Prime Time - Jane Fonda [85]
Diabetes is the most common cause of male impotence, yet, interestingly, 80 percent of diabetic women do not lose their sexual desire or ability to orgasm. In The Fountain of Age, Betty Friedan conjectures that the explanation for this disparity might “simply be that male sexuality is equated with ‘erectile capacity,’ and not with total sexual responsiveness, which remains unimpaired in female diabetics.” Friedan wonders, as do I, whether, if we moved the focus of male sexuality from a preoccupation with the erection to a more all-over sexuality, diabetic men wouldn’t remain sexual the way their female counterparts do.1
Erections
We pay way too much attention to the importance of an erect, hard penis. More accurately, men pay too much attention to this, and, all too often, if erectile dysfunction (ED) inhibits their erections, they will lose confidence and interest in sex. Some will blame their older wife and seek out younger partners; however, this doesn’t always work out. A younger woman may be more physically attractive, but she may be expecting the youthful, phallic model of sexual intimacy, even though a sizable percentage of women (if not most) are unable to experience orgasm from intercourse alone and require extended clitoral stimulation. A confident older woman can bring more to the bed: experience, empathy, and understanding—especially an understanding of her own sexuality and the reality that her pleasure is not exclusively dependent on penile penetration. The late Dr. Helen Kaplan was a world-famous sex therapist and the director of Human Sexuality Program at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center. When interviewed by Betty Friedan for The Fountain of Age, she said, “The older woman who is loving and sure enough accommodates herself to these age-related changes—they have oral sex. Do it in the morning, whatever.… The paradox is the older woman is likely to be much more accepting of his reality and his vulnerability.… A man can have a million dollars but his penis is still sixty-eight years old. An older man can be a wonderful partner, a wonderful lover, if they both can get away from that obsession with the penis and the performance.”2
If men insist on trying to repeat the youthful model of sexuality in the Third Act, they will miss out on discovering the pleasure and intimacy that can occur later in life, when the slowing down and showing up of two mature, trusting, fully realized people allow for a deeper intimacy and more holistic sensuality. Older women have a greater potential for sexual agency, claiming their pleasure without fear of being too forward, while, conversely, older men are freed to experience a deeper connection and intimacy. At last, perhaps, the two genders can come together with greater sexual compatibility than ever. For most of us, this doesn’t just happen. It takes working at it with courage, humor, and intentionality.
Differentiation
In Passionate Marriage, Dr. David Schnarch writes, “Sex isn’t a natural function—at least, not intimate sex. Intimate sex is a natural potential that requires development for its fulfillment.’ ”3 Part of the development that Schnarch writes about is “differentiation”—that is to say, when an individual stands on their own two feet and becomes a whole, more confident, self-validated person, unafraid to claim their desire. “Differentiation” is another name for what Carl Jung called “individuation,” which I discussed in the last chapter. Many older women, myself included, were raised feeling that “good girls” didn’t show desire. We were recipients of the desire of others, pleasers who dared not ask for what we needed for sexual fulfillment. This harmful double standard is still all too prevalent today, and girls are harmed because of it. As I wrote in the last chapter, women in their Third Acts tend to gain confidence, self-understanding, and self-control, and become more able to stay in relationship to themselves while in a relationship with a partner. When we feel confident, we are more able to reveal all