Sex in the Sixties vs. Sex in the 60s
By Jed Diamond©
2007
Born in
1943, I moved into my sexually active years as a teen in late 50s
and early 60s. What boys learned was that girls weren’t much
interested in sex. Since boys were very interested, it was our job
to break down her resistance and get her to go along with our
desires. Sex was mostly about "scoring." If you were very lucky to
find a girl you could coax, you did everything you could to get to
"first base." If successful, you tried to steal second. After that
you were in "no man’s land." You weren’t quite sure what you were
supposed to do next. But you knew it was incumbent on you to try and
make it all the way.
There seemed to be an agreement between the boys and the girls. It
was the boy’s job to try and score. It was the girl’s job to
continually remove your hands and keep her virtue intact. Pleasure
and joy never seemed to be part of the package.
Most of my young sexuality wasn’t spent with girls at all, but with
airbrushed images from magazines and imagined scenes from forbidden
books like Peyton Place. In my fantasies these dream lovers would do
all the things that real girls, I had come to believe, didn’t want
to do. Masturbation became a much more consistent means for
expressing my young sexuality.
Meeting my wife, "messing around," and finally having sex after we
had decided to get married, I entered a new phase of sexuality. I
found that women not only enjoyed sex, but would take an active role
in initiating and sharing it. It was a time of sexual exploration
with a real person, without so much of the conflict over me pushing
for it and her saying no. Though there was still the belief that I
should want to do it all the time and she should want to do it at
times, well at times that often seemed incomprehensible and
mysterious.
As I’ve gotten older, sex has changed. Sometime in my mid-forties,
the time I’ve called "male menopause," I moved into a period where
everything having to do with sex became awkward and confused. We
became like pimply-faced teen-agers again. We were shy with each
other. We seemed to have totally forgotten the ease of sexual
intimacy and pleasure. We couldn’t seem to kiss without our noses
getting in the way. Sex was hit and miss. Erections would disappear
at the most inopportune times. They would jump to attention when
least expected.
In talking with other men and women who came to see me for therapy,
I realized that I wasn’t alone in this. There seemed to be a stage
of life centered around "the change", where it’s like adolescence
the second time around. This was the most stressful period of our
marriage. I would alternate between wanting my wife with all my
heart and feeling that I should leave the marriage and find someone
who I was more compatible with. She seemed to feel the same way.
As we moved into our late 50s and 60s, sexuality seemed to settle
into a new phase. For the first time in my life I wasn’t driven by
the need for intercourse. I found that sexuality would be more
playful and less focused on orgasms. We enjoyed each other more even
when we weren’t "having sex."
In fact, sex started expanding in our lives. It went from sex being
synonymous with intercourse to sex being anything that created
pleasurable orgasms to sex being anything that was mutually
pleasurable and created more intimacy between us. Sex started to
include holding hands while we were sitting on the couch watching
television. It even included unexpected looks of love and longing
that would bring tears to my eyes.
It took me some time to let go of old beliefs:
· If I’m not trying to have intercourse all the time, anytime, day
or night, there must be something wrong with me as a man.
· If I’m not the aggressor all the time, she’ll think I’m not
attracted to her.
· If I accept sex as more loving, touching, feeling, and less "wham
bang," it will mean I’m losing my manhood and becoming "feminized."
· If my men’s group found out how little we were "doing it," I would
lose face.
· If I can’t get an erection on demand or if it takes longer to get
one, or if I lose it before we can have intercourse, I’m a failure
as a lover and she’ll probably look for someone else.
· If her body doesn’t look like the models I remember growing up, I
should look for someone who is younger, prettier, and easier to
impress.
· If I go for days or weeks and don’t think about sex I must be
getting old and decrepit and the next stop is Alzheimer’s and the
nursing home.
It is true that sex in my sixties is different than sex in the 60s.
When I’m nostalgic, reflecting on what I might do and who I might
bed if I had another shot at the past, I become frustrated with what
I have now. Most of the time, however, I’m content to let the 60s
stay in my memories with the guy I was then. It’s actually kind of
wonderful to be a man in his 60s with a woman in her 60s still
trying to figure out what it’s all about.
So what’s changed for you? What’s sex like now compared to then?
For more information, please visit
www.menalive.com
or
www.writtenvoices.com.
Jed Diamond is the author of seven books, including the best seller
Male Menopause (Sourcebooks, 1997), which has now been translated
into 16 foreign languages. His forthcoming book is entitled "The
Irritable Male Syndrome" (Rodale, 2004). He has lent his expertise
to such programs as "The View" with Barbara Walters and "Good
Morning America" with Charles Gibson. See his Web site at menalive.com for more valuable information on living long and well.
The best way to reach Jed is by e-mail:
Jed@menalive.com.
He also has an online newsletter and information through his web site:
http://www.menalive.com.
