Ages of Sexual Behaviors

From the perspective of a healthy, albeit aging, body, the ability for sexual activity resembles that for any other physical activity. In this view, sexual functioning is similar to jogging, swimming, hiking, and climbing stairs: the more one has done this in the past, the better one is able to do it now and in the future. There may be a general decline in motivation, speed, and endurance, but if essential health is a quality of the aging body, the ability to perform physical activities will remain essentially intact.

In the sexual realm, at least for healthy men, a parallel decline in the sensory/neural and autonomic functioning of the genitals is part of the aging process.(9) Erections are slower to attain, briefer in duration; seminal ejaculate is less; and orgasmic pleasure is satisfying but less intense than in earlier years.

Will a healthy older person be able to function sexually? The simple answer is, “The past is prologue,” as research studies on sex and aging have taught us. At least for elderly married men, past patterns of sexual activity are strong indicators of sexual vitality in older age.(10) The more complex answer is, “It depends.” Whether or not an older person is interested in sex and is sexually active depends on a number of factors other than physical health. Availability of a partner, quality of the relationship, history of sexual expression (or lack thereof), competing interests or commitments (e.g., chosen celibacy) are some of the factors that predict sexual activity in an aging person.

One carefully designed study captures many of the issues involved in sex and healthy aging in men. Raul Schiavi, at the time a psychiatrist and sex researcher at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, recruited a sample of men (ages 45 to 75) carefully screened to minimize the effects of disease or medications as confounding factors in sexual functioning. Seventy-two heterosexual couples were interviewed, the spouses separately, about their sexual lives together. The men participated in nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT) sleep studies in which erectile tumescence (erection) was monitored with strain gauges attached to the penis. Much to the surprise of the investigators, a high proportion of the men above 65 who failed to have full erections during sleep were, by their own and their partner’s independent reports, able to have intercourse regularly and were quite satisfied with their sexual lives.




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