Older people ‘young at heart’ have better sex lives
- Study looked at sex and ageing attitudes in adults aged from mid-40s to mid-70s
- The closer people felt to their actual age, the lower the quality of their sex life
- Feeling younger impacts quality, but not quantity, say researchers
- ‘Feeling young at heart appears to make a difference in the bedroom,’ they say
Colin Fernandez Science Correspondent For The Daily Mail
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Feeling young at heart makes you enjoy sex more, a study has found.
People who feel younger than the number of years they have on the clock get more pleasure from people who feel their age, research suggests.
The findings add weight to the idea in science that subjective feelings of age are as important as our ‘true’ age as measured by our years.
Ageist attitudes have meant that sex and older people often gets ignored – but it is an important area that can enhance the quality of life of the over 40s, the researchers said.
Professor Steven Mock of the University of Waterloo in Canada and colleagues looked at the attitudes of sex and ageing of a group of 1,170 adults from their mid-40s to their mid-70s over a 10-year period.
The group, which included people of diverse sexual orientation, reported that the closer people felt to their chronological age, the lower the quality of their sex life.
Most people tend in middle age to feel younger than they are, said Dr Mock
He said: ‘One thing I’ve learnt from studying adult ageing is that getting older isn’t necessarily a period of decline. [Age] is not a one size fits all situation, there’s a lot of variability of what ageing means.
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Dr Mock said: ‘What was clear from the data is that feeling younger had a huge impact on how people felt about the quality of their sex life and how interested they were in having sex.
‘For people in mid to later life, feeling young at heart actually appears to make a difference in the bedroom.’
The research drew upon data collected in a study called MIDUS – the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) between 1995 and 2005.
‘It’s important to consider all of the different psychosocial and biological factors that might influence a person’s sexuality,’ said Amy Estill, who led the research while completing her Master’s degree at Waterloo.
WOMEN MORE SEXUALLY SATISFIED AT 80
A recent survey challenged the myths about sex in later life with an audacious claim – that not only does sex get better, but some women are more sexually satisfied at 80 than they were in their 50s.
Researchers from the University of San Diego studied sexual activity and satisfaction levels among 800 women.
And despite having a lower sex drive, they found half of women in their 80s still claimed to achieve orgasms ‘most of the time’ during sex.
The scientists think this is because the women had sex as a means of affirmation or keeping their relationships healthy.
‘While feeling younger didn’t have an impact on how much sex people were having, it was quite clear that feeling older does impact the quality of the sex you’re having.’
Typically, most people tend in middle age to feel younger than they are, Dr Mock said.
‘When you are young it’s not unusual for people to feel their age, or even feel more mature, but as you age, typically at around 40, you reliably don’t feel older than you actually are,’ Dr Mock added.
‘People say ’I still feel like a 25 year old or 35 year old.
‘Feeling younger than your chronological age has an effect on the quality of sex and your interest in sex.’
The researchers adjusted the results to take into consideration chronic health conditions as well – but even so, subjective age was still the significant factor on how much people enjoyed sex.
Dr Mock said that ageist attitudes often meant researchers did not look at the topic of sex in later life.
But having a positive view of ageing was also helpful to one’s sex life.
He added: ‘Sex is one of the most important things we do, it makes people happy, it enhances the quality of their relationships, there are potential health benefits.’
‘How people think and feel about themselves is almost as important as the more objective measure of age,’ he said.
The research did not look at whether having a younger spouse has an effect on sex. ‘It could make you feel younger – but it might also make you feel older,’ he said.
The study was recently published in the Journal of Sex Research.
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