Prime Time - Jane Fonda [88]
Some women find that intercourse is painful because their vagina has shrunk. I interviewed gynecologist Dr. Michelle Warren, medical director at the Center for Menopause, Hormonal Disorders, and Women’s Health at Columbia University Medical Center New York. She told me, “I had a patient the other day who has just remarried; she is in her seventies. She called me from Florida and said, ‘Even with the vaginal estrogen you have given me, I just can’t have intercourse, and I don’t know what to do.’ I sent her some vaginal dilators, a series of progressively larger plastic molds that you insert into the vagina for twenty minutes to an hour a day and gradually they expand the vagina, and she came back and said, ‘Oh, you saved my life!’ She used the dilators along with the estrogen and she was able to resume an active sex life.” Conversely, the vagina may have stretched so that the man’s penis doesn’t experience enough friction to cause ejaculation. In this case, regularly performed Kegel exercises that strengthen vaginal and pubococcygeus muscles are helpful. I explain these exercises later in this chapter. If, because of childbearing, these pelvic muscles have been badly torn, an operation can be performed to repair and tighten them. Such an operation requires about six to eight weeks of recovery before intercourse can be resumed.
Just because our culture assumes that women want to be sexual only in the context of a monogamous love relationship shouldn’t cause us to ignore the possibility of recreational sex with a partner of any age—or even without a partner.
The most important message in keeping sexually active is keeping sexually active. Use it or lose it. A broken arm atrophies. Penises that aren’t being used have more problems with erectile dysfunction. Vaginas that aren’t being used have more problems with elasticity. As a result, if you are experiencing any of these problems and want to prepare yourself for an active sex life, all the experts I have talked to recommend masturbation. This can be with your hand, your partner’s hand, or a vibrator.
Masturbation
A 1995 study by the National Opinion Research Center showed that fewer than half of all women in the United States masturbate; even fewer do so regularly. Dr. Louann Brizendine, a pioneering neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, and the founder of the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic, says, “Studies in nursing homes have shown that a quarter of women age seventy to ninety still masturbate.”11 Dr. Michael Perelman told me, “I think it would shock some of your younger readers the extent to which older individuals will use sex toys and enjoy them. Again, that is another wonderful adjunct and it can be done by people of all ages merely to help create variety, or it can be something that can help as an assistance, much in the same way someone would use a cane. A vibrator provides more stimulation, and especially as people age, the use of these toys could be quite helpful, and I think the next generation is probably more likely to do that than the current generation of very elderly people.”
Obviously, a loving relationship of mutual pleasure-giving is preferable to solo masturbation, but that is not always an option. If we want to stay ready for love, it is good to keep our sensual selves tuned up—you never know what will happen a week, a month, a year or two from now. As I said earlier, I was celibate for seven years after my marriage to Ted Turner and thought that was the end of it. I was wrong!
If you are not used to masturbating and your own hand is not sufficient to excite you, I recommend that you buy a vibrator and some of the newest lubricants, make yourself comfortable, maybe even try reading a book while you masturbate so you are more relaxed and forget about what you’re hoping will happen. This is no time for performance anxieties! Please try to get over any concerns you have about the appropriateness of pleasuring yourself. Think of masturbation as a medical necessity: You may