There should be no upper age limit to your ability to get some kind of sexual enjoyment. But of course many people would rather believe that sex is for the under 40. Until of course you are 39 or 49 or 59 etc. I’m going to be 59 in August and in my 20s I found it hard to imagine sex being part of my life by the time I was 60. Mind you my Sex life in my 20’s wasn’t all that much to write home about. I truly believe though that sex is for everyone (so long as over the age of and able to provide consent).
But sex in older life isn’t without problems and anxieties. Brigit asks in this week’s Erotic Journal Challenge:
What, if anything, about sex (or your sex life/Sexuality) distresses you…or what part(s) of your Sex Life/sexuality have distressed others?
I’ve written at length about some of the problems I’ve encountered with sex as I’ve aged and gone through the menopause. Painful sex and difficult penetration, lack of libido and disappearing orgasms to mention a few. I guess my biggest fear is that Master will some how go off me and not want to have sex with me or that he might go off with someone else. I’m pretty sure after 7 years together that isn’t going to happen. But it is a deep seated fear. That I am in reality not good enough, sexy enough etc. Funnily enough I don’t think he suffers from the same fears and he is right not to.
In terms of distressing another my thoughts turn to my son and his reactions when I first brought Master home and he stayed over.
“I just didn’t know what was going on”
A few months ago I was talking to my now 30 year old son about his reactions to me having Master over to sleep. He told me that it wasn’t that he disapproved but that he didn’t know what was happening and reacted accordingly. He has a point.
My son went off to university with his parents apparently happily married. There were fights and he obviously knew about them, but never suspected I might have fallen out of love with his dad. Little changed though until he went on a year abroad to California. In February we travelled to visit him to celebrate his 21st birthday. We took he and his girlfriend to Las Vegas and spent lots of time with him. In June he returned home and by then I’d embarked on an affair. I managed to keep this under wraps, after all he wasn’t home much, until just before Christmas when his dad found out. Relations and communication with my ex was bad enough, but I never really tried to explain anything to my son.
By the following summer when he graduated, things between his dad and me had completely broken down. My ex behaved terribly, like a spoilt child, at the graduation. Soon after he began to spend more and more time away from home, but it was difficult to answer my son’s questions about why. In the event my relationship with Steve ended, although we did pick up again later.
Fast forward to Feb 2014 and my ex was barely home. He’d spun us some lie at Christmas and was absent. I met Master and once we had been seeing each other a few weeks I brought him home. My son acted very oddly, especially when he realised we were in bed together on the Sunday morning. After that he would leave when Master arrived, come back after we were in bed or not at all. During the week he was fine, but at weekends he started to stay away. Around that time he met his now wife and as she had her own place it wasn’t long before he began staying there and eventually moved in.
This was funnily enough the turning point. Because Master and I both had to load our cars up due to the amount of stuff my son was taking. That very act of generosity seemed to change his opinion. We met up with them a few times and Master seemed to win him over.
Now though I know that it wasn’t that Master was sleeping with me in our home that was the problem. It was the fact that we struggled to communicate with each other. At the time, my son just wanted me to tell him what was going on. Meanwhile I didn’t feel it was right that I should. I think I was wrong. He is a sensitive and caring man who wanted what was best for his mum. But needed her to tell him things would be ok. Which of course they are. Our relationship is better for the fact we can now talk about those times and I can at last explain how things were for me.