Older people are often assumed to want amiable companionship in later life rather than passion-fuelled romance.<\/p>\n
But a survey of 2,002 older Britons suggests 52% of over-65s feel they do not have enough sex, and nearly a third are happy to have sex on a first date. <\/p>\n
It also found one in 10 over-75s have had multiple sexual partners since turning 65.<\/p>\n
The charity Independent Age said its survey showed age was “no barrier to having a sex life”.<\/p>\n
Dennis Allen, from Somerset, has not let age stand in the way of his and his wife’s sex life. <\/p>\n
The 84-year-old married Pauline, 85, his fourth wife, in 2004. <\/p>\n
He said the pair were on average sexually active twice a week.<\/p>\n
“If you’re up for it, you should enjoy life,” he said. <\/p>\n
“You never know when you’re going to be past your sell-by date.” <\/p>\n
Dennis said both he and Pauline, 85, had made sure to exercise and look after themselves, in part so they remained attractive to each other.<\/p>\n
He said: “Let’s put it frankly, if you were a young lady and you saw your husband was sitting there with a great big beer belly, smoking a fag out of his mouth, what would would you think? Would you fancy him?<\/p>\n
“My wife has always looked very attractive. She won’t go out of the door unless she looks the part, and she won’t let me go out of the door unless I look the part.”<\/p>\n
The survey also found: <\/p>\n
Lucy Harmer, director of services at Independent Age, said a lot of older people were more sexually active than many people might think. <\/p>\n
She told the BBC: “The generation that is reaching 65 and older now is the baby boomers. I don’t think anyone has ever told them they should be stopping. <\/p>\n
“People of that generation have a slightly different approach to sex, maybe, than the 80 to 85-year-olds did.”<\/p>\n
The poll also highlighted that about one in 11 over-65s said they did not take any precautions against sexually transmitted infections when they started having sex with a new partner.<\/p>\n
The Terrence Higgins Trust said some older people who were newly single or sexually active later in life had little knowledge about preventing STIs. <\/p>\n
Debbie Laycock, head of policy and parliamentary affairs at the sexual health charity, said: “There is still very little discussion of the sex lives of older people, with the vast majority of conversations, education and sexual health campaigns focusing on young people. <\/p>\n
“This has created the assumption that sexual health and STIs are only issues for the young – and that needs to change.”<\/p>\n
For Valentine’s Day Independent Age compiled some tips to maintain strong romantic relationships in later life<\/a>. <\/p>\n
Older people are often assumed to want amiable companionship in later life rather than passion-fuelled romance. But a survey of 2,002 older Britons suggests 52% of over-65s feel they do not have enough sex, and nearly a third are happy to have sex on a first date. It also found one in 10 over-75s have Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}