When does female sexuality end and intimate relationships end? Spoiler alert: never! Here is a completely scientific look at the issue of sex after menopause from a specialist in Chinese medicine, Anna Vladimirova.
I really like the current trend: young women are actively interested in and planning their future, studying issues of how to maintain health and sexuality over the years. About what your sex will be like after menopause, and even when this very menopause comes, you need to think now — in the prime of life and opportunities.
Menopause is a reduction in strength
In Chinese traditional medicine, there is the concept of «qi» — the amount of strength, and when it is reduced, the female body refuses to be fertile (menopause occurs). And it depends not only and not so much on age.
During the Second World War, young girls of twenty to twenty-five years old stopped menstruating after a year or two of sitting in the trenches: they depleted the body, and the body, in order to save resources, “turned off” the reproductive function. For some of them, after the end of the war, the cycle was restored, for some it was not.
Here’s a reverse example. I traveled a lot in Southeast Asia and, in particular, lived in monasteries where women’s Taoist practices are studied — techniques that allow you to accumulate energy and increase the resource of the body. Such women can maintain fertility until old age.
We are capable of many things in our body, and even the studied mechanisms of it suggest that menopause is a regulated phenomenon. According to Chinese medicine, normally — if you are no longer faced with the task of giving birth — it occurs at the age of 49 years. How does this process affect sexual relations?
Anatomical details
For a long time it was believed that female sexuality is similar to male. A man has a stage when his erection fades and this is where his sexuality ends, which means that women should have a similar scenario. It reminds me of the idea of burning a living wife in her husband’s funeral pyre. And the period of menopause is the best suited for the ritual “burning” of sexuality: after the extinction of the ovaries, a woman’s lubrication production is reduced — and this is a sign! It’s time to stop intimate fun!
Some evidence was even tied to this idea: according to studies, it was believed that female sexuality was tied to ovarian hormones, and when they stop working, libido disappears.
Modern research refutes this idea: according to them, the driver of female sexuality, like male, is testosterone. Only in men, its level decreases with age, while in women it increases. And this means that with age, a woman becomes more sexual. Scientifically proven! Fact! Why do some ladies give up on themselves with age and say that sex is no longer their element?
Bad PR of menopause
If a woman has driven something into her head, then she is able to adjust the entire surrounding reality to this strategy — and, of course, her own state. If you explain to her for years that they don’t have sex at this age, she will believe — and she won’t. Even if you want. Even if sometimes objectively required! Even if at hand there is a beloved and ready for exploits partner.
Residents of the USSR found themselves in such an information field in which sex was not the most relevant activity even in childbearing age, and after menopause it completely disappeared. I offer a different, more modern vision of sex after menopause — based on objective facts.
— You are calm! Young girls face a lot of worries about an unwanted pregnancy: the constant threat of «flying», the selection of the right contraceptives, several levels of protection … In anxious natures, these worries can significantly reduce the pleasure of sex. And now — finita la comedy, no more worries! It is possible to have sex the way you like, with the one you like, without aggravating circumstances. Don’t you dream about it? And it will!
— You are free! In childbearing age, we ladies are hostages to our hormonal fluctuations. A woman happens to be the same once every 28 days — and this is with a stable cycle, and if it fails … Over the years, we get used to our mood swings, learn to control them, but still our relationship is not a very well-balanced attraction with eternal take-offs and falls.
Before the onset of menopause, our mood does not belong to us, but with the onset, we will be freed from hormonal storms and will be able to enjoy our intellect, kindness and wisdom. Menopause is the shortest path to myself and my own freedom, so I am happy to think that this period is ahead of me, and how nice it is to know that this is just another stage of life and relationships with men will play an important role in it.