How to Improve Your Sex Life as You Get Older
Sexual satisfaction doesn’t have to decline with age
Welcome back to Age Wise, exploring the science of improving physical health and mental wellness at every stage of life. This week, a delightful side effect of having a positive outlook on your aging self. First, some housekeeping: My new book, Make Sleep Your Superpower, is now available in paperback, in addition to the Kindle version. Should you read it, I'd be much obliged if you posted even the briefest of reviews on Amazon, thereby supporting my writing and keeping this newsletter afloat.
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Older people who are sexually active report better physical and mental health and higher enjoyment of life in general. Good health later in life can, in turn, encourage a more positive view of aging, which has been shown, in further turn, to boost well-being.
Now along comes a study that finds that a positive view of aging can actually lead to a healthier sex life.
Sounds like a worthy cycle to embrace.
“We know positive perceptions of aging can be really beneficial, but when they are negative, they can be really detrimental,” said the study’s lead author Hanamori Skoblow, a gerontologist and PhD candidate at the University of Missouri. “Negative perceptions of aging are linked to higher likelihood of cognitive decline, higher likelihood of cardiovascular disease and even shorter lifespans. We wanted to see how it would affect people’s sexual relationships. As expected, thinking positively about the way you age can also lead to a healthy sex life.”
The findings were based on questionnaires completed by 1,122 heterosexual couples over age 50 who were married or living together. The participants rated how much they agreed with statements like “with age comes physical decline.” Responses were compared to their views on sexual satisfaction and frequency.
“Participants with a more positive perception of aging also had sex more frequently as well as increased satisfaction,” Skoblow said in a statement. “We found this relationship to be strong with both men and women.”
The results were detailed recently in the journal Gerontologist.
An important step toward embracing old age is to bust the myth that sexual satisfaction is doomed to decline. As I've reported previously: While better sex down the road isn’t a sure thing for everyone, many people acquire skills and strategies during the course of life that can improve sexual satisfaction in their latter years. “Older adults actually reported better sexual quality of life than younger adults when we matched them on key characteristics of their sex lives and things like gender, relationship status, and mental and physical health,” Miri Forbes, PhD, a psychology researcher at Macquarie University in Australia, told me.
Skoblow has some thoughts on why a person’s view of aging might have a direct impact on their sex life, for better or worse:
“It’s possible that if people expect a steep physical decline as an inevitable part of aging, they could have anticipatory inhibitions,” she figures. “They stop enjoying themselves in the moment and could have less satisfying sexual encounters. We also know that Western cultures often have many youthful beauty ideals, so maybe people with more positive perceptions of aging don’t buy into them as much, leading to a more satisfying sex life as their body begins to change.”
The upshot: While you can’t prevent aging, you can certainly accept it as a natural part of life—there’s no alternative, after all—then pursue physical activity and healthy ways of eating, both of which can improve sleep and help you look upon your own aging more favorably, all of which just might lead to a little more healthy sex, which can certainly help you feel younger.
Seems like a pretty good cycle to embrace, compared to the alternatives.
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