Aging Intimately

Maureen Kadri-Maloney sits at home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn scrolling through her phone. At 76, she’s still not too old for online dating. Periodically, she’ll read aloud a message from one of her many suitors on Silver Singles, a dating site for older adults.

‘Maureen, we have a lot in common. We can talk about the Dodgers and nursing. I’m so happy I made contact with you,’ writes Dave from Wallingford, Connecticut.

Kadri-Maloney’s husband of 45 years, Richard, died of lung cancer seven years ago. Five years later, she retired from a long career in nursing — and that’s when the loneliness hit harder than ever.

“I am just as sexually interested now as I was when I got married,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be cannons exploding. But my expectation is that I can have a very, very fulfilling sexual life with someone.”

She signed up for the dating site a few months ago and a couple of “dates from hell” later, she remains steadfast in her belief that she will one day find “somebody special.”

Kadri-Maloney is far from alone in her search for companionship. As older adults live well into their 80’s and 90’s, the Silent Generation is making noise about their sexual desires. Relationships and sex are different in later life. They come with a slew of physical and emotional challenges. Yet ageism often overshadows society’s ability to reimagine intimacy at this stage of life.

“Culturally, I think there has to be some breakout conversations about older folks having sex in a way that's not for comedic punch lines,” says sex therapist Sari Cooper. “There's a way in which they're neutering older folks.”

Cooper is the founder and director of Manhattan’s Center for Love and Sex, which helps individuals and couples work through sexual issues, like premature ejaculation, impotence and vaginal discomfort.

She encourages patients to think of intimacy as a menu. “Sometimes, you’re not that hungry and you want to have an appetizer, and sometimes you want an entree and a dessert. You can have all sorts of sexual behaviors.”

But the experimentation that comes with a sexual menu can have its pitfalls. STD rates for the over-60 population increased 23 percent between 2014 and 2017, according to a 2018 report by Athenahealth. Researchers emphasized the need for communication and sexual health education well into older adulthood.

Tosia McCormick, co-founder of the Upper Manhattan-based non-profit JT&M Prime Health, develops safer sex campaigns for the aging population. At 72, she’s personally experienced doctors shying away from the topic. Six years ago, McCormick had a cardiac procedure to repair a hole in her heart, also known as an atrial septal defect. Afterward, she asked her cardiologist — a male in his 40s — a question that startled him.

When would she be able to have sex again? “It never occurred to me,” he replied.

“What he was looking at,” says McCormick, “was an older woman who, in our culture, is not considered a sexual being.”

Downtown, OBGYN Virginia Reath encourages her older patients to get in touch with the physical desires doctors don’t normally acknowledge. She wants women to feel visible and sexually empowered. If sex doesn’t come up in conversation, Reath makes sure to bring it up.

“I think it’s still a really taboo topic, there’s a lot of shame around it,” she says. “I want them to really get back into their bodies, their sensuality, their playfulness. ‘Love your body’ is a revolutionary thought.”

The Hebrew Home at Riverdale in the Bronx is one of the few nursing homes to uphold residents’ rights to intimacy. In 1995, it established a sexual expression policy empowering residents to engage in sexual relationships if they so choose. The home also organizes a “senior prom” event and an in-house dating service called G-Date.

“We may lose eyesight or hearing. We lose friends, loved ones, spouses, independence,” says Dan Reingold, president and CEO of RiverSpring Health, which operates the Hebrew Home. “But we don't lose the desire for touch. Let's actually encourage that.”

By nature, humans are social beings. The need to touch and be touched — by a friend or a partner — is present regardless of age. Its absence can be detrimental to a person’s health. A 2010 study by Brigham Young University linked social isolation to the mortality risk of smoking nearly one pack of cigarettes a day.

Loneliness becomes more common with age, as the probability of a partner passing away increases. On average, women live six to eight years longer than men. And according to the most recent census, 72 percent of older women in the U.S. had lost their partners by age 85.

One Delaware-based couple, who wish to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, met on Match.com after the loss of their former spouses. The 76-year-olds have been together for over a year and describe their sex as “hot and heavy.”

“We tend to think of sexuality as a battery. It's something that's charged up when we're young, but it wears out when we get old,” they say. But that’s a false paradigm. “Both of us are very, very much fulfilled in our sexual life now. I don’t think I was ever sexually fulfilled until I was with [my current partner].”

Great sex aside, the couple isn’t free from the physical challenges of aging. She currently takes a hormone, which doubles as a lubricant, to ease chronic pain around the vaginal opening. Towards the end of their former relationships, neither were having much sex. Her late husband struggled with erectile dysfunction — and once he hit 70, health problems led to a loss of interest.

“When couples stop being sexual, whether it's 50, 60, 70 or 80, it's almost always the man's decision — because he's lost his confidence with erections and intercourse,” says sex therapist and author Barry W. McCarthy. “Sex becomes much more of an intimate team experience than it was in your 20's and 30's.”

McCarthy notes that the sex of our youth informs our relationship with sex as we age. Because women are less accustomed to consistent orgasms, they have more realistic expectations in older age — whereas men, who tend to perform successfully for most of their adult life, are more disappointed when their erections become less dependable. For many men, it’s a pass or fail scenario.

“As you get older, you have to have the self compassion to say, ‘Okay, what can I do with my body today?’” says Sari Cooper. “‘Maybe I need some pillows to support me in order to do this position that I used to love. Maybe I need more lube in order to have penetrative sex. Maybe I need to use different types of sex toys in order to orgasm.’”

But getting there isn’t always easy. A 2015 study by Trinity University found that nearly 62 percent of female respondents over 60 were dissatisfied with their bodies. Many attributed this to the lack of positive representation of older women in the media — and an accompanying fear of becoming invisible to society.

Sex educator and author Joan Price, now 76, met the love of her life at age 57. He was 64 and made her feel anything but invisible. They spent seven years together before she lost him to cancer. Together, they experienced “life altering, earth shattering” sex. She asked herself, “why is it such a secret that a relationship can be this spicy and hot at this age?”

For Price, successful sex is linked to the open communication that often comes with age and maturity. “We learn more about what we want. We learn to talk about it.” But she admits that the journey never really ends. “We finesse that our entire lives. I’m still learning things about how to do that myself.”

Kadri-Maloney hasn’t yet found a worthy suitor on Silver Singles who can give her that type of emotional and physical connection. After her 45-year relationship, she acknowledges that intimacy takes time. But the shared experiences of aging — whether it’s grief, physical challenges, or loneliness — can bring people together.

“You have to acknowledge that things change, but I don’t think physical needs change,” says Kadri-Maloney. “Touch is a way of just reassuring yourself that you’re not alone.”