Alex, 76
We’re always letting our hands wander under restaurant tables, or on the escalator in the Tube
Beth and I met online 20 years ago, emailing back and forth for a good while before our first date – but once we met in person we only waited a few days to have sex. I brought dinner over to her place, but both of us were too distracted to eat.
It really surprised me how eager somebody could be to go to bed with me – and how open-minded Beth was sexually. By that point in my 50s, I struggled to maintain an erection naturally but it never diminished her enthusiasm in bed, or mine. For me, orgasming is just one small part of sex; with the right person, just being naked together is pure joy.
Growing up with a single mother in the 1950s, I did not learn much about sex at home and I lost my virginity at university to the girl I ended up marrying. My sex life with my first wife was pretty active for a long time, but then gradually she became more withdrawn and sex became less and less frequent, and eventually ceased.
By the point she came out as a lesbian, I’d sort of guessed that it was going to happen. Getting divorced was difficult but it didn’t hurt my confidence. As a friend told me: “Alex, you kept a lesbian happy in bed for a quarter of a century!”
Sex with Beth felt radically different right from the start – more of a shared adventure. In the beginning we’d do it every day. Now, it’s maybe a couple of times a month, but it’s still incredible. We’re always letting our hands wander under restaurant tables, or on the escalator on the underground. Hardly anybody clocks it because nobody expects seventysomethings to be cheekily feeling each other up in public.
As you grow older, you have to make certain adjustments; we have much less penetrative sex than other forms of touching. I now have chemical assistance to maintain erections, and we sometimes go shopping together for her preferred lubricant. You can imagine the stares the two of us get from other shoppers while strolling round a sex emporium. But, honestly, I’d brave far worse than a few funny looks to go to bed with Beth.
Beth, 75
As liberated as my upbringing might have been, I’d always been taught that sex meant intercourse. Nonsense
I’ve always been sexually curious; I came of age during the 1960s and remember marking the pages in The Joy of Sex to share with my teenage boyfriend.
When Alex and I first slept together, I realised he had less experience than me sexually, and we discussed his struggle to maintain an erection. If he had closed down about that, I might have wondered if it was because he found my body off-putting, but because we spoke about it, it never bothered me.
I have friends who have got divorced because they found it so hard to speak to their partner about vaginal dryness, erectile dysfunction or other changes happening in their bodies. You’ve got to discuss it. Then the fun can begin.
As liberated as my upbringing might have been, I’d always been taught that sex meant intercourse. What nonsense. I was married to someone else for decades before, and I know my way around the block when it comes to sex, and even though Alex and I have probably only had full intercourse perhaps 10 times in our two decades together, I’ve never been more fulfilled by a partner in bed.
These days Alex and I generally masturbate together, interspersed with oral sex. Sometimes I’ll wait for him outside the shower, and give him a quick blowjob before he goes off to work – and remind him he’s probably the only person in his 9am meeting who just got one, so that he can savour the memory while he’s in the office.
Sex is less frequent now than in our 50s and 60s, but when it does happen it’s mindblowing. I’m a real fan of cruise sex – I call it “shagging with a view”. Nobody has enjoyed a night at the Premier Inn Milton Keynes more than we have. If you can openly communicate with your partner, sex only gets better with age.
