What’s Your Life Going To Look Like After 50 ?

Slowing Down After 50 Years

Of course, it’s entirely possible that you can, say, start a business and remain busy, achieving “great things”, but in general the pace of life slows down.

The mellowing that occurs in the majority of people after the age of 50 means that their focus may well be different to the years before: perhaps more spiritual, directed to greater self-fulfilment, and in the area of sexuality, certainly devoted to exploration, finding satisfaction, and maybe even having new adventures.

And at the same time, we recognize that these are easy words to say, because many women are trapped in marriages where sex has died, or where the relationship itself is simply not fulfilling any longer. The question for many women then is: do I stay or do I go?

And what is going to happen to me? Is this about this emotional fulfilment, or sexual fulfilment, or both? As far as this website is concerned, the emphasis is on achieving greater sexual pleasure and satisfaction, no matter what your life situation, after the age of 50.

Sexual Pleasure For Women After 50

We will have a look at many issues as we go through the various aspects of achieving sexual satisfaction after 50, including male sexual desire (or, rather, the lack of it!), how a relationship can grow rather than stultify, and most importantly of all, how it is possible to achieve greater sexual satisfaction and pleasure even in the face of what appears to be a lowered sex drive.

A woman in her 50s is often moving from a position where she serves others like parents, teachers, husbands, lovers, partners, and other powerful people, into a place where she seeks greater mastery and independence: a fulfilment of her own emotional, physical and career potential.

She can stop pleasing other people, and start pleasing herself; she may feel a sense of power, or a desire to achieve independence and fulfilment in some other way.

Possibly what underlies all of this is a search for meaning that emerges round about midlife in most human beings.

The search for meaning encompasses many things, and its exact nature is different in almost everyone, because what is emotionally and psychologically significant to each of us is slightly different.

What lies at the root of the search for meaning is a search for personal fulfillment.

This can take any form — you can think of it, in shorthand, as the opportunity to actually achieve something personally significant.

Along with this change there ought to be a natural sense of something evolving (or dying) as you give birth to new dreams, new aspirations, new expectations, and hopefully more fulfilling relationships.

It seems that women over 50 are not as willing as they once were to settle for the stability of a marriage that has no intimacy, emotional connection, or sexual fulfillment.

Gail Sheehy interviewed hundreds of women in the course of writing her book “Sex and the seasoned woman”, and she had access to the membership of The Third Age, an online website with more than a million members, designed to focus on the needs of midlife adults.

Her interviews and research in this group demonstrated that women seem to divide fairly natural into five groups which she called: Passionates; Seekers; WMDs (women married, dammit!); SQs (status quos); and LLs (lowered libidos).

The Passionates, who represented 40% of the total, were described as healthy, independent, sexy women anywhere between their late 40s and their 80s. 

They usually had a measure of financial independence, and passionate about their work or a cause, and usually involved with someone romantically — whether that be post-divorce or in a long-term marriage. These women often say that they enjoy more romance and novelty in their sex play since the children left home, and many of them have been widowed, but have found new sexual relationships easily.

Seekers look forward to new relationships eagerly, anticipating the pleasure of being in sexual relationship with great satisfaction.

Judging by the descriptions that Sheehy gives of her interviewees and participants, these women have always found sex important, but in this period of their life it assumes a new importance: their orgasms are more powerful and more satisfying, and there may be a blossoming of their sexuality.

The third category that Sheehy identified was that of WMD.

These women represented 15% of the total. They were women who were frustrated by marriages that had been sexually or emotionally empty for some time, or women who felt victimized by a man who was an alcoholic, an adulterer, or lacking in fundamental masculine values (power, compassion, inner strength, vulnerability, etc).

Unfortunately these women didn’t feel ready to change direction, and they didn’t have a passionate interest that could provide them with the energy to change direction.

Most of these women had given up on sex: they were too angry, or too busy, or too resentful, and many of them were looking for reciprocity in their relationships — and not finding it. Some of them were having affairs; some were eager to have sex; in general they didn’t find their partners satisfying, and their marriages were failing to provide fulfillment.

Next, Sheehy identified the SQs or status quos, 12% of the total.

These women were resigned rather than happy. Like the WMDs, they didn’t have a burning dream or a new love, but felt that maintaining the status quo was preferable to the risk and discomfort of any change. In many cases they had long-standing marriages, though sex had often dwindled to zero.

However the women didn’t seem to care, for even if their husbands were having affairs, the SQs would turn a blind eye. In general they seemed to have personalities that were anxious or shy, or they lacked the confidence to seek out sexual relationships.

Continued below!

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