HEALTH : For More Seniors, Sex and Romance Aren’t Memories

Sometimes, in a sort of Romeo and Juliet turnabout, there is sabotage by the children.

Sometimes there is a perception of disapproval on the part of friends and relations or even society as a whole.

Sometimes there is deep shame at the very thought.

But whatever it is, by and large, lovers way past the age of consent--say, after 75 or thereabouts--can give a new meaning to the expression “star-crossed.” Said one woman sadly: “It’s very hard to find an old couple meeting, falling in love and living happily ever after.”

But all that is changing.

By the force of their very numbers, older Americans are on the verge of making the sexual revolution their own. And if the kids don’t like it, well, more and more seniors say, it really is not their affair.

Back in the days when people didn’t live much past 40, and very few women lived long enough to experience, much less suffer from, empty-nest syndrome, the idea of sexuality in the 70s (or 80s or, heaven forbid, 90s) was almost inconceivable. It was only a tad more acceptable in a man.

The idea of love and companionship was great when a couple grew old with each other; but a new romance? Romance? Pitter-pattering heart, sweaty palms, blushes, breathlessness? For seniors? For your parents? Give us, society seemed to say with contempt, a break.

‘Neuterdom Over 50’

“Our culture,” gerontology professor Ruth B. Weg says, “has tended to assign a kind of neuterdom to being over 50. And that couldn’t be less correct. . . .”

Weg, a USC professor and author of one of the classics in the field, “Sexuality in the Later Years” (Academic Press: 1983), emphasizes that “sexuality is much more than genitalia; it is more than orgasm and it is more than any other physical means of stimulation. It is by all means the total human being who is involved. . . .”

Dr. Robert N. Butler, former chief of the National Institute on Aging and now chairman of the department of geriatrics at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York, has written “Love & Sex After 60” (Harper & Row, revised in 1988) with Myrna I. Lewis--his wife who also is a psychotherapist and social worker.

Sexuality “is something that grows with experience,” Butler explains. “The romance of many older people can be very tender, very sensitive. It may have a lot of physicality. It may have intercourse. It may not.”

Not only are more older people living longer, but there is also a dramatic increase in the number of elderly Americans who are vigorous and in good health. They, especially, Butler says, “are not going to be denied an appropriate expression of their sexuality.”

Marcella Bakur Weiner, a gerontologist and psychologist at Brooklyn College, and her colleague, psychology professor Bernard D. Starr, have interviewed hundreds of seniors about their sex lives. In 1981, they published the results of interviews with nearly 1,000 seniors in “The Starr-Weiner Report on Sex and Sexuality in the Mature Years,” one of the first major works on sexuality among the elderly that was not done with residents of nursing homes or hospitals.

Weiner says groups of older people, once they are given leave--that is, an uncritical listener and peers with the same feelings--are candid about their sexual feelings and liberal in their sexual views.

Basically the Same

Weiner and Starr established what many specialists had long believed: Love, romance, intimacy, sensuality and sexuality are basically the same at 80 as at 18.

- Item: An 80-year-old man and his 72-year-old woman friend visit his daughter. “Where will she sleep?” the daughter whispers to her father. “With me, of course,” he says. “Never,” she says. “What kind of message is that for the children?”

- Item: An 84-year-old woman whose husband recently was placed in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease advertises in a local paper for a companion. She confides to her therapist that one caller said he was 72. “Is that about your age?” the therapist asked. “About,” she said. She now has three lovers, each in his early 70s. None of the men knows about the others, but her more pressing concern is that her children not learn of her activities at all.

These accounts reflect the upheaval in the U.S. family triggered by grandparents, though American society has not been understanding or even kind to its elders.

Butler and Lewis write: “A mythology fed by misinformation surrounds late-life sexuality. The presumption is that sexual desire automatically ebbs with age. . . . Thus an older woman who shows an evident, perhaps even a lusty, interest in sex is often assumed to be suffering from ‘emotional’ problems; and if she is obviously in her right mind and sexually active, she runs the risk of being called ‘depraved.’ ”

Lust and Lechery

Older men have it a bit better but not much. Butler and Lewis write: “Lustiness in young men is often seen as lechery in older men. . . .” Look at the terms about the aged and sex, says Butler: “Older men become ‘dirty old men,’ ‘old fools’ or ‘old goats. . . . ‘ “

Grown children, most experts agree, can be a great trial to a parent in love. They may expect the surviving parent to show loyalty to the deceased parent by remaining single. And, of course, there is the kind of general difficulty some people have in accepting sexuality in their parents.

Sometimes, among more sophisticated middle-aged children, there also is concern that the parent--usually the mother--may end up being a care-giver to another man, then will have a second loss.

To complicate matters further, adult children sometimes worry about their inheritance--and whether the new love interest will interfere.

Not Enough Men

Meantime, not every woman who is interested in a relationship is likely to find one easily, even assuming the hurdles posed by children in particular and society in general can be overcome. The reality is that there are something like six older women for every older man.

Some women are too daunted by the competition and simply withdraw from men’s company. Because of their greater numbers, many older women tend to form warm, close groups with each other--widows’ groups, they are called. These are daunting to some men, but some of the women prefer the nonsexual intimacy of their women friends to what they have always seen as a kind of submitting to a male.

Meanwhile, some men feel as though they are being attacked. This, in turn, can trigger their own insecurities. Sometimes they will seek refuge with younger women. “But,” Weg says, “that can be a kind of sad disappointment for both. Young women don’t necessarily understand the changes that come with time.”

Ways to Compensate

Indeed, there are changes with age--a man tends to have softer erections and there may be longer periods between love-making episodes. Some women may develop thinning and drying of the vaginal walls. But experts agree there are ways to overcome or compensate for these changes and others, some caused, for example, by prescription drugs.

There is no reason why sex and sensuality cannot continue to function well over a lifetime. Weg quotes a single 74-year-old grandparent who answered an interview conducted by writer Judith Wax:

“Sex isn’t as powerful a need as when you are young, but the whole feeling is there, and it is as nice as it ever was. . . .”