Occam's Razor

Men will notice some changes to their libido as they age. With rare exceptions, your libido is going to go down. This is primarily because the level of testosterone in your blood is going down. It decreases with age.

This is generally greatly disturbing to the middle aged man. That’s because they envision themselves as 20-something for life. Their hair may be receding and their gut may be expanding — all typical signs of aging in men — but somehow they figure their penis is exempt. All of this is entirely natural, but sadly a lot of this information is simply not discussed.

Physicians will usually write men a prescription for Viagra or Cialis easily enough. Rarely will physicians clue you in on what’s really likely to happen to your sex drive as you age. What it amounts to is that if you want a sex life after forty or fifty, you need to reduce your expectations. You need to stop chasing the illusion that you are 20-something. You need to communicate really well with your partner. And you need to change how you make love. That’s quite an agenda! No wonder so many men simply withdraw from sex. It’s too much pressure!

It’s also more than a little embarrassing. It used to be that erections just happened. In many cases, they arrived unwelcome and for no reason at all. Perhaps it was a fleeting memory of a previously great sexual encounter that caused you to shift legs on the subway to avoid embarrassment. When you are 40-something or older, the memory is still there, but it’s unlikely to kick off an erection. You may find that given the choice between making love to a willing and decently attractive woman and watching football, you’ll choose the football.

It’s easy for you to feel horny with relatively high levels of testosterone surging through your blood. Most men who use anti-impotence drugs soon realize that while once aroused these drugs help them maintain an erection, there is also now the issue of getting aroused. It usually helps to have a surplus of testosterone in the bloodstream to feel arousal. To the extent men have it, it comes from longer intervals between orgasms. And that’s when it becomes embarrassing. If you are used to shagging with the missus every night or every other night, maybe it’s now once a week, then biweekly, then once a month, and then maybe only on Valentine’s Day. It’s hard to tell your significant other that you just aren’t a stud anymore. Even if she is drop dead gorgeous, that’s sometimes not enough for your body to keep up with your mind.

Not that long ago this wasn’t much of a problem. This was because nature took care of the embarrassment problem, by tipping the scales that you would be dead before it mattered. Men went off to fight in wars and died nastily in the heat of a battle. Or they simply wore out chasing after sheep or hunting a saber tooth tiger. Or they were culled by the many diseases that are now easily prevented. Actually, a lot of men (and women) died from abscessed teeth. There were no schools of dentistry until recently. Now of course fewer of us serve in wars so we get to live to our doddering years. So now we are getting a close encounter with our declining sex drives, and it is often disturbing. It is made more disturbing by the simple lack of quality information on what is normal. You can find it if you look but you have to look real hard. I came across such a site, well actually just a web page, recently. Here it is.

By all means reach for the Cialis or Viagra, assuming you can afford these overpriced anti-impotence drugs. Men often use them to great effect, but soon discover that while it makes sex possible it doesn’t increase the frequency of sex or give you the chronic urge to have sex like you had as an adolescent. That usually just keeps declining with age. Some men figure out the real issue, which is why testosterone supplements are all the rage online. It doesn’t take much Googling to discover these supplements are of dubious value, and likely dangerous, probably much like estrogen supplements are dangerous for women during and after menopause.

The bottom line for men is that nature intends you to slow down. It wants you to smell the flowers instead of the scent of women. This is actually fine for most women your age. Many still want to have sex, but a lot less frequently. A frequent issue with menopause is vaginal dryness during sex, which means there will be a tube of lube in your future, as well as the Cialis, when you do have sex. Moreover, since your sex drive is declining and her sex drive is likely declining as well, you are both more likely to just cuddle instead. The exception may be when you are in your forties. Women tend to peak sexually in their forties while men start to noticeably decline sexually in their forties. That’s when it gets embarrassing for men. She wants it but you don’t necessarily want it, and you can’t always keep up with demand. And that makes you feel, well, less of a man, because real men with a hot woman can keep it up.

So what you might want to do is print out that web page and pass it on to your wife or significant other. First thing you want to do is to remove the shame factor, because shame will contribute to sexual dysfunction when what you are going through is completely normal. Second, if you do value having sex, albeit less frequently than before, you need to educate your S.O. on what she can do to increase the probability of success. You need to educate them that losing an erection during sex is normal for older men but with a decent amount of pressure it is likely to come back and if applied continuously your erection may not fade. All this takes intimate communications, usually a challenge for men who are trained to behave as if they are invulnerable and eternally youthful. If your partner loves you, then it’s not unrealistic to expect them to work with you and your aging body.

It’s also okay to now have sex and not necessarily have an orgasm. If she is horny and you are not, you can use a vibrator on her or better yet your mouth. You may get aroused to the point where you want to have sex, in which case you’ll be raring to go, or not. But most likely next time you will be in the mood. It’s okay. This is what nature intended.

Is there an upside to all this? Actually, there are many upsides for personal growth. First, sex can take on a deeper and richer meaning than it did when you were younger. It becomes more about intimacy and connection that it does about anxiously depositing semen. When you do have sex, it might well be longer and more enjoyable than when you were younger. It becomes more about making love, connecting and enjoying your partner in many dimensions. You can also become more aware that the tactile parts of lovemaking are very pleasurable too: simply touching, or caressing, looking in her eyes, nibbling her ears or kissing her can be very enjoyable.

Perhaps the biggest reason to enjoy your sexual decline is the one so rarely stated: you have the opportunity to see yourself, and your partner, as a human being with many dimensions, of which sex is but one aspect. Having spent most of your life defining yourself as a man, you may discover yourself as a human being instead. Things like sex still matter, but should matter less. You may find yourself being able to see someone as multi-dimensional, rather than as a role or an object. You may have a deeper appreciation for the experience of simply being a human.

These are some of the gifts of age, but they often require giving up some of the fallacious notions of youth and assumptions on how you should be because you are a male. This stuff is a graduate school for human relations. If you live long enough, and are brave enough to try it, you may find that this stage of life can be a great learning experience about what it means to be fully human. These are aspects of yourself that were always there, but which you ignored or deprecated. They too are precious in their own way.

Be brave and take that journey into being fully human.