Sexuality in later life: A spectrum of sexual reality among older women

This issue of the journal features a curated selection of articles related to sexuality in later life.

What do we know about sexuality in the later lives of older women? Although women’s sexuality is a widely discussed topic, relatively less is known about the sexuality of older women. Mainstream notions of beauty and body ideal flood our consciousness, and the search to remain youthful is a billion-dollar industry. However, the reality is that as women age, our bodies change, and health challenges and psychological responses may arise to those changes. Furthermore, our social networks change. Women may lose their partners and are faced with decisions about how to pursue intimacy in the later stages of their lives. Each article in the collection touches on an aspect of sexuality among older adult women; when the articles are taken together, they portray a spectrum of the sexual realities older women face.

Sexuality is an integral part of the lives of older women, and how sexuality is experienced is constrained by one’s developmental life stage. As women age, their bodies change, and how women experience these changes affects how they view their bodies and by extension their sexuality. Therefore, it is essential that any discourse of sexuality is anchored in an examination of health and body image. Hence, we begin this discourse with the article “The Female Aging Body: A Systematic Review of Female Perspectives on Aging, Health, and Body Image.” In this article, Erin Cameron provides a systematic review of the empirical literature on older women’s perspectives on health and body image.

The next article in the issue extends the conversation on body image and sexuality by offering a rich exploration of the biological changes experienced by older women and the accompanying psychological changes that may affect their sexual experiences. The article “Body Image, Satisfaction With Sexual Life, Self-Esteem, and Anxio-Depressive Symptoms: A Comparative Study Between Premenopausal, Perimenopausal, and Postmenopausal Women” by Natalène Séjourné provides a useful examination of the impact of menopausal transition on body image and sexual satisfaction. A unique contribution of this manuscript is the insight it provides on the persistence of body image and sexual dissatisfaction as a function of menopausal stages even when psychological factors and BMI were accounted for in the study.

Understanding sexuality in older women must extend beyond an empirical exploration of health, body image, and physiological changes to an idiographic view of how women themselves tell their stories and navigate their sexual lives. In “Pathways to Pleasure: Older Adult Women’s Reflections on Being Sexual Beings,” Morrissey Stahl and colleagues share the stories of 16 women’s journey to achieve sexual expression in their lives.

The last two articles in the collection focus our attention on the relational lives of older women. Jocelyn Crowley’s article, “Gray Divorce: Explaining Midlife Marital Splits” points to an aging-related pattern of divorce and proposes a model that leads to divorce decisions that is particular to baby boomers. Divorced women in midlife and other women may be in a position to begin new sexual relationships, and the last article in this collection speak to this issue. In the article “I’m in Control: I’m Not Stumbling in the Dark Anymore”: Midlife Women’s Experiences of Successfully Negotiating Safer Sex with New Partners,” Catherine O’Mullan and colleagues offer an in-depth exploration of the experiences of midlife women negotiating safer sex with new partners.

Taken together, the collection of articles in this issue gives us a glimpse into the sexual spectrum of aging women’s reality. The issue addresses the changes aging women experience in their health, body image, and menopausal stages and provides insight into older women’s journey for sexual expression in their lives and how they navigate different changes in their relational world.