The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: Sexual Secrets Every Couple Should Know (31 page)

MASSAGE

If being sexual is the problem but exhaustion is not, you can exchange massages with your partner. Massage is a wonderful and important complement to sex and should be included in the whole range of your loving even when you are regularly making love. As you massage your partner, try alternating between deeper pressure and a lighter feather touch. If your partner is too tired to exchange massages, you can offer to give him or her a massage. Often we try to get all of our needs for touch met through sex. Touching and being touched both release oxytocin and lead to a sense of well-being. If your partner does not want to touch, you can offer to do the touching. Your partner may even be willing to allow you to stimulate yourself on his or her body. Rubbing your genitals on your partner’s buttocks, leg, or back can be highly pleasurable and can conclude a very enjoyable massage for all concerned.

TOUCH

Even if one or both of you are too tired for lovemaking of any sort or for massage, we strongly recommend that you take a few minutes or even just a few moments to touch and kiss before going to sleep. This will allow you to harmonize your energy and to reconnect after days of separation (physically or emotionally).

Touch, as you know by now, is important biochemically and energetically. When you embrace and kiss, send your partner healing love wherever you are touching. (Remember the energy that we convey with our eyes and our smile.) The release of oxytocin that occurs when you touch each other will increase your affection and your bonding with each other.

Lifelong Lovemaking

Connected as they were to the natural world, the Taoists saw our lives as divided into seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. But they were also passionately committed to the search for longevity and even immortality. As we discussed in chapter 5, the Taoists found in the bedroom a fountain of youth

that they knew to be as important in older age as it is in youth. Their beliefs have been confirmed by many recent studies, some of which we discussed in our earlier chapter. Indeed, the Taoists believed that people should make love until the day they die.

In our culture we glorify young sexuality and denigrate older sexuality. Indeed, older men who remain sexually desirous are called dirty old men. We assume that men’s sexual power peaks in adolescence and then declines ever after, but this comes from a general misunderstanding of sexual power. Sexual power is not simply potency (the number of sperm) or speed to erection or the number of feet that a man can spray his ejaculate.

For the Taoists, sex was not an Olympic sport. True sexual power, they believed, is about the ability to satisfy oneself and one’s partner. This ability can increase over the course of a lifetime as we understand and adjust to the physiological changes that inevitably take place. There are many things that men can do to maintain their interest in and pleasure with sex as they get older.

In our culture, older women also are assumed to lose all interest in sex, and postmenopausal women are traditionally called crones. While a woman’s fertility peaks in early adulthood, her ability for sexual pleasure can expand throughout the course of her life. With the end of fertility in menopause many women actually find that they have increased sex drive as their relative testosterone level increases. There are certainly physiological changes that take place with menopause, but these can be accommodated or even postponed through hormone replacement therapy and other means, which we discuss below.

Contrary to the stereotypes, many older adults are having much more sex than is typically assumed. In a
Consumer Reports
survey of 4,246 men and women, 80 percent of married men and women over seventy remain sexually active. Fifty-eight percent have sex at least once a week.
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Sex certainly changes as we get older and our bodies change, but this is not a slippery slope toward sexual obsolescence. However, it is easy to worry about the loss of a sexual response that we relished in our adolescence or young adulthood. The mistake we make is in assuming that our sexual desire is the same throughout our life. We worry when our sexuality—or our partner’s sexuality—changes from what we have become accustomed to.

As hormone research is making ever clearer, our sexual desire changes dramatically over the course of our lifetime, and these changes will differ greatly between the sexes and between individuals based on their hormonal profiles. What is important to remember is that each sexual stage and each

The Taoists believed that people should make love until the day they die.

80 percent of married men and women over seventy remain sexually active.

58 percent have sex at least once a week.

decade offers its own unique passionate possibilities. In fact, each new stage offers the opportunity for a more profound relationship if we are able to overcome the difficulties that occur during the tense time of transition.

The stereotypes of men wanting sex and women wanting romance are actually less true as men and women age. As men get older their testosterone level decreases and women’s testosterone level (relative to their other hormones) increases. According to the language of the Tao, men become more yin, and women become more yang. As a result, men and women actually become more compatible as they age and as their hormonal differences become less extreme.
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According to Taoists, it takes seven years to know your partner
’
s body, seven years to know your partner
’
s mind, and seven years

to know your partner
’
s spirit.

Love Just Gets Better and Better

For Taoists, the goal of our love lives is ever-increasing intimacy and spiritual growth. Because Healing Love is based on the ecstatic exchange of sub-tle energy and not on the aerobic frenzy of pounding flesh, sexual satisfaction is not based on having a nubile body. While the frenzy is fun while it lasts and wonderful when it returns, Taoists know it is only one way of sharing love with one’s partner.

According to the Taoists, it takes years to reach the heights of physical, emotional, and spiritual union. It was often said that it takes seven years to know your partner’s body, seven years to know your partner’s mind, and seven years to know your partner’s spirit. According to the Tao, it takes twenty-one years just to get acquainted! The longer we are together the more we know each other and the better our bond can be.

This ancient insight was echoed in a university study of long-term marriages in which researchers found that, contrary to our cultural stereotypes, “old love is the best love.” Robert W. Levenson, psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, concluded,

What we actually thought we would see is a kind of fatigue quality in these relationships. But that’s not what we see. They’re vibrant, they’re alive, they’re emotional, they’re fun, they’re sexy, they’re not burned out.
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According to another recent study of older adults, sexually active seniors are the happiest men and women. But to remain sexually active, you need to maintain your sexual health and learn how to respond to your body’s different physiologic needs.

Sexual Health for Older Women

BEFORE THE “PAUSE”

Significant changes in desire and sexual response frequently occur around menopause. Sex hormones begin to decline in women ten to fifteen years prior to when their periods stop, usually between the ages of forty and fifty. Usually these women have had very satisfying sexual lives and note a decrease in their sexual desire and ability to have orgasms.

In addition to the decrease in sexual hormones, this time of life can include many different stressful demands, such as young children, aging parents, career responsibilities, and so forth. Because of this, in part, the forties and early fifties are the most common age for women to become clinically depressed, which dramatically affects their sex drive. It is important at this time to consult a physician if your changing hormonal levels necessitate medical treatment. Many women who have not yet reached the menopausal

While in our culture we denigrate older sexuality, the Taoists believed that people should make love until the day they die.

stage may benefit from low-dose oral contraceptives, which will increase their estrogen level and their sexual desire.
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After women
fi
nish going through menopause, their relative testosterone level is higher and some women experience a resurgence in their desire.

MENOPAUSE

With the gradual onset of menopause, women suffer further symptoms from the often-dramatic decrease of estrogen. Many women experience hot flashes, anxiety, insomnia, and mood swings. As if this weren’t enough to affect their sex drive, many physiological changes take place in women’s sex-ual organs. Significant thinning of the vaginal tissues occurs, leading to frequent vaginal infections and itching. Compounding the problem, this estrogen withdrawal causes reduced lubrication in the vagina.

Fortunately, many of these sexual problems can be remedied through hormone replacement therapy or alternative methods. It is worth mentioning that should you choose to do nothing, for most women the hot flashes, anxiety, insomnia, and mood swings tend to go away after the transition to menopause is complete (usually within one to two years after menstruation stops). Unfortunately, the thinning of the vaginal wall and the decrease in lubrication, which can sometimes cause pain with intercourse and more frequent infections, remain. These changes, however, can be minimized by the use of a good lubricant and by more gentle thrusting during intercourse. Topical estrogen creams can also help with vaginal irritation and dryness. As mentioned above, after women finish going through menopause, their relative testosterone level is higher and some women experience a resurgence in their desire.

Hormone replacement therapy is an important option for many menopausal women. It has been shown to increase desire, sensitivity, and both frequency and intensity of orgasm.
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It also alleviates the symptoms of menopause discussed above as long as the hormone therapy is continued. Unfortunately, long-term studies on the effects of hormone replacement therapy are not yet available. Though it appears safe in the great majority of women, there is still some concern about increasing the likelihood of breast cancer. Hormone replacement therapy reduces the risk of osteoporosis and fractures, but its effects on heart disease and stroke remain unclear. Studies are being done that will clarify these risks.
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If you are interested in consider-ing hormone replacement therapy, you should discuss your options and risk factors with your physician.

Hormone replacement therapy improves sexual enjoyment for most women. However, many women still experience a decline in their sexual desire after menopause. This is because estrogen, the hormone being

replaced, is only one of the hormones that decreases during menopause. Testosterone and its cousin,
DHEA
, also decrease, causing a waning in sex drive. There are good studies that show that for short periods of time testosterone replacement significantly improves sex drive and overall sexual satisfaction (as well as mood) in women after menopause. Testosterone is most widely available for women in combination with estrogen in tablet form. Unfortunately, oral testosterone may not be effective in the long term and may be associated with some significant health risks.
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Newer and safer forms of testosterone replacement therapy will be available in the near future.

For those women who choose not to take hormone replacement therapy, other supplements are available that can ease the transition to menopause. Phytoestrogens are natural estrogens that can be found in foods, most commonly soy products. Though they don’t offer all the benefits of hormone replacement therapy, soy products added to your diet may alleviate some menopausal symptoms.
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Natural progesterones in creams and oral forms also decrease the symptoms of menopause. The treatment of menopause is rapidly evolving, and newer, more effective products are increasingly available. While some people now believe that menopause will someday be managed like other hormonal imbalances, it is important to mention that women have been going through menopause for millennia and have continued to have active, satisfying sex lives.

Sexual Health for Older Men

While men do not have as dramatic a hormonal change as women, they also undergo significant hormonal changes in their forties and fifties that medical experts are starting to call “viropause.” As mentioned earlier, a man’s testosterone decreases over the course of his lifetime, and this decrease in male sexual hormones can cause many physiological changes, especially around middle age. For example, most men who are over fifty (and often younger) need significantly more direct genital stimulation to get and maintain an erection.

Gone are the days of spontaneous erections in the middle of algebra class. (Fortunately, also long gone are the days of algebra class.) Those awkward erections may have been embarrassing, but once this now-familiar sexual response changes, men may pine for its return.