This is only partly true, according to our experts, sexologists Alain Eril and Mireille Bonyerbal, discussing another common stereotype about sexuality. It happens that women lose interest in sex with age, while men do not.
“My husband is, how shall I put it, not very good sexually. I dated men that I liked much more as lovers, who suited me better as partners. I think it’s like food. When you try dishes that are a hundred times better than what you are used to, you will probably like them more. I like caresses, I like it when sex lasts a long time. My husband does not try to please me, he thinks only of himself. He doesn’t even ask if I like it. But I’m not going to explain to him right now, it’s too late to change something now.
Natalia, 61 years old
Alain Eril, psychoanalyst, sexologist:
For a long time, the sexual activity of older people was considered something indecent. Because of this, men who reached the age of 65-70 felt apathy. Of course, with age, the time it takes for a man to achieve an erection may increase due to a decrease in the tone of the urogenital sphere. But in general, the situation in this regard is changing.
Some of my patients have experienced their first orgasm after 60, as if they had to wait until the menopause and lose the ability to become a mother in order to allow themselves something as frivolous as an orgasm …
Mireille Bonierbal, psychiatrist, sexologist:
After the age of 50, men can suffer from cardiovascular diseases that impair their erectile ability. But I believe that the loss of men’s interest in sex is primarily due to the exhaustion of relationships in a couple; when these men date women much younger than they are, they do just fine.
Some women lose their desire to make love with age because they stop appreciating and perceiving themselves as an erotic object.
As for women, they may experience a lack of lubrication, but today this problem is solvable. Some 60-year-old women lose their desire to make love because they no longer appreciate and perceive themselves as an erotic object. So the problem here is rather not in physiology, but in psychology.