Study Finds Intimacy in Many Elderly Americans’ Lives

Despite our culture’s taboo characterization of the sexual lives of older individuals, a 2007 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine involving more than 3,000 subjects suggests many older Americans are experiencing satisfying sexual relationships. The study found that almost fifty percent of the sixty-five to seventy-four year old subjects and twenty-six percent of the seventy-five and eighty-five year old subjects are still sexually active.

Poor health does not appear to be the main reason for a lack of sexual activity for older individuals. One of the highest ranking impediments is the absence of a willing or able partner. Even though most professionals who deal with the elderly report higher degrees of satisfaction among those who are intimate, the study found that only thirty-eight percent of men and twenty-two percent of women age fifty and over reported discussing sex with his or her physician.

[T]there is nothing unusual or deviant about romance among older people. If we have learned nothing else from the past half-century of personal freedom and experimentation, it is that we are profoundly sexual beings. How we understand ourselves over the course of a lifetime is closely tied to our bodies and how we share our bodies with others, even when we’re done reproducing. The details may change with age, but our basic physical and psychological needs do not.

Mark Lachs, Desire in the Twilight of Life, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 12, 2010

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this to my attention.