Relationships February 18, 2017
When you think of aging, sex might not be the first concern on your mind. However, more and more research is showing that the elderly want to have sex. The problem? Nursing homes aren’t conducive to a healthy sex life.
How much sex are people 60 and over really having? And what barriers – in nursing homes and otherwise – are keeping grandma from gettin’ it on like she wants to? ENTITY recently chatted with Dr. Jennifer Berman, residential sex expert and co-host of The Doctor, and Bat Sheva Marcus, Clinical Director of Maze Women’s Sexual Health, to learn more about sexuality as men and women age.
If you want to have a healthy sex life, no matter your age, here are all the facts, stats and stories you need to know.
Considering today’s obsession with youth – seen in everything from the plethora of ant-aging products to advertisements featuring younger and younger models – the sex life of older men and women is often overlooked. In fact, though, studies and surveys have shown:
The truth is, according to Dr. Jennifer Berman, common assumptions that older individuals can’t enjoy healthy lives are just plain wrong. “I’ve had patients [in their 80s] come and say, ‘I’m wanting, in these last years of my life, to experience intimacy and sex and orgasms that I may have missed or not missed in my earlier part of life,'” she says. “Having sex at an older age just requires accepting the limitations in our body, optimizing our bodies, speaking to our health care providers, not feeling shame about it.”
Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus agrees, explaining: “I had one patient who said to me, ‘When I was younger, I was good at two things: sex and skiing. Now I’m only good at skiing! And I hate that’. After a few months of some couples work and some additional hormones, she told us she was going on vacation with her husband to enjoy the TWO things she was best at (yet again.) Healthy sex is all about attitude and commitment to make things work.”
Apparently, seniors can really put the “s” in sex.
So, seniors want sex and they have it whenever possible. So what’s the problem? Today, one of the biggest issues is nursing homes, according to a recent report by researchers at the Washington Post. First of all, getting some one-on-one “alone time” at a nursing home may be harder than finding privacy in your college dorm room: staff regularly “knock and walk,” or give a cursory knock and then enter a resident’s room. Talk about a mood killer. Not only that, but nursing homes also often limit contact between people who seem romantically involved.
Nursing homes claim that these methods of supervising and controlling residents’ behavior is for the greater good of keeping seniors safe. And, on one hand, they may be right. Between 2007 and 2011, studies show that STD rates among people 65 and older jumped to 31 percent for chlamydia and 52 percent for syphilis. As of 2014, STD tests were just as popular as colonoscopies among the 47.6 million people using Medicare, Part B.
Reasons for this spike in senior STDs could be that older people’s immune systems are more susceptible and that STD symptoms – like worsening eyesight and arthritis – can be dismissed as signs of aging. On the other hand, though, nursing homes should accept a portion of the blame. Less than 20 percent of surveyed long-term care staff members had received training about sexuality or sexual issues, according to a 2013 report by the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine. Not only that, but 30 percent of participants reported that their facility didn’t have any sexual behavior policies and another 30 percent of participants didn’t know if any policies existed. This lack of training often means nursing homes aren’t able to provide condoms or STI screening…which means if sex does happen, it might not be as safe.
By limiting residents’ privacy and relationships, nursing homes may think they’re helping to keep the elderly safe. However, they’re actually just harming residents’ sexual expression and safety.
So what needs to change for seniors to safely enjoy sex (including nursing home sex)? Policies in nursing homes, for one thing. Some homes have started happy hours or dating services to give residents the chance to embrace their sexuality or find romance, according to the Washington Post. Some fixes are even easier, like giving residents “do-not-disturb” signs to hang on their doorknobs or even passing out condoms, as is done on many college campuses.
The work doesn’t stop there, though. Doctors also need to be more aware about screening those above 65 for STDs, and the public needs to be more educated about senior sexuality and sexual health. According to Dr. Sheva, “If sex is something they [older individuals] want, they absolutely can enjoy health, passionate (and dare I say hot?) sex lives, sometime even more so than their younger counterparts.” As of 2014, there were 1.4 million residents in nursing homes all over the US. Who are we to deny them a healthy sex life if that’s within their abilities and wishes?
As people age, they may experience all sorts of losses, ranging from energy to loved ones or a home of their own. Let’s not make a “healthy sex life” an automatic part of that list.
