One Thing Leads to Another

Surely this has happened to you: You read one article, and it leads you to another. From that second article, you’re pointed to another. Before you know it, you’ve spent an hour diving into a topic that wasn’t quite on your to-do list.

Today I’m glad I did. The first article was “A Good Sex Life Can Help Older Couples Cope with Illness and Other Difficulties,” in the Washington Post (a long title, but you don’t have to read the whole article to get the point). That led me to the full research in The Journals of Gerontology. And a reference in the full research prompted me to seek out an earlier article by researcher Adena M. Galinsky, published by the National Institute of Health.

That article, published in 2012, is called “Sexual Touching and Difficulties with Sexual Arousal and Orgasm among U.S. Older Adults.” The author defines “sexual touching” as “non-genitally focused sexual behavior,” including “but not limited to, kissing, stroking, massaging, and holding anywhere from one part to the entirety of a partner’s body.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is foreplay, and what I love about this article is that it presents empirical data of its importance! With more foreplay, both men and women experienced fewer “difficulties with orgasm, sexual pleasure, and sexual arousal” and more physical pleasure in their relationships.

We all have “sexual scripts,” Galinsky says, which we learned growing up and tell us, without our thinking about it, how to be intimate. Depending on where and when you and your partner learned about sex and romance and relationships, your scripts may not include much sexual touching. If that’s the case, it’s time to call “Rewrite!”

Having the time and the cues of desirability, safety, intimacy, and arousal are critical to us in midlife. If we don’t have them and still expect our bodies to respond as though we’re 20, we’re setting ourselves up. And we can fall into the downward spiral I’ve talked about before: We’re uncomfortable or unsatisfied when we have sex, so we’re unmotivated for a repeat performance. Because we’re not having sex, it’s less comfortable next time we try, so we put it off longer. We may begin to wonder if there’s something wrong with us, which is the opposite of feeling sexy. And before we know it, we’ve abandoned a part of ourselves that made us feel loved and lovely and powerful—and our partners quite happy!

You can talk to your partner about a collaborative revision of your “sexual scripts.” You can share this guest post by a “man friend” of MiddlesexMD, or this “Open Letter: How to Really Turn Me On” to start the conversation. And then, you know, one thing can lead to another. In a very good way.