Sex After Sixty

Sex after sixty; couples say that advancing age is no longer an excuse for a lousy love life
Ebony, July, 1989 by Alex Poinsett, Richette L. Haywood

HE'S 74 and a retired U.S. Army forklift truck supervisor. She's 71 and a part-time receptionist. When Aretha and Jethro english celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in Atlanta two years ago, their two adult children teased them about diminishing body chemistry. But the couple's venerable role as great-grandparents doesn't keep them from regularly affirming their sexiness.
Mrs. English is amused that many of her peers donht even talk about, let along engange in, sexual activity, a bodily function she ranks in importance with respiration and digestion. She rejects social taboos against aging persons expressing sexual needs. She also rejects mythical claims that sexual desire automatically ebbs with age, declining in the 40s and hitting bottom sometime between 60 and 65. Nor does she agree with those latter-day Victorians who equate sex with S-I-N.
Like Mrs. English, many of the nation's 30 million people (one of every seven) who are 60 or older are much more active sexually than is generally believed. "People are having sex long after they start wearing reading glasses and hearing aids," says one sex behavior researcher.
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