Does sex lose its luster as we age? If we redefine what we mean by ‘sex,’ the best just may be yet to come.

As an intimacy educator and author in my 60s, I’m asked, “Does sex get better or worse as you get older?” “Well,” I reflect, “that depends … and a lot of it depends on how you define “sex” in the first place.”

Students squirm at the question. Even with a professional sex coach this stuff is hard to talk about. I suggest, “If you define ‘sex’ as one organ plumbed into another for a wiggle, wiggle … pop, then ‘sex’ as you age poses new challenges … and new risks.”

Body parts don’t work the same as before. In addition, if you haven’t already learned to talk candidly with your partner about sex, then probably the experience is going to be downhill from here.

Mature lovers choose to throw away the old scripts; there is no right way — just this way, with this person, this time. They stop trying ‘to do’ or perform, and start noticing sensations.

On the other hand, if you define sex in broader terms, then it can mean much more than interacting with the plumbing. Consider how we use the word love—you love your mother, love your dog, love pizza, and love freedom. In a similar way, sex can be defined as the pleasure that comes when bodies meet and tangle in a place of mutual safety, respect and vulnerability. With this expanded (and more truthful) definition, aging can open a new sexual landscape — one that is deeply textured with the precious recognition of mortality and divinity.

With Age Comes a New Acceptance

Maturity can bring an acceptance of our bodies, an appreciation for each other, and a grace for treasuring each moment we have together. In a larger definition, sex becomes an intricate web of attention and touch that expresses our innate longing to play, connect, belong, and experience our bodies as sacred. With this mature definition, sex definitely gets better with age. As the physical changes of our aging bodies manifest, we can choose to focus on and celebrate the mental aspects of lovemaking and bring an added depth and dimension to the experience.

As elders, while we are happy to slow down, we also know there is no time to waste.

An older client once confessed, “Finally, I get to enjoy being aroused.” Not that he didn’t enjoy sex in his younger years. What he means is that, with maturity, men slow down and genuinely seek more intimacy. They stop withholding their feelings, stop worrying so much about results and stop being goal oriented in the bedroom! Women change in their own ways, too. They stop apologizing for their brand of sexuality, and become more confident, listening to their own rhythm, learning to initiate and take responsibility for what they want and need. A new playing field emerges where men and women can enjoy a growing pleasure and connection.

Slow Down, But Don’t Stop!

As elders, while we are happy to slow down, we also know there is no time to waste. Silly games of trying to read each other’s mind are replaced with a new-found transparency. Forgiveness and a sense of humor trump the previous destination sex with its predictable beginning, middle and end (boring?), and replaces it with meandering sex, where attention, the food of love, reigns. We learn to be instead of to do. We’re delighted with the unexpected — a wisp of hair on the cheek, a fingertip behind the knee, a lick on the ear, and laughter — at ourselves and our seriousness. Sure, bodies change; whether we’re 20 or 80, we’re aging. For both men and women, tissues thin and dry, unused muscles decline, and the vascular system relaxes. To counter these physical changes, we can choose to enhance the mental aspects of lovemaking — heighten our focus and ability to take in and experience pleasure. We can learn to slow down, ask for what we want, and enjoy sensations through our skin — an organ that, mercifully, grows in sensitivity as we age.

While speaking to groups, I’ve asked rooms full of women, “Is size important?” “Yes,” they respond, but it is the size of their partner’s attention, his caring, his compassion that is the true measure, they explain. Mature lovers choose to throw away the old scripts; there is no right way — just this way, with this person, this time. They stop trying ‘to do’ or perform, and start noticing sensations. Beyond the thinking body lives the feeling body. Beyond the controlling body lives the noticing body. Beyond the doing body is the being body. Why does it take us so long to discover this?

So, does sex get better or worse as we age? Depends, and we get to choose. And choosing is what makes us human.

My mother, at age 85, was sitting naked in a hot tub with me at a nudist resort — our first time! I asked her about her own experience of sex in her elder years. She smiled at her cutting-edge daughter’s question. “Remember when I visited China in the ‘70s before President Nixon ‘opened’ China to the West?” she responded. I smiled at my globe-traveling mother, remembering the Mao jacket she had brought me back from her journey. “I was given a vibrator at a Chinese medical clinic for back pain and discovered putting it elsewhere felt great. I still have that vibrator, and I tell you those feelings are as strong now as they were in my 40s.”

Shame that we don’t raise our kids to understand that yes, sex can be exciting when you’re young, but for really great sex, the kind that turns the universe inside-out, you’re just going to have to wait — no way around it!