Age doesn't end seniors' sex lives

Despite a culture that equates sex with youth, a new survey shows that many people continue to have intercourse and oral sex at 75 and beyond.

In the most comprehensive survey to date on older Americans and sex, researchers asked detailed questions about sexual practices, health status and sexual dysfunction to more than 3,000 people between 57 and 85. Their results, published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, exploded many myths about aging and sex.

Among the more surprising findings: of those people still having sex, most engaged in it at least two to three times a month, which earlier surveys showed was typical for younger couples.

"Frequency of sex doesn't change a lot across age groups," said Stacy Lindau, a gynecologist from the University of Chicago and lead author of the survey. "Old people are just young people later in life."

Those not having sex reported lack of opportunity as often as lack of desire, she said. The senior survey also revealed that around half of men and a quarter of women engaged in masturbation.

Sex matters, said co-author Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago, because sexual activity can reflect more general well-being.

"People who report they are happy with life overall are the same ones who say they're happy with the sexual parts of their lives," he said.

Before this survey, very little was known about the sex lives of senior citizens, Lindau said, and she hopes the data will help people determine how their experiences align with others in the same age range - something that may become increasingly relevant as baby boomers advance in years.

The results showed that most people in the 57 to 64 age range were still having some kind of sex - defined as "any mutually voluntary activity with another person that involves sexual contact, whether or not intercourse or orgasm occurs." Most who reported having sex by this definition had engaged in intercourse or oral sex.

By the 64 to 74 range, a disparity set in, with 67 percent of men but only 39 percent of women reporting they'd had sex within the last 12 months. Lindau attributed that to the fact that women tend to marry older men and many in this age category had lost partners. Other women gave up sex because of health problems suffered by older husbands.

Sex starts to become the exception rather than the rule in the 75 to 85 group, in which 38 percent of men and 16.7 percent of women reported remaining sexually active. But Lindau said it was health problems more than age that was linked to giving it up.

Sex does change as you get older, said Betty Dodson, a 78-year-old sex educator in New York City.

"You have fewer orgasms but they're more appreciated and more enjoyed." But sex isn't like wine. It doesn't necessarily get better with age.

"Your body is not prime time," she said. Sex in older years shouldn't be an expectation, Dodson added. "Older people have every right to not have sex" and people shouldn't feel they're not normal if they stop having intercourse.

Still, while seniors might still be getting it on, they're not too keen to give it up - at least not to a reporter canvassing the streets of Center City.

Out on 19th Street, a woman said she still had sex with her 80-year-old husband but then turned around and walked briskly away.

Striding out of the Watermark at Logan Square, an 85-year-old single man said he couldn't talk about sex because he was in a hurry to meet his 71-year-old girlfriend.

In the lobby, Berta and William Remer were checking their mail, and laughed after hearing about the survey. They'd been married for 58 years.

"We didn't give up on sex," said Willam, 92. "Sex gave up on us."

There were some concerns raised in the study. About half of their female respondents reported some kind of sexual problem they found "disturbing". Some had trouble climaxing, or they found sex not pleasurable or even painful. Some men reported erectile dysfunction but 14 percent of the men across the age groups were taking Viagra or related drugs.

Lindau said doctors should be aware that adults at any age may be sexually active, and should start asking patients about their sex lives. A change in sexual function can indicate a health problem, she said, and in some cases doctors may be able to help.

"If we regard older people as asexual we miss an opportunity to do important counseling and intervention that may benefit them," she said.

New York's Dodson was featured in a film called "Still Doing it: The Intimate Lives of Women over 65." In that film, Dodson revealed trepidations about her body image that surfaced several years earlier when she was pursued by a much younger man. He was 26, she was 73. But she didn't let that stop her.

Dodson said there's still a powerful stigma associated with older women and sex - especially when they date younger men, as she does.

"People say, 'that's disgusting that she's got a young lover,'" she said. But that doesn't bother her.

Not at her age.