Why I'd Rather Sleep with a Man over 50

By Katherine Anne Forsythe, American Sexuality Magazine. Posted September 15, 2008.

Rippling, hard muscles. Firm six pack. Tight, round butt. He undresses you hurriedly. Your pulse is racing. You open your eyes to see a chiseled twenty-five-year-old face with the look of fiery hunger burning in his eyes. He wants you desperately. You want him madly. Your kisses are delicious and wet and deep and full. Your passion builds. Your breath comes faster. He pumps faster and faster, harder and harder ...

Sound good? Before you decide, consider this: The whole scene, start to finish, took twenty minutes, max. Fortunately, he is resilient. He has a brief recovery time-out, and you start all over again. This time, if you are lucky, he thinks about you and your orgasm. If you are in a typical situation, you may reach orgasm or you might feel pressure to fake it. Of course, he thinks you are loving it. And, why wouldn't he? You are telling him so, over and over, as we are taught to do as women.

In the end, though the experience was hot and passionate, the emphasis was on performance, not pleasing.

Not all experiences with every twenty-five-year-old man turn out this way, but this scenario is not uncommon. Truth be told, you probably had fun. It could have been a lot more pleasing, however, if you were somehow able to tell him to slow down, tease, play, and give you what you want. Chances of that happening are slim, though, especially in a moment of raw lust like this. Even in the most solid of relationships, sex is a very difficult subject to discuss. Consequently, couples don't talk, they perform. Most younger men do what they are hard wired to do (get erect and ejaculate) and women (literally) go along for the ride.

Let me tell you, it can be so much better. All it takes is an old guy!

Men over fifty, sixty, seventy-five, even ninety can be great lovers for three basic reasons. Primarily, they are not in a hurry. Secondly, they put their partner's needs first. Thirdly, they have learned that great sex doesn't have to include intercourse at all -- it's only one option.

Why, then, do we denounce older men as lovers? Men in the second half of life -- men over fifty -- have taken a heavy hit in our society. The pack of mistruths perpetuated by advertising is overwhelming. Let's look at what we've been told. Performance is all that matters to women. Men in midlife-plus have to struggle to get and maintain erections. Sustained intercourse is for the younger man; older men just can't stay hard enough to "do it" for any length of time. Men (and women) become asexual and lose interest in sex as they age.

Whoa! What man wants to chance not getting hard when the passion play begins? When the suggestion of failure looms, enter the heroes: Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra. These medications manage to engorge his penis with blood, and may (not always) save the day by helping him get that hefty, manly hard-on that gives him firm entry when called upon to perform. There can be trouble in paradise, however. These are not magic pills. When dependence on the drug -- rather than the natural libido -- becomes the source of confidence, performance anxiety is heightened, and now the seed of worry grows: What if I forget the pill the next time? The man begins to believe he has lost his ability to get hard without the drug. The diagnosis of ED (erectile dysfunction) in this country has reached epidemic proportions, thanks in part to performance anxiety induced by the suggestion of erectile failure.

All the red-flagged side effects of these drugs aside, let's stop the presses. The point is that an older man does not need the drug to have incredible sex. We're judging success in the sexual experience with the wrong set of criteria. The whole premise has taken a wrong turn. If Shakespeare's mantra was, "the play's the thing," we can say that our conventional thinking has adopted this mantra for men: "the erection's the thing." What if we changed that assertion? What if we took the emphasis off erections, and off intercourse, and off orgasm? What a concept! What if we decided that having sex was about pleasuring each other, taking time to explore bodies, building up passion intentionally, gradually, bit by bit, savoring each move? What if intercourse became just one option on a menu of lots of options? What if great sex happened over hours, not minutes? What if playing and teasing and opening up to new erotic ideas became part of your regular repertoire? What if you talked about what pleased you and what didn't, and your partner acted on it? What if you had a partner who was more interested in pleasuring you than in satisfying himself?

That's why sex is better with an older guy. Older men have a quiet confidence and patience that allows enjoyment of the entire sexual experience, yours and his. The mellowness of having been "around the block" with age -- and, most likely, a high number of partners -- permits him to let go of having to rush, and prove, and perform. Without those pressures, older men (and women) can see themselves as equal partners in a titillating, creative escapade. Creativity and curiosity allow variety in new erotic adventures: expanding play with oral sex, sampling new sex toys, play acting, even an evening of cuddling, fondling and holding, among others. Everything slows down or speeds up according the needs of the partners.

See more stories tagged with: sex, aging, intimacy

Katherine Anne Forsythe, MSW, has been a sexuality educator with a specialty in intimacy and aging for over twenty years.

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