Sex Talk: People age, pink elephants don’t 

When I was in my 20s or younger, I was convinced that anybody above 60 was no longer mad about sex; that from thereon, they were just living a day at a time, holding hands, singing kumbaya and waiting for the good Lord to come one day and take them home!

Don’t laugh at my ignorance; many young people still think that way. I have heard some question why a septuagenarian would still be attacked by jealousy pangs and go after her randy husband’s mistresses.

Or why in neighbouring Kenya, former first lady Lucy Kibaki (RIP) held those cringeworthy press conferences, where she would have her husband assure all and sundry that she was still his one and only sweetheart.

Well, you will be shocked; in fact, I am convinced that when it comes to marriages, couples 50 and above may be having more action between the sheets than their younger counterparts. After all, not all that glitters is gold, and there are truly diamonds to be found in the rough!

Barring an illness that may cause sexual dysfunction or other complications, older couples are actually having a blast; so, kindly mind your own marital business.

“If anything, my sex life got better after menopause, because many of my hormone-related complications also disappeared and I felt in tip-top shape after decades of struggling with anaemia, fibroids, name it!” a 59-year-old Ugandan married in the UK said.

Why do you think older women/men at that point in life even dare to marry men/women decades younger than them?

Because they can handle, and handle them well. A widower in his late 60s asked his family to help find him a wife after he had mourned his late wife for a year. The family found him a widow in her early 40s, and surprisingly, both testified that this second marriage that came later in their lives, was more fulfilling in every way.

Because of the lack of performance anxiety, the maturity with which the couple approaches love and sex, as well as the sense of accomplishment in other areas of life, the sex tends to be better later in life – or so older couples testify.

“Unfortunately, these days younger couples give up on marriage so quickly, when just one thing goes wrong,” a 52-year-old, married for 28 years, told me.

“My husband and I went through some turbulent years, but we hang in there and now we are possibly living the best years of our marriage. We have never been this much in love and contented with our sex life.”

The younger years come with dynamics of career and educational growth; childbearing or on the flipside, fertility issues; good investments and devastating financial loss; hurtful experiments with ‘side dishes’ and everything that can lie in between.

But as the couple grows older, many of these extras are no longer a problem and those who did hang in there, usually have interesting stories to tell.

When one lovey-dovey couple was celebrating their golden jubilee a few years ago, we were all struck by how besotted and in love they still seemed to be, for a couple in their seventies.

But during his speech, the husband tearfully knelt before his wife to ask for her forgiveness for the pain he had caused her along the way. He did not have to say much more; you don’t make fifty years in a marriage without high drama.

But those who tirelessly forgave and stuck it out will tell you that life indeed started at sixty. So, don’t be blissfully ignorant like I was; the pink elephants are forever young and they trumpet into marital bedrooms even long after things are not as sprightly and firm as they once were.

carol@observer.ug