Sex after sixty

Is sex between older people – and older people having sex – one of the last taboos in Britain? You bet it is. We're British. We don't airily wave away hundreds of years of history and conditioning. Never before has there been a generation of “older people” like us. We do what youth today is doing – be it e-mailing our friends, taking adventure holidays, wearing Nike trainers or having sex. But – we take some getting used to. Older sex often didn't happen years ago. Lives were shorter, and many women, often totally ignorant about sex before they married, thought it was something to be endured as the price for having a man around. Women may have craved affection (don't we all?) but there is little evidence that many of them were craving sex over 60. They were tired, worn out with child-rearing and relieved not to have to “do all that”. Men were always encouraged to “sow their wild oats”. Yet until as recently as 40 or 50 years ago, women were meant to move from virginity to marriage to young motherhood – with no sex education.