Are Senior Relationships Mostly Chickens Coming Home To Roost?

Are most senior relationships either monuments to "settling" or just plain awful . . . or is it just the crowd I am aware of? Or, . . . . do we just not care as much about anything as we get older? As a group are we a stable boring bunch or cynical cheaters, adulterers, backroom porn customers, lonely drinkers . . . . or is there something better somewhere else that everyone knows about that I missed when I last looked around?

I certainly do not claim to know the answers to this, but I do know that people look at me kind of funny when I say that I prefer to do things with my wife, that I don't have side conversations about which I don't tell her, that we are as involved in all aspects of our lives as we were when we first met.

Over a quarter century ago now a favorite aunt was waxing eloquent one evening about how one settles into a relationship in such a way that sex and love are assumed and don't need to be affirmed all the time. To which her husband, arguably as perfect a gentleman as I have ever met, spoke up saying "If that is your idea of marriage then I say that your idea of marriage is a crock of shit." That really got my attention especially since I had never heard him talk that way.

I recounted the story to another aunt who smiled and said "Yes. He is and always has been a genuine romantic." I already knew that she and her husband were real romantics too. They both assured me that they had their share of arguments and didn't agree on everything, that they just did it behind closed doors, but I never saw a hint of that. Just genuine affection and mutual respect. If they said they kept that even when they were angry with each other, I believed it. I still do.

I chose to pursue the latter. Truthfully it has been quite a challenge, but not one I intend to back away from. And that's where it stands now.

Senior Sex Movie

Finally found a movie with an ongoing theme of senior sex (not just a short bit) and it was a comedy!?! Oh my! Oh well! I guess something is better than nothing.


Meet the Fockers casts Barbra Streisand as the senior sex therapist mother of one of the characters. A senior sex therapist. What the heck is that? Is there any science that supports specific interventions that a senior sex therapist might initiate? I'll bet there isn't.


Should there be? Well, I see no reason why not. The recent survey of senior sexual behavior published last August in the New England Journal of Medicine got more than a few notices in the mainstream media, but was it respectful? Was it reported with a bit of discomfort? Is anyone truly comfortable with images of their mother or grandmother with her heels in the air squealing with delight? I don't know.


You can type "senior sex therapy" into your search box and find an article like this one. It's a good article, but notice how much of it is aimed at correcting physical ailments that curtail sex and how little is about the emotional/relational components. I suspect that says as much about the current state of knowledge as it does any conscious decision of what to report on.


Anyone know where to get one of those mats they used in the movie?

Mindfulness Practice For Seniors: . . . . . . A Skeleton Key? ..................or A Waste Of Time?

Mindfulness practice of one kind or another probably offers more help in difficult and changing times than anything else someone could suggest. Why?


Mindfulness practice is totally generic and at the same time it is totally personal.

• The only belief that it starts with is that the answer to whatever we're asking is there to be found, if we'll only stop talking and stop thinking long enough to allow it to be observed.


• Whatever we observe, experience, come to, will necessarily come through us in the right form and way for us.

Next time someone tries to tell you that they know exactly what you should do in your relationships, in your sex life, in your thoughts, they may be telling you exactly the right thing, . . . . but that will probably be for them.


Mindfulness practice is the generic tool that returns the specific solution.