A few months ago, in my June reading post, I wrote about Siri Hustvedt’s novel Memories of the Future and I finished my response to that book by introducing a long excerpt in which the protagonist, now in her “later years,” recalls the energetic dawn of her romantic and sexual relationship with her long-time spouse. It’s a wonderfully rich description of an old lover remembering her young love, burnished by so many years, so much physical intimacy. This is how I introduced it:
I’ve decided there is too little written about the topic of sex in older women’s lives for me to be coy about including this excerpt, especially since I find it so beautifully descriptive of my own almost half-century-long sexual relationship with a man who’s “turned seventy [but doesn’t like] to walk slowly”; my fellow isn’t “potbellied.” and, unlike the narrator’s husband in Hustvedt’s novel, he sports only a few grey hairs. But otherwise, so much captures both the continuity and the slow transformation of our intimate life together. If you fear being offended, stop reading now.
You really should go back and read Hustvedt’s two beautiful and funny and wise and, yes, graphic (But, I mean, we’re all adults here, right?) paragraphs as excerpted in my post. Meanwhile, though, here’s what I said after sharing them:
In fact, this excerpt could probably introduce a post that tested the room for a conversation among us on this topic. It’s one I’ve occasionally thought of broaching, but so far hesitated, procrastinated. And to me, this is one of many gifts literature offers us — to see our experiences reflected so clearly that we recognize ourselves — often with pleasure, also sometimes with relief, comfort — and that we have a starting point for conversations that build connections. And also expand our ideas of “the Other” — in this case, arguably, a societal view of older women’s sexuality.
And that tentative suggestion to myself was met with enough interest and encouragement in the comments section that I committed to opening the conversation further. The idea’s been simmering but life’s been busy, and it’s a topic that I’ve wanted to sidle up to. So let me do that in two parts, this week and next, and then we’ll see where the community wants the conversation to go from there and how able (and comfortable) I am to facilitate that.
Let me start by describing a memory I’ve been mulling a bit ever since I began thinking about how I might broach a limited-public conversation about sexuality on this side of, say, 50. And 60, and 70, and 80; perhaps even 90 if we have commenters willing to speak to that. The memory is of a birthday lunch one August afternoon, somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago.
A table was set just at the edge of L’s backyard, near the (unpaved) lane that circled our small island, and the four neighbours who were celebrating their 60th birthdays that month had asked me and two other neighbour-islanders in our mid-40s to join them. I can’t remember if it was a potluck lunch or if we had sandwiches or if, perhaps, the four Newly 60s had already had their lunch at the island’s pub and we were simply joining them for cake and coffee or bubbles. I do know the lunch to celebrate their birthdays had become an annual tradition years earlier when they’d discovered they’d all been born in the same month.
Those details are gone, but I remember the sense of the vantage point — L’s waterfront yard was only three houses away from mine but on more of a slope so that from where we sat we could see over and around her rooftop to the ocean. There’s a distinct smell there mid-summer as well, the fir trees and the wild roses and the sea salt, the dust that would rise from the dirt road when a golf cart drove by. . . Abundant summer growth with the roadside grasses and weeds knee- to thigh-high, not yet dried by the summer sun. . . Sounds — birdsong and waves susurrating on the shore and a rare lawnmower down the road. Kids on the beach, neighbours calling out a greeting as they drove their carts or bicycled past. . .
And the conversation. All four of the Sixties were plainspoken women. Only one of them had politics or aesthetics close to my own — the other three were Right of Centre and quite capable of pronouncements that left me sputtering. But two of them were keen gardeners and, if opinionated, all of them were energetic and entertaining; between the Sixties and the Forties we all lived within eight houses of each other on a community with fewer than 300 year-round residents, and at that time we were all “married with children,” although theirs had all grown and ours were still in school.
So the conversation ranged. If you know anything about small-island life, you know there was gossip. Some of it compassionate, some titillating, none of it harmful or mean although it’s possible there might have been a touch of schadenfreude in there at some point. And we talked about our kids, school-aged or grown, some with children of their own. Two of the Sixties had grandchildren who lived on or visited the island, hung out with the Forties’ kids, so we Forties got a glimpse of what the adult-kid relationship might be like with one more generation of separation. And we talked about husbands. All of us had been married at least 15 years by then; one or two for over 30 years; two were in a second marriage —
We knew E’s romantic story about serendipitously bumping into a high school sweetheart a year or two after divorcing her first husband. She and C had quickly rekindled their earlier passion and by the time we sat around that table in the sunshine, they’d been together for two decades. It was her pronouncement that I remember most clearly from that lunchtime conversation: she told us, rolling her eyes, moving between indignation and laughter, that she wanted to give her husband a concubine for his birthday. I don’t remember that she offered much detail about the burden she hoped to shift in this imaginary gift, but it was pretty evident that he was much keener on the physical aspects of their conjugal relationship than she was. The words “old goat” may have featured. He would have been somewhere between 65 and 70 at the time . . .
We all laughed, of course, and enjoyed the shock of her addressing the topic thus. The sentiment, itself, its supposed practicality, the relaxed morality implied, if playfully. And the glimpse inside that bedroom door. None of us, though, carried it further. We teased her a bit, the other Sixties might have offered some commiseration, rolled their own eyes. . .
But when the memory popped up in response to my thinking about this post, what struck me was all that remained latent in that conversation. What got silenced, and why. Was it our presence, we Forties, that stifled? Further, how much of what I drew from her comments said more about what I, at Forty-something, was projecting on women fifteen or twenty years older? Could her claims of exhaustion with her “conjugal responsibilities” actually have signalled some pride in a still-active sex life? Did she want to pierce our young smugness (all relative, folks, it’s all relative — Forty was young, I now agree with her), knowing that we had likely dismissed the possibility she was pushing in our faces? Or preferred to ignore it?
Or was she hoping for some sisterly solidarity, some problem-solving? Would there have been room in that conversation for one of us to probe a bit, to find out if she was ever able to take any pleasure from what her husband wanted? Or was he in need of some re-education? Had she once enjoyed it but the physical effects of ageing meant sex was now painful for her? Was he more selfish as he aged so that it was more work and no pleasure? Were there possible techniques they could have tried or medical approaches that could have made her more comfortable? And, in the absence of concubines for hire, was she simply going to “lie back and think of England”?
In her 2003 memoir A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, Jane Juska wrote about placing an ad in the New York Review of Books stating, “Before I turn 67 — next March — I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.” It’s a surprisingly erudite, entertaining, and moving memoir, in which she sets the stage for her ad placement by outlining her preparation for a sexual life as a woman born in 1933 into a certain class in small-town America. A preparation that primarily taught (and warned) her to stay as chaste as possible until marriage while attracting and keeping enough male interest to ensure such marriage.
The preference was for her to finish a college degree first, thus ensuring a “better” marriage, so managing to keep boyfriends interested and satisfied “enough” was paramount (euphemisms abounded, but by the time Juska writes the memoir, she abandons them with delightful clarity). A tricky balance, particularly in the days before contraception was easily available to unmarried women. Once married, Juska’s expectations for her own sexual fulfilment were limited and always held in deference to her husband’s. It wasn’t a happy marriage nor did Juska find romantic nor sexual satisfaction in the decades after she left it . . . until she hit a low point that pushed her to therapy and, finally, to a loving relationship with herself. And thus to that ad and the drama that unfolded in its wake.
I’m introducing Jane Juska’s memoir right after telling you about my older neighbour’s audacious comment about her husband’s advances not because I think E had spent a lifetime suffering an unsatisfactory sex life. In fact, she and C always appeared well-matched, and I suspect the open communication — affectionate banter to frank but respectful disagreement– they modeled in public probably extended to their private and intimate life as well. No, I’m introducing this memoir, instead, because of a passage in which Juska describes a conversation she has, in her early 60s, with two younger female friends, one in her 20s, the other 30-something.
I’ve already returned the book to the library and I don’t recall the exact specifics of the conversation, but what Juska stresses is the comfortable and matter-of-fact manner in which her young friends speak of graphic aspects of sex with her — not that it’s belaboured, particularly, but that it’s taken for granted that there’s value in sharing experiences. That we might have complaints or wishes or spilling-over joys or worries or curiosities that are valid and that other women might be able to help us sort through these. Or that by articulating our own responses, we might help other women recognize their own. It was a very new experience for Juska and a refreshing glimpse of what might have been, what still could be in the decades she had left.
Although she also describes, with retrospective hilarity, a prolonged and uncomfortable scene in which another younger friend gives her an abundance of precisely detailed advice about what to ask prospective partners. The advice, given dramatically and loudly in a public place (a café), amuses a wide and unintended audience and Juska has to work hard not to shrink away from it, mortified. At the same time, she recognizes that she has opened herself up to this exposure, an exposure which is, after all, minor in comparison with what that ad may bring. You’ll have to read the book. . .
Meanwhile, though, I want to see what kind of conversation we might have, comfortably and safely enough for the community here, given that this is, realistically, a semi-public space that I’m responsible for moderating. I’m not suggesting, in other words, that we could have the kind of conversation Juska had with her two younger friends in that quieter, more private setting. But I am curious to know if some of you have longed for such a conversation. Or whether some of you are or have been fortunate enough to have such a resource in your life.
And I want to be sure we make room for those who might be relieved to let go of an active sex life, as my eye-rolling older neighbour (then almost a decade younger than I am now) claimed to be. And those who want to make sure they “get some” before they’re gone. I’ve got a small list of some of the topics we might cover as our conversation warms up, but I think I’ve written enough to get us started.
In the second part of this conversation’s launch, I’ll share an exchange of emails between myself and a regular commenter here who’s contributed several delightful and provocative and playful paragraphs which I think you’ll enjoy. But that’s next week. For now, I hope some of you might leave a comment below and that this chat will be well underway by the time I board my flight this weekend.
With some trepidation and much curiosity,
I await your replies,
xo,
f
Brava, brava. I know it took some loin-girding to start this.
I have a fair number of sex talks. Which sounds odd. But if the conversation goes that way, I’ll signal openness, and then it often just happens. Many times I listen more than talk. And my daughter and I jabber all the time (we laughed at Thanksgiving: clothes, home design, sex, medically assisted dying, what it means to be told you are beautiful, career choice, all on the agenda).
I remember ‘older’ women (younger than I am now) talking/joking about sex in various settings but it largely centred on grumbling and I hated that…and I still do, although it could be a way of shyly trying to gather information. We can do better though.
I read Round-Heeled Woman this month too. And her following book which I flipped through and put into the return to library pile. A gentle critique might be the second book was ‘somewhat redundant’. Jane Juska was a close contemporary of my mother. I applaud her for writing it, but I felt tense for her all the way through; her sexual appetite was so shrouded in 1940s/50s morals; I think she really struggled. (The ‘being told you are beautiful’ conversation was partly inspired by a passage from the book.) It was worth it though, because she pointed me to this by Ted Kooser:
‘…if mine,
it would be the secret dream
of walking alone across the floor of my life
with an easy grace, and with love anough
to live on at the center of myself.’
Buon viaggio, ci parliamo a presto.
Author
Thanks, Georgia, for being the first commenter. You’re so lucky that your daughteer and I “jabber”together so easily!
Completely agree with your assessment of RHW (and had anticipated that one memoir on the topic was probably enough). The Ted Kooser poem is lovely.
si, ci parliamo a presto!
I am greatly intrigued by this whole conversation. As a 70 year old woman, 43 years into a very loving and happy second marriage, I have only recently become VERY interested in a mutually satisfying and exploratory sex life with my husband. It has only been in the past couple of years that I have felt confident enough in my own sexuality to initiate lovemaking. I need to make it very clear that this delay had nothing to do with how my husband treated/treats me (he has always done his very best to be sure I am taken care of before his needs are met) but everything to do with how I viewed myself as unworthy. The trigger to the change in me was two fold: an excellent counselor at the cancer center who was finally able to help me see the lies I had believed, combined with an unexpected awakening of libido courtesy of post cancer treatment hormone therapy. However, now that this epiphany has taken hold, despite a mastectomy (with no reconstruction) and a vaginal prolapse that took seven years to be repaired because I have so many health issues no surgeon would take the chance, my husband has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and the neurogenic issues that arise with that have left us with a limited repertoire of creativity. Possibly through this open dialogue that you have courageously opened, there are others out there that are willing to share their secrets of success in this arena. Thank you for this. Blessings on you!
Author
Thanks so much for this interesting and hopeful response, Diane! Although you and your husband are again facing physical challenges to your intimacy, I’m so impressed that you found such an unexpected and rather wonderful surprise in the wake of a cancer diagnosis. I’d love to see others share related experiences.
So much of your post resonates. I’m in my mid-60’s and I find myself longing to have conversations of depth and compassion with other women. My relationship with my best friend (from 15 til her passing 10 years ago) was full of laughter and sharing, as they say “no detail is too small, so don’t be shy”. It was a wonderful complex relationship and one I miss dreadfully. I have other women friends now but the sharing is different and as you allude to there is a point in conversation where we step back, or away, from going further and delving into true intimacy. I look forward to reading further and I’m interested to see where the community will take this conversation. Thanks for being brave and opening the door.
Author
The losses we experience during these years of long-time friends capable of these kind of conversations are so tough — such friends are rare and the intimacy we come to rely on, or at least to treasure, isn’t easily replaced. But perhaps we could surprise ourselves here and create a space for building a different kind of intimacy and trust. We can hope. . . .
When I was young – 20s – it was a subject that never seemed to be off the table. But you’ve made me ponder; when was the last time I had that sort of chat? Literally cannot remember. I think there is an unspoken agreement that it is a no-go area and not to be shared if you are married/in a long-term relationship and, to be honest, most of my friends are married. I hadn’t even considered that point, either. I will go away and think further about this.
Author
Yes, I feel the same way. I used to be like Georgia and if the topic was in the air, I signalled openness and was nourished by the talking and the listening both. But it’s been a long time. . .
No trepidation required – you have broached an important topic with grace and inclusiveness. I welcome a conversation about sexuality and older woman. I was young in the 70s when such conversations were easier to have. They occurred frequently between me and my friends, and even some acquaintances were happy to share in such talks. But I married in the late 80s and after some difficulties, our daughter arrived in the late 90s, and somewhere along the way talk about sex seemed to roll off the table and I miss that. Close girlfriends are thinner on the ground these days (some moved overseas, sadly some died or are very ill) and the pandemic has added its own special lustre to the difficulties of maintaining friendships. I welcome this topic and will think hard about what I could contribute. Literature is a safe space for exploration and I appreciate the books you’ve mentioned.
Maria – You have said everything I have been thinking and feeling. Thank you!
I would love to be a part of this conversation too – I seem to have lost my “mojo” and the idea of sharing and learning from a group of open-minded women sounds comforting. I’m off to the library to find Juska’s book.
D.
Author
Hope you enjoy the book and continue to join in this conversation!
Author
Thanks for the encouragement, Maria. Isn’t it surprising to think about the changes from the 70s; I don’t expect we’ve become more prudish, but rather that we’ve got busy, the friends we trusted most for such conversations have, as you suggested, become thinner on the ground, then taking on the roles of 30-50 adulthood and conforming almost automatically to rules of discourse in so many public situations. But as Georgia says, “We can do better” — I hope this is true, even in our 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond 😉
I didn’t expect to be interested but I am! Nice job leading us into this.
Author
I’m pleased to have you here!
I too welcome this topic.
for many years I had a dear friend with whom no topic was off the table, including and frequently our sex lives. We were both divorced mothers, the same age and felt free to speak about our most inner desires. she was very open about her long relationship with a married man. At 74 she reunited with an old flame and they were together until her death last year. I miss her a lot, and there I times when I long to talk to her. I have a circle of friends at the present moment but they seem to want to talk about lighter issues. although we are all in our 70’s and 80’s, I am 81. with one exception no one else seems to have had a similar experience . Which is to say early marriage, children, divorce at a fairly early age and then years of being single. The media seems to present a bleak picture of elderly relationships, one partner seems to be always coping with the other’s failing cognitive or physical decline. I did enjoy the series Last Tango in Halifax a few years ago as it presented a older couple, and I mean in their 70’s, in a loving relationship. I will look into the above books.
Author
This has already become a recurrent and resonant theme here, this loss of the friend(s) with whom we can speak frankly about all matters. It’s so much more of a statement, speaking about sex-related topics at 80 than it is at 30 or 40 or even 50. And it’s not every personality that wants to draw attention. Not that we’re shy or prudish or cowed by public opinion, but that for some of us, discussions on intimate topics with people we don’t know well is going to demand barrels of energy (never mind trust) that we might not have. So we tuck away our concerns or curiosities or even simply experiences we’d like to share. . . and feel just a bit more lonely or isolated.
I really enjoyed Last Tango in Halifax (always happy to see Derek Jacobi in anything!)
Bravo for opening this conversation. I echo what Maria has said, and look forward to learning from a group of older women going through the same experiences. I have two close friends and although we skirt around the issue much as your friend on the island once did, perhaps it would just take one brave person to open a deeper and mutually beneficial question.
Author
Lorrie, I wonder what your two close friends would think — feel free to send them a link to this post as a way to sneak the thin edge of a wedge in. . . At our age, some of us will be experiencing, shall we say, “mechanical issues” (either ours or our partners) and sometimes a friend’s experience is more helpful than what happens at a doctor’s office. At least as a starting point for what to ask the doctor . .
I’m a bit late to the conversation as we’ve been having internet woes this week, but I applaud you for introducing this topic, Frances, and look forward to seeing where it goes. I’ve never really had a friend that I could talk openly with about this subject. Perhaps that’s at least in part because, at 70, most of my close friends are quite a bit younger than I am. Without going into detail, I’ve been in a mostly loving marriage for 46 years, but our sexual relationship has been fraught with problems. While I’d never thought of giving him a concubine, I totally get the sentiment! Cue laughter! A great deal of healing has happened in our relationship over the past decade or so, but now we both have cancer which introduces other issues. Sigh!
Author
Thanks for taking time to join in, Elaine, and I really appreciate this perspective. So brave of you to contribute this because I suspect you voice what others can’t — and thus you relieve someone’s feeling of isolation or even alienation. And cueing laughter can cover over but it’s also a way of introducing the tricky topics (and why I wonder, retrospectively, about my erstwhile neighbour’s comment).
I’m so sorry you’re both dealing with cancer now — other issues indeed. I loved Diane’s comment below about how her experience with cancer was healing in terms of her sexual relationship, but of course everyone’s story is different. Both of you with cancer — that’s a lot. Be gentle with yourself. Take care.
Frances,as you may noticed,I never comment politics, because I couldn’ t express myself very good and without a lot of (unvoluntary) hidden meanings in a language that’s not mine. It seems that it is similar with sex. I’ve tried,and read it myself and it didn’t look like I wanted it to be
But ,brava for opening the conversation-I remember how difficult it was for my patients to start talking
Dottoressa
Author
I wouldn’t dare, K, in either of my extra languages. You’re much more articulate in English than I am in those, but I completely understand the reticence and I’m very grateful that you commented to say that. I suspect you speak for many readers here who could perhaps join in a small-group oral conversation on the topic but are very wary about writing. In fact, this might be a topic in itself, one I think I might come back to. (I think your patients would have been very lucky to have you as a listener!)
Thank you 🙂
D.
Thank you for opening up a space for this conversation.
I am most interested in this conversation. Frances, thank you so much for starting it and for your careful observations and thoughtful introduction to the subject.
I have never considered myself uptight about sex. I’ve had light conversations and lots of jokes with friends over the years, but nothing very detailed. My husband and I are very compatible when it comes to intimacy and we really look out for each other. We discuss sex and are curious about it.
As with most couples, I assume, our sex lives have ebbed and flowed. With full-time jobs and a baby, then child, in the house, we were often exhausted and not paying much attention to sex. When our son went off to summer camp, things got more interesting again. When he left home, we found that we had lots of time and freedom and we circled back around to having more time for each other. We noticed that our joints were creakier.We have had to deal with the impact of aging, menopause and all that comes with it. Luckily, we have had frank discussions about it and I managed to have a frank discussion about it with my health care provider. I was shy about doing so, but I decided that this was too important to not figure it out.
While I started this saying that I that I don’t think I am uptight, I do hold back a little. I’m not fully open on the subject and I am interested in becoming more so. There are things to learn from others and sharing to be done. I’m looking forward to that.
Author
“I was shy about doing so, but I decided that this was too important to not figure it out.” — Brava! And exactly! Also, your final paragraph — yes, I think there’s a difference between “uptight”-ness, or even prudery, and reticence. . .
This is such a broad (pun intended) and complex topic that it’s impossible to have one conversation, and good for you for initiating one. Re the strategy your friend shared at the party: introducing another sexual partner within the structure of a polyamorous union is a very different approach than the ’70s-era “open marriage” or the tradition of the concubine or mistress. This is a •huge• change from the days when I married 50+ years ago and the expectation was monogamy for life, never mind if there were significant differences in sexual appetite and preferences between the couple.
Author
Honestly, my neighbour was not at all serious, but rather enjoyed being a bit outrageous. In fact, I think her (problematic in its racialized exoticism and in the notion of a controllable commodity) use of the word “concubine” signalled that. . .
But I think the change you speak of is interesting, if something I haven’t known about in my own fairly limited social world (“Married with children” can do that, depending, obviously, on circumstance ;-).
From the early 90’s traveled to many states lecturing. Choice of private home or hotel, always chose the home. More recently, pandemic entered.
Women, always the organizer/s. Always a good dinner at a choice restaurant, for style/scenery/food, not cost.
Dinners, usually about 5 women. Women across 30’s – 70’s. Wine, laughter, tears.
Conversations at those dinners covered it all. Affairs, discovery of illegal activities, favorite types of meat for a cassoulet, a new grandchild, sex, travel, gardening, antiques, books, art.
In the sharing, each assured privacy. Telling too much, the unwritten rule.
Interesting, looking back, 2 topics not covered; politics, religion.