I’m Learning It’s Better with Age

As a widower going into the seventh decade of my life, I began to consider what it would be like to be in an intimate relationship again.

A wise friend I spoke with about this told me, “At your age, your relationship can look like whatever you want it to look like.”

“You raised your kids, you worked at your job, and you pleased everyone you need to please, so now you get to do what works for you,” she said. “If there is something you want or need in your relationship, you can ask for it. The other person can say yes to it if it works for them, but you don’t need to settle if they say no.”

Before I came to this stage of life, when I was much younger, I remember hearing that some older persons found that sex and intimacy as they aged were the best of their lives. I remember thinking then that I really did not want to bring these images into my mind too much, as my entire process of acculturation to sex and intimacy up to that point concerned a focus on youth.

And yet, now that I find myself to be an older adult, I realize that, of course, intimacy and sex should be better at this age! It seems to make some sense that you get better at the things you practice, so maybe there was a reason for all the drama and heart aches of early relationships: we just weren’t very good at it yet.

What I realize, now that I am entering that period of older adulthood, is that it seems to make sense that something that I’ve been practicing all my life — intimacy and sex — would only get better if I kept practicing them. Now that I’m not working every day and raising kids and stressed out all the time, I have time to be present with my partner, and we have time both to be spontaneously intimate together and to make plans in advance to have time to spend intimately together.

But the lesson that really comes from having intimate relationships over the course of decades is this: intimacy doesn’t just happen — it takes work! It is not necessarily easy to know what you want in a relationship, and then it is not easy to know how to communicate what you what, or what you need, to someone else, and to have dialogues on subjects of intimacy.

I wish I could say that this comes easily to me now that I’m older, but one of the things I lost when my wife of 25 years passed away was the ease of familiarity and practice. After years of being together, we didn’t need to talk about these things much. Now, with a new partner, comes the effort of being articulate and reciprocal in talking about wants and needs, and what does and doesn’t work.

What is clear to me, in starting a relationship with a new partner, is how much good intimacy — and good sex! — depend on communication. For me, it can be challenging to put into words with a new partner the things I want, and to ask her about the things she wants. But at the same time, what I am learning is that, in fact, it is true that some things can get better as one gets older, and that includes intimacy … and sex.

Mark Lamers, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Eureka.