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IN YOUR PRIME
Sexuality in Later Life
What of the senior woman, alone? How does she bring tenderness and
touch into her singular life? To what degree does
sex truly matter with her?
Provocative questions about senior women, and their chances for sexual
gratification, were addressed recently with the publication of A
Roundheeled Woman, My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance (Villard;
2003). The author is Jane Juska, divorcee and retired California
schoolteacher, who determined she would experience "a lot of sex with a
man I like" as she neared her 67th birthday.
Juska placed a personals advertisement in The New York Review of Books.
To her surprise, she received 63 positive responses and acted upon a
half dozen. She indeed had affairs, or sexual romps, which she
thoroughly enjoyed and then shared with us.
Her rationale for this aggressive, risky, behavior: What if I never had
sex with a man again? In an earlier column, I reported, Our worries
are over, dear reader.
Despite Juska's explicit confessions: I like everything about sex: the
kissing, the touching the filling of me, the book went nowhere. Sales
proved modest, despite a concerted publicity campaign: Juska received
media training, and then did several TV appearances. The New York Times
ran a long author's interview, and People magazine carried a spare,
mixed, review.
Meanwhile, frugal women borrowed someone else's book or read a library
copy. They argued then over the meaning of Juska's experiences. Among
the brightest, most intellectually honest women I know is Helen Harvey,
once a memoir writing student of mine at Emory Senior Studies, in
Atlanta. A widow, and a divorce, Harvey is an accomplished potterer; she
also gardens, reads, writes and takes courses, in part to meet
stimulating, and challenging, conversationalists. Here is her critique
of Juska's work:
Most older people, married or unmarried, have need of touch.
Touch means reassurance, touch is pleasurable, and touch is
a way of sharing affection. Unfortunately, in our society, aside from
the perfunctory hug or peck on the cheek, touch is frowned upon outside
of a marriage or a committed relationship.
All other touch is considered pre-sexual, as if it were somehow dirty
or pathetic to want this physical comfort. The result? Many widows,
widowers, divorced and single women and men live what I consider
physically isolated lives. They yearn for some connection, yet are
embarrassed to admit to their pervasive hunger.
I think this author (Juska), who admits to a lifetime of unsatisfactory
relationships (with her ex-husband, her son and only child, to some
extent) came to believe the oblivion of orgasmic sex would satisfy her
yearning to belong and to be touched, and cherished.
Her approach, in this day of internet anonymity and widespread sexually
transmitted disease, seems scary to me. Therefore, I have very mixed
feelings about this book. I do applaud her for being alive in every
sense of the word and admitting to a hunger for something, yet I wonder
if this lusting for orgasmic sex is not more symptomatic of some
underlying relationship hunger, one she has never had satisfied?
Harvey, plainly a thinking person, concludes that maybe it isn't all
about sex. Instead, maybe life's about finding someone who enhances
your existence just by being himself or herself. Someone who's also on a
journey of exploration. Maybe, too, this person loves and respects the
total humanity of the other partner.
Perhaps it isn't necessary to be married, or even living together in
the same house. Whatever the sleeping arrangement, the ability to share
intimacy and affection, and yes sexuality, along with a sense of humor
seems to be the best of all possible worlds for most senior women.
In Late Love (Houghton Mifflin; 1994), author and psychoanalyst Eileen
Simpson reports that with increased longevity there also is a striking
rise in the number of widows and widowers. She then asks this question,
What are all these people to do with the rest of their lives? That,
indeed, is the crux of it, especially so for the woman (and man) alone.
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Outrageous Associations
