Fulfilling Your Sexual Potential in the Second Half of Life
FULFILLING YOUR SEXUAL POTENTIAL
IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE
?
Sexual desire and pleasure is our birthright.? After all, we were created naked and with different genitals.? There must have been a plan in mind.? We are sexual beings from the day we’re born until the day we die.? Sex is fundamental to our lives and seems to be the area of life that most deeply touches our most personal issues.? Our sexuality is a core expression of who we are. We can hide with sex, we can hide from sex, but we cannot be fully ourselves sexually and hide.
Why have sex?? Well, it is well known that sex enhances our lives in multiple ways, both psychologically and physically.
Health benefits include lower blood pressure, overall stress reduction, higher levels of antibodies so fewer colds and flews, burns calories, good exercise, improves cardiovascular health, boosts self-esteem, releases endorphins which makes physical pain decline and helps lift depression; reduces risk of prostate cancer; promotes sleep.
Interpersonally, good sex may be only 20% of a good relationship (80% when it’s bad), but it’s a crucial 20%. Orgasm increases the level of oxytocin, a hormone that allows us to nurture and to bond. Hence, sex increases love and connection even on a purely biological basis.? Sex is an arena that is particular and special to a couple.? We let ourselves be known to our sexual partner in a way that we don’t share with anyone else.
A couple who has a satisfying sex life is more able to create and sustain a long-term loving relationship.? It is well known that people in stable relationships are thought to be more productive in their jobs, have better health and live longer.
The most rewarding sexual experiences are much more rich, diverse, and creative than the “get it up, get it in” approach.? And sexual responsiveness has absolutely nothing to do with being able to meet the culture’s prototype of sexual attractiveness.? Rather, it grows from connections of hearts, minds, and bodies.? Truly good sex begins with a willingness to be open and vulnerable and to give and receive pleasure and nurturing freely. The psychological ability to share intimacy, both physical and emotional, is essential for good sex, but being intimate (as we’ll discuss later) is an art that confuses and even terrifies many individuals.
Good sex, then, is a complex concoction of openness and secrecy, risk and control, personal satisfaction and mutual fulfillment.? Good sex requires an ability to be totally immersed in the moment (which is difficult for most people), ever-present to the sensuality of ourselves, our partner and our lives.
Sustaining a healthy, balanced sex life requires mindful attention to our senses, to the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of ourselves, as well as our relationship with our partners.? We must KNOW OURSELVES (“KNOW THYSELF”) to know what we want and need sexually.? Then we need to have the courage and self-assurance to communicate these desires to our partner, even in the face of possible rejection.? Also, we need to have relinquished some of the layers of narcissistic self-consciousness that, when young, may have prevented us from being truly attuned to another person’s reality and needs.
What I’m saying is: good sex requires PSYCHOLOGICAL MATURITY (which we all have because we’ve lived for a while now and have learned some things along the way.)
Mature lovers are more likely to experience not just satisfying sex, but are more likely to experience sexual ecstasy.? Certain states may occur in sex where the boundaries of self are suspended in merger with the “other”.? This kind of, well, self-transcendence, can open the channels to experiencing a sense of a broader, more universal connection.
Let’s see what the dictionary says about “ecstasy”:? rapturous delight; intense joy; mental transport or rapture from the contemplation of divine things; displacement; trance; a shared sense of being taken or moved out of one’s self or one’s normal state, and entering a state of intensified feelings so powerful as to produce a trance-like dissociation from all but the single powerful emotion; this trance or rapture is associated with mystical exaltation.
Eastern societies routinely equate sexual ecstasy with spiritual enlightenment.? Only in Western civilizations is there a chasm between sex and God.
So, it’s all good, right?? Everything from lowering your blood pressure to experiencing mystical exaltation points to the fact that sex is a good thing.
But if it’s such a good thing, why are so many people not having sex?..or are subject to various sexual dysfunctions, compulsions or perversions?
The fact is that few of us will ever seize the opportunity to explore the full range of our sexual possibilities.? One writer I read referred to those who achieve the heights of sexual fulfillment as “the blessed few”.
Why so few?? According to a recent survey, one in five Americans is not interested in sex.? According to recent estimates, more than one-third of the women in the United States have problems with low sexual desire.? Even this statistic may be low, as people may be embarrassed to respond to the interviewer honestly. “Diminished sexual desire” in women, considered by some to be an epidemic, is the diagnosis “du jour” for many sex researchers and therapists.
The loss of sexual desire can undermine a person’s perception of herself, her relationship to her body and may cause an irreparable strain in her relationship.? Chances are if her excitement for sex is diminished, her excitement for life in general is somehow compromised.
So why are there only the “blessed few”?? One in five is “not interested”???? A third to a half of American women has no desire for sex????? What’s wrong with this picture?? Why are so few people actually interested in having sex, exploring it, heightening it?
There are many, many reasons that people eschew sexual pleasure.
First, there are societal/cultural/religious influences.? We live in a sex-negative culture.? For instance, most Western societies do not support sexual education and development.? Parents are still battling to eliminate whatever beleaguered sex education courses are offered in the schools (which, by the way, focus on procreation exclusively), stating that educating children about sex is the purview of the home.? Yet, in the homes, silence is the order of the day and kids are still left to figure it out for themselves.
When children are left to their own devices, they are subjected to misinformation from peers and their own fantasies about what sex is. If they become fixated at these levels, there’s more of a chance that they’ll grow up with certain sexual problems. (perversions, dysfunctions and compulsions)
Western culture has historically done much to harm sexuality.? Vestiges of the Victorian and Puritan eras, with their emphasis on exclusively procreative sex and discomfort with the idea of sexual pleasure, still resonate with many people, at least on an unconscious level.? Sex is evil; sex is sin and eternal damnation.
Today, we have the “free love” of the 70′s behind us, a growing understanding of sexuality in the mental health field, the significance of the women’s movement and the impact of the communications industry which have combined to break down some barriers to sexual understanding.? But we STILL live in a sex-negative culture.? The sexual terrain of our times, especially after AIDS,? is filled with fear, uncertainty and reactivity – for “normal” people, never mind? neurotics, homosexuals, alternative sexualities (BDSM), cross-dressers, people who embrace polyamory rather than monogamy,–? AND for the baby-boomers who are trying to forge a new paradigm for sexy aging.
We still get mixed messages from the culture about sex.?? We’re? still confused.? “Sex is dirty, save it for someone you love.”? Does sex have to be illicit for it to be good?? Sex belongs as part of a committed relationship, which connotes high values but low passion.? Honor and virtue do not seem to combine well with hot, trembling, lusty sex.? Men in this culture still suffer from the “Madonna/Whore Complex”.? Some men choose both but will have to be dishonest about it, thus making a tear in the fabric of the integrity of their primary relationship.
Then there’s the societal influence of new technology.? The permeating influence of cybersex/pornography on men’s ability to attach and bond to a real, vital woman is a significant barrier to sexual intimacy.? Divorce attorneys from the American Bar Association report that a whopping 50% of all divorces are the result of the husband’s addiction to cybersex – that is — pornography, chat rooms, webcam sex, ads for prostitutes, dominatrixes, female bondage and humiliation, the fetish of your choice.
Women, for their part, are encouraged to adorn themselves to be sexually desirable, but not to be sexual.? In their historical roles as the guardians of morality, they fail as women if they “succumb” to their (base) sexual natures and allow for the experience of sexual pleasure.? Religious traditions have, in fact, been part of this split way of understanding sexuality.? The idea of sex as sin outside of marriage and sex as duty inside of marriage is still alive in the collective unconscious and has gone far to undermine the acceptance of sexual pleasure as normal and healthy.? These antiquated ideas that there is something morally perverse about a woman who enjoys sex are cultural imprints that unconsciously paralyze many women when they try to experience their sexual selves.
It seems to me that the media, as the messenger of cultural values, promotes
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