Intimacy Gains Value With Age
In all my surveys and interviews, I’ve found that men over 45 feel LEAST secure about their sexual prowess; almost half of them admit they no longer feel the same level of sexual desire. But something else takes its place as they enter Second Adulthood. The need for intimacy and companionship eclipses the importance of sex.
Only a handful of the Professional Men over 45 I’ve interviewed say they most prize “revitalized sex.” They now value “intimacy and trust” most in a loving relationship. Consider: All the Professional Men over 45 who are still in first marriages say that their spouses are now their primary source of intimacy and comfort, all of them - 100 percent.
This challenges the conventional excuse that it’s the familiarity of the same old wife that deflates a man’s desire and performance. And it’s not about a much younger wife. None of these men is married to a woman under 35; they are all married to near peers.
Men who make it through male menopause and do find intimacy and trust with one partner can enjoy an equivalent to postmenopausal zest (PMZ) for women; call it SP - Serene Potency. It helps if a man knows what to look for.
An urbane investment banker described to me his bafflement at how the direction of his sexual energies changed dramatically in his 50s. He was divorced and constantly invited to parties as a highly eligible bachelor-around-town.
“I didn’t feel like chasing women anymore. It wasn’t a natural instinct, the way it was when I was younger. … But I felt like I SHOULD chase women. They expected it.
“This may sound sappy,” he added. “What I discovered was, as I got older, sex for its own sake wasn’t much fun. But sex as a way of expressing love, that is sublime.”
In our secular culture sexuality often replaces religion as a means of pursuing the meaning of life. But as the late author Ernest Becker reminded us in “The Denial of Death,” “sex is of the body, and the body is of death.” Therefore, when relying upon the sex act as the bottomless well of continually renewed strength, a man sets himself an impossible standard: perpetual virility.
Robert White, an electrical contractor I interviewed in Florida, was conditioned to the standard of perpetual virility. But beneath the rigid behavior codes of his working-class upbringing were hidden the longings of a man both gentle and cerebral by nature.
Divorced in middle life, he met a woman who lectures on miracles. Robert readily acknowledges it was she who released the tenderness in his soul and freed him from his total preoccupation with technical performance on the job and in bed.
Men in Second Adulthood who still find meaning in their work or develop passionate interests or hobbies, who also expand the intimacy in their marriages, and who invest in their physical health and strength, seldom have potency problems.
A successful New York surgeon, the guru to many younger doctors, retired in his 70s. “Just watch, he’ll get depressed and dry up and die,” fretted his family. But the man’s inner vitality carried over into a passion for studying history, collecting coins, and playing chess until he became proficient enough to enter tournaments. He continued playing tennis twice a week to keep his body tuned up. “He never looked back and never missed a beat,” says his admiring son-in-law.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Gail Sheehy Universal Press Syndicate