To enjoy better sex (and more of it)
So you want great sex as you move into your fifties?
First of all, talk about the issues you face with your partner. This may be difficult for you to begin with, and it is a pity that this first step should present a problem of communication. Reticence, inhibition and embarrassment have made us doers rather than talkers; and yet wherever you find a sexually happy couple, you will find a couple who have been able to talk to one another about their desires and their experiences in the most intimate terms. It is essential for a couple to be able to talk to one another about sex if they are to establish real sexual connection. Believe me, it is possible for any couple to overcome their inhibitions in talking about sex. It is the first test of the real intention of a couple to get a great sex life that they succeed in this. But there is no need to set yourselves too high a standard. A word or two - 'Come into me', 'Are you coming?' 'Was it all right?' - will break the ice, and if helped along by gestures such as taking the partner's hand and placing it on the breast - or penis or clitoris - and whispering, 'Play with me here' it should not be too difficult to establish effective two-way communication.
Normally, I am dead against making love in the dark because it deprives the couple of so much stimulus in the way of looking at the partner's body, and especially his or her face where you can see what they are experiencing reflected. Sex can never be enjoyed thoroughly unless you can see each other.
At the same time that you are setting up your communications, you should also be observing your own and your partner's responses to foreplay and intercourse. The sort of things you will want to know are: how often do you feel the urge to make love and how often does your partner? Have there been any changes in his/her sensitive areas since your early days? Are there any forms of caress which are especially exciting to him/her? Is there any position for intercourse which seems to be particularly effective? Does your partner seem satisfied with his/her orgasm? and so on. Talk about them as fully as you can.
And how are you about appearing naked in front of each other? With the blemishes and weaknesses which almost certainly appear in the middle aged body, there's a natural tendency to some reticence in appearing naked before your partner. But your partner has a right to know by sight the body with which s/he is going to enjoy sex. Perhaps, if you have let yourself go physically to seed, letting your partner have a good look at you will encourage you to take your figure in hand more vigorously. And get rid of your clothes when you make love. The sensual response of naked flesh against naked flesh is one of the most powerful stimulants there is. And when you pass 50, you cannot afford to overlook any aid to sensation you can think of, or anything that comes your way. In these early stages, until you have established a new rhythm of sex, you must use, and deliberately so, every technique you can think of. Maybe if you had experimented with sex techniques in the past, and done so thoroughly, with adventurous foreplay and exciting sexual positions, you would not be reading this website now.
If you more or less gave up sex some time ago, the best way to make a new start is to use a wide variety of new sex techniques and positions, to experiment with new ways of satisfying each other, and to ensure that you have good communication between the two of you. On the other hand, you won't be able to use all the techniques you might have enjoyed in your earlier days, because of the physical limitations imposed on you by your age. At the same time you must have a variety of techniques on which to ring the changes in order to prevent boredom creeping in again.
Here are some suggestions about how you might enjoy greater variety and stimulation in your sex life.
A great deal is going to depend on your attitude to sex. Often men have a more open approach to sex than women. Men are, by and large, much more open about sex than women. Why? Well, a woman can be sexually aroused, and though naked, can be seen to be only if examined very closely indeed. But when the man is sexually aroused, it is difficult for him to hide his erect penis even when he is fully clothed. The erect penis is the sign of his masculine sexuality, just as the protective folds of the woman's vaginal lips could be seen as hiding her sexuality from public view.
Sex is fundamentally the most intimate of all human relationships. If it is worth anything at all, and particularly if you look on it as the visible symbol of your love for one another, then there is no reason at all why there should not be absolute frankness of thought and speech and deed between the two partners in the privacy of their bedrooms. There should be no holding back at all between the loving couple, in the whole realm of sex, whether it be in discussion or in action.
A lot of women dislike engaging in mouth-genital caresses. (When the man stimulates the woman's clitoris and vaginal entrance with his mouth and tongue, the caress is known as cunnilingus; when the woman kisses, licks and sucks the man's penis, the caress is known as fellatio.) Both cunnilingus and fellatio have been practiced by men and women for many thousands of years, perhaps since prehistoric days.
If a woman is totally honest, she has to admit that the caress of her partner's lips and tongue on her clitoris, vaginal-lips, outer and inner lips, and her vaginal-entrance is among the most exquisitely sensuous, voluptuous sensations she can experience. Men find fellatio equally enjoyable.
I think many women's refusal to fellate their husbands is based on the fear that their men will come in their mouth, or that the semen will have an unpleasant taste. Most men want to be fellated, but not necessarily to orgasm. They may prefer the caress to be used as part of love-play, to build up sexual excitement, so that when they come with the penis in the vagina, the final sensations of orgasm are as magnificent as they can be after love-play of this kind.
Women ought to know that many men have a powerful desire to be fellated. Even if your partner hasn't told you so, he will still want fellatio. Probably he has been dying for you to do it to him, and hasn't liked to ask you - quite simply - 'Kiss my penis,' 'Suck my penis', or 'Go down on me, please' because he has felt you might object or be offended.
So it helps for the female partner of a man over fifty, even if communication hasn't been good up this point, to make quite plain to him now what you are and aren't willing to do with him sexually - which, within the context of a loving relationship, really should be anything that isn't harmful to either of you, doesn't offend your principles, and gives pleasure to the other partner. And of course, this includes oral sex.
If what holds you back from fellatio is the fear of him spurting his semen into your mouth, tell him so. He may not want to come in your mouth, or if he does (and most men do) he may well be willing to compromise by telling you when he is about to come and then having you finish him off by hand.
Equally if you have the urge to be the recipient of cunnilingus, do not fail to tell your partner. I think you will be surprised at how quickly he will agree to pleasure you in this way. All you have to say is, 'Kiss me down there,' or 'Lick me, or 'Go down on me'.
If you do accept fellatio as an ordinary part of sex, I am sure you will be surprised how useful it is going to be for a man over fifty. As your partner gets older he becomes more and more ineffectively aroused by psychological stimuli. That is to say, he won't get erections any more when he looks at pictures of beautiful girls, or even at beautiful girls themselves, or, even I regret to say, possibly when he looks at you. In some cases he may not become erect even when he fondles you. This is absolutely normal for many men over fifty-five, and quite a number of men over forty-five find themselves in the same position. But he won't usually be entirely without an erection; all he needs is some slight encouragement. Usually fondling of his penis is enough, but if you want to do a really good job in getting him erect, offer to fellate him. And on those occasions when he doesn't even start off with a partial erection, fellatio is pretty much a sure-fire way to get him erect.
An older man's inability to achieve spontaneous erection has nothing to do with erectile dysfunction. It's a natural process. As men age, they find their sexual response is lower than it used to be to the same stimuli. It takes more effort - and different sexual techniques - to get a man aroused. But once he is aroused, he will enjoy sex and be able to take part in it just as much as he ever did.
Talking of this and impotence, it is essential that you should understand your man's sexual challenges, and, above all, be supportive, as he must be towards your changes when you arrive at the menopause. If you allow yourself to be irritated by his failure to achieve erection, or show him your irritation in what you say or do, you will only make matters worse, as a cycle of anxiety, loss of erection, more anxiety, followed by even less chance of gaining an erection, becomes established.
This is particularly true of those two predominant male sexual problems: premature ejaculation and delayed (or retarded) ejaculation. Premature ejaculation is when the man cannot control his progress towards orgasm, and gets so aroused, just by stimulating his partner, that he comes at the slightest provocation, usually soon after he gets his penis into the vagina, and sometimes even before he gets it that far. The difficulty with PE is that he leaves his partner unfulfilled. She can usually then only reach orgasm with the help of manual stimulation. And while PE is thought of as a problem that mainly affects the young, not enough research has been done into its origins to know what is the exact cause of it - either in young men or men in midlife.
Certainly lack of psychological control is contributory, and certainly an over-intense response to sexual stimulation plays quite a large part, with younger men, at any rate. But why, after successful years of lovemaking when there has never been any sign of PE, the problem should suddenly afflict middle aged men who did not suffer from it when they were younger is something of a mystery. Maybe it has to do with being anxious about being able to stay erect, over-aroused emotionally, and consequently reaching the point of ejaculatory inevitability too soon.
Retarded ejaculation - also known as delayed ejaculation - is another problem which you can work on at home, though the assistance of a therapist may be helpful. Delayed ejaculation means a man takes a very long time to come - if he manages to come at all. As a general rule, the ability to delay reaching orgasm or coming off is looked on with favor because it gives the woman time to enjoy orgasm, not once, but two or three times, which can be more satisfying; and some men also deliberately delay ejaculation in order to draw out the pleasurable sensations. But there is a point at which any further delay in reaching orgasm produces friction that may become painful.
Young and healthy men experience retarded ejaculation from time to time, but this generally happens when they have had sexual intercourse to orgasm several times in quick succession. In other men it is usually psychological in origin; and they suffer because of it. Their partner may think they do not see them as attractive, she may be sore internally and frustrated emotionally, and, for the man, there is no release of sexual tension.
Temporary male failures connected with erection are not uncommon over the age of fifty. There is always the possibility of a man losing his erection after he has entered his partner but before either of them has had a chance to reach orgasm. This is a very distressing problem for most men, not least because it can happen so unexpectedly and so rapidly. If his erection recedes so completely that his penis slips out of his partner's vagina, you can try fellating him back to erection. Another alternative is to fondle his penis as he brings you off with cunnilingus or masturbation. Knowing that he is bringing you off may go some way to arousing him to erection again, and this combined with your fondling of his penis may make him erect. If so, as soon as you have reached orgasm he may want and be able to go back inside your vagina, which will give you the benefit of prolonged thrusting sensations, perhaps even as you enjoy your orgasm.
More often than not, however, the penis, though limp, does not quickly shrink back to its normal flaccid size, but remains larger than normal and does not slip out of the vagina. If you act quickly you, his female partner that is, may be able to restore his full erection within a few seconds, in the following way.
If you are using the man on top sex position, and he is lying inside your legs, change position so that his legs are lying outside yours and he is gripping your thighs between his. At the same time you should grip his penis as hard as you can with the muscles of your vaginal entrance. (I will explain how to do this presently.) If your arms are long enough reach a hand round over his buttocks and feel his scrotum carefully. His scrotum, by the way, should be lying on top of your closed legs.
Find the spot on the scrotum above the balls, as near to the bottom of the penis as possible, and grip it firmly - but not nipping it so as to cause pain - and pull it away from you quite hard, at the same time gripping the penis with the vaginal muscles, to avoid pulling it out of you. This has the effect, if you pull hard enough, of pulling on the penis skin and stretching the frenulum, where most of the nerves are which control erection and orgasm. The effect of stretching the frenulum is to stimulate these nerves and within a very short time his erection may be restored. The effect of your gripping his penis with your vaginal muscles will be to maintain your own progress towards orgasm, and with good fortune, intercourse that might easily have had to be abandoned can be brought to a satisfactory conclusion agreeable to both. But you must act quickly; either as soon as you find you can't feel the penis inside you, or your man tells you he has lost his erection, which he can do in such terms as, 'I've lost it,' or 'I've gone small', or 'It's gone soft'. Never at any time is it more essential for the two partners to be able to communicate precisely with one another, as it is during intercourse - especially after the age of fifty.
Stretching the frenulum in this way may also be successful, in resolving retarded or delayed ejaculation. Once again the woman can grip the man's penis with her vaginal muscles; but in this case it is better not to change positions. To reach the scrotum, slip your hand between your two pubic areas and take hold of it in the spot I described above. Pull downwards at the same time as your husband pushes his penis upwards into you. The pressure of his pubic area on your general clitoral area will keep you aroused despite the intervention of your hand, if you keep it a little to one side.
Quite a number of men, by the way, occasionally use this method of stretching the frenulum as an alternative method of masturbation. It is quite likely that your husband will have done so once, possibly as a boy or young man, and he will be able to show you what to do. By the way, the best method of taking hold of the scrotum is to ring your thumb and forefinger fairly tightly round it and pushing away from you, with his balls under the palm of your hand, as though you were trying to squeeze them out of the bag.
I am being constantly surprised by the number of men who do not realize, until they discover it accidentally, how sensitive to stimulation the scrotum is to very light strokes of the palm of a woman's hand. Begin at the base and very lightly draw the palm up over the scrotum, just brushing it. If you continue slowly with the same kind of touch up over the penis until you reach the penis-tip, you will surprise your partner, if this kind of touch is new to him, by the intensity of the sensations with which you will provide him.
If you do not know them already, go exploring your husband's body with him as your guide, in order to discover his most sensitive spots. (He should return the favor for you!) One very sensitive spot is the perineum, the area situated behind the scrotum extending from the base of the penis to the anus. It is extremely sensitive to light and firm stroking with the fingertips or tongue.
Masters and Johnson's research in the 1950's suggests that your nipples will become hard and erect when you are sexually aroused by the mouth or fingers of your partner until you are in your late seventies. Your clitoris will also respond with erection and behave exactly as it did when you were younger, except that it may require longer stimulation. Your outer vaginal lips will not swell and open like they did earlier when you are past the age of fifty-five or sixty; this is due to the reduced hormone levels after the menopause. Your inner vaginal lips will continue to swell a little throughout the sixties, but they will gradually lose the power to do so. Vaginal lubrication may gradually decrease production of its slippery fluid, sooner or later stopping in some women, though by no means all women.
It is in the vagina that the greatest changes take place after the menopause. I have already written about the thinning and smoothing of the vaginal walls which may give rise to discomfort during intercourse as you get older, and how this may be thickened again, by hormone replacement as prescribed by your doctor. This is not likely to occur until your sixties and seventies, but can always be put right by treatment.
If your vagina also becomes shorter and narrower as you grow older, your partner can always adjust to your length - with your help - and the narrowing is really a bonus, for it will help you to have closer contact with the penis. This will heighten the sensations during sex for both of you.
You can develop the muscles at the entrance of the vagina, so that you can contract and relax it at will. Some women teach themselves how to do this when they are younger, but it is surprising how many women do not know that they can control this muscle - which contracts involuntarily when you have an orgasm - in the same way that the man can control the muscles that make his penis jerk.
You will find it easier to learn this technique if you use a smooth round object like a dildo or vibrator. Anyhow, whatever you use, it should be about four inches round, with a rounded end and it must be clean. Having lubricated it with saliva, insert it carefully about two inches into the vagina and then try to grip on it with the muscles of the vaginal entrance.
At first it may feel that you cannot budge the muscle at all. But don't give up! It will begin to respond after a time, and with as little as five minutes' practice twice a day, you should have the sensation that you are actually gripping the instrument tightly with your vaginal entrance. When you reach this stage, use a less thick vibrator and practice until you feel you are gripping on that. When you reach this stage you will have full control of the muscle. You grip and relax when you do this: don't try and keep up a continuous grip.
Besides being useful for holding a half-erect penis in your vagina and helping to stimulate it back to erection, it is also a useful technique to have in cases of delayed or retarded ejaculation. The wave-like gripping of the muscle about the base of the penis is very stimulating to the man when his penis is erect, and I have known two cases of retarded ejaculation cured almost entirely by the stimulation afforded by this muscle. When you have perfect control of the muscle you should continue to have two or three gripping sessions - without using any instrument - a week, to keep the muscle toned. Better still, use the Kegelmaster, an appliance designed specifically for vaginal exercises.
The uterus also becomes much smaller after the menopause. This is not likely to cause any repercussions in your sex life. It will still contract when you reach orgasm, and it will add its sensations to the others. Actually, then, as you grow older, your sexual responses will not change very much. Indeed, you are in some ways in a much superior position to your male partner, whose sexual responses may be really affected by encroaching age.