, prejudices, and dreams: don’t presume that a partner will know yours unless you tell them; don’t presume you know theirs unless they have told you. Unpick them all, together, without feeling threatened, to appreciate as well as to understand – your own, revealed in comparison, as well as theirs.

Knowledge, it should be added, is important in other ways – it informs, improves, and optimizes the maps of young people growing up. We now know, through competent research, that
sex education actively raises the age at which
adolescents first have sex and lowers the number of partners they have and the number of risks they take; there is no excuse for withholding from children knowledge not only of the mechanics but also the underlying and informing emotions. To quote the first edition of this book: “Good sex education starts with respecting your children’s modesty, answering their questions, and letting them see that you regard this as a topic for pleasurable interest, naturalness – and privacy, not secrecy.”

fidelity

fidelity

people have to find their own fidelities

Fidelity,
infidelity,
jealousy, and so on. We have deliberately not gone into the ethics of lifestyle. The facts are that few of us go through life with sexual experience confined to one partner only, infidelity figures increase year after year, and many people run multiple relationships on parallel tracks. See the five-to-seven early evening infidelity slot or the rich man’s love nest. Yet most of us still remain monogamous in our long-term relationships, at least unless things start to go sour.

Don’t buy into the myth that men do the betraying and women are immune – the female is just as programmed to stray, and if her statistics are lower, it’s due to lack of opportunity, not instinct. (Besides, surveys usually measure lustful activity, whereas women’s temptation is to fall in love, though the results can be even more devastating – think of
Anna Karenina
.)

There are as many reasons for
infidelity as there are people, but in general for her it’s a switching of loyalty when a central relationship disappoints; for him it’s a boost to self-esteem when a central relationship invalidates. All this can be vice versa. Not to advocate, but this may be because humans have three sets of needs – for sex, romance, and deep attachment – and aren’t always able to meet them all, long term, with one partner.

Whatever the temptations, however, fidelity is not only a good ideal but a good idea. We are more able to love – and to make love – if we are neither lying nor being lied to. Active deception always hurts a relationship. Complete frankness that is aimed to avoid guilt, or as an act of
aggression against a partner, can do the same. The real problem arises from the fact that sexual relations can be anything, for different people and on different occasions, from a game to a total fusion of identities; the heartaches arise when each partner sees it differently.

There is no easy answer here. There is no sexual relationship that doesn’t involve responsibility, because there are two or more people involved: anything that, as it were, militantly excludes a partner is hurtful, yet to be whole people we have at some point to avoid total fusion with each other – “I am I and you are you, and neither of us is on Earth to live up to the other’s expectations.” People who communicate sexually have to find their own fidelities. All we can suggest is that you discuss them, so that at least you know where each of you stands.

A final word on
jealousy. Never play “get-even” games by flirting and worse. It may bring an errant partner to heel short term, but long term it’s the worst kind of unloving behavior – and pointless; a relationship that doesn’t hold together without such manipulations is not worth having. If you are prone to jealousy, particularly the desperately insecure, low-self-esteem kind, get counseling. If your partner is prone to betrayal, get out.

compatibility

Not whether you are “in love” or have chemistry, but whether – when you settle in for the long haul – the jigsaw puzzle pieces fit. If they do, then no external force will shake you; if they don’t, however good you feel there will always be a sense of something missing. This is about having the same values, aims, goals – one reason why
arranged (not forced) marriages often work better than the hearts-and-flowers variety. Two people see the
world the same way, and that leaves them not so much focused on each other as, in French novelist and aviator
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s words, “looking together in the same direction” – as neat a definition of lasting love as one could hope to find.

Sexually, looking in the same direction is initially about complementary sexual preferences; if she fancies him and he also fancies him, then forget it, at least in bed. It’s also about how important sex is; what’s acceptable (erotica,
infidelity, fetishes, and so on); how much and how often. Similarity not quantity matters here – they can both be happy with it once a year and hence be happy with each other. Get the match on these right and the connection will be bone deep.

Sexual incompatibilities that surface once the first rush of love is over are mostly due to loss of love, not lust. But keep the sexual fit and it will be much harder to fall out of love; this may seem like kindergarten stuff, but in and of itself, passion will act as a safeguard for the whole relationship. Properly done, sex is not only based on compatibility; it also creates it.

desire

desire

desire will be strongest where lovemaking is most effective

What prompts desire at first is insecurity. We are unsure of the other’s response, unsure of the ending to the story; the possibility that we might not get what we want creates a kind of obsessive focus. Thus medieval “courtly love,” thus psychologist Dorothy Tennov’s “limerence,” thus
Romeo and Juliet
and most of the lyrics of contemporary music. When and if consummation comes, we are left with an air of astonished gratitude.