Children are stressors as they enter the teenage years and begin struggles for independence, then parents incur the expense of their children's college educations, and eventually, the nest is empty. This can have a positive and a negative impact on a couple's sex life. On the positive side there is more time to get together with greater privacy and flexibility. The negative emotional stress is the feeling loss, especially as children become adults and launch out their own. Parents can lose a sense of purpose and, in the grieving, lose touch with each other.
All of these environmental factors take time and energy away from making love and focusing on the marital relationship. Sometimes parents get too much identity their parental roles and have a difficult time readjusting being best friends and lovers. The greater time together be scary, but the excuses for lack of intimacy and sex have to be faced head-on. A couple will need to to expose impasses and not be afraid of confronting honest discussion. Unfortunately, all couples do no hard at exposing impasses, resoling problems, and dealing companionship.
Midlife issues. The forties and fifties bring many career decisions to the forefront: Will my dreams ever be realized, and will I achieve the level of success that I had hoped for? This can bring on a full-fledged midlife crisis. You may have to grieve over some of your unachieved goals and change gears.
Midlife career changes and whole new career directions are common in today’s marketplace. The wife may be back in the job market after full-time homemaking, and she faces many new decisions as she revs up a vocation she put on hold for the sake of mothering. The husband may be in the most productive and busiest time of his career—fighting for time to keep everything balanced and to enjoy making love.
All of this affects intimacy and a thriving sex life. The husband is entering a time when he has less sexual energy but a greater desire for intimate connecting. The wife may be entering a time of more sexual enthusiasm with greater independence and openness to explore and enjoy, or she may be experiencing the physical changes and emotional turmoil menopause can sometimes bring. As their bodies begin to age, their circumstances are a kaleidoscope of changes and challenges. Sex may be ignored and intimacy put on the back burner as the husband works through his challenges, and the wife works at varying jobs from launching children out on their own to balancing her own career.
There will be a search for individual identities in this time, with a need to learn to practice forgiving and the skills of grieving over losses. Young adult children complicate the picture. There can be some panic as you wonder if you might have missed the perfect mate and maybe it is now or never, because you do desire the deeper intimacy of midlife. But don’t think that you know your mate perfectly or that there are no new horizons sexually to discover .You will want to revive mystery and plan sexual surprises, avoiding routines and not neglecting frequent and passionate love-making. It may even take getting out of town to overcome this. Be selfish sexually as well as nurturing as you individually put some pizzazz back into your love life.
Retirement issues. The fifties and sixties present even more changes as the transition into retirement is made over the coming years. Retirement can be structured differently for every couple. It may be going into early retirement and a new career or easing into more leisure time when one comes to mandatory retirement and there is nothing else to fill the vacuum. Both mates can get frustrated by the husband being underfoot for the first time in their lives.
Grandparenting can bring special meaning and enjoyment, but you may have to add into the equation a major illness and the recuperation time involved. This is also the time in life when you start dealing with the loss or needs of your aging parents, possibly calling for you to make difficult decisions or adjust your living situation.
Circumstances will hit the relationship with attending grief and losses. You may wonder if it is too late to establish a deeper level of intimacy in your marriage, but you do have tremendous opportunity for renewal. You are entering the years where the blessings and curses of the aging process become more apparent. Sex after fifty or sixty can become more exciting and intimate, and you can achieve a level of affirmation and togetherness as you celebrate this part of your relationship. Learn your limitations and flourish within them. Old dogs can learn new tricks—so be creative and experimental.
One couple had major adjusting to do when the husband was forced into early retirement at age fifty-two. It presented a financial crisis because there were still college bills to be paid for their last child, and the husband’s field did not offer an immediate lateral shift. This was also tough because they were just adjusting to their last child's leaving the nest. The wife grieved more over her empty nest than she expected but launched into a part-time job that helped fill her need for personal identity and fulfillment. Her father also passed away after a struggle with cancer—an expected event, but it still left a hole in her life.
The husband became depressed, and the whole relationship suffered. But they rallied together. The wife grieved through her losses and started healing. She was able to get more hours at work, and shifted into a lower-paying but personally gratifying job. They had to make major decisions a year later when an opportunity came up in his original field that would necessitate a move geographically. He turned it down, especially for his wife’s sake. She enjoyed being near her daughters and liked what she was doing. Plus, they had already moved three times because of his job over the years, and both felt a deeper need for roots and stability. The couple had also purchased land in the country where they were going to build a cabin and get away from the rat race. Both found nature very therapeutic to their souls, and the cabin was a mutual goal for their sixties and seventies.
The couple valued their intimacy and worked to lessen the toll of the environment on their companionship There were some lean sexual times during his depression and job fluctuations, but their marriage slowly changed—for the better—during these times. She became more independent and he less driven, and sex came back to its place of priority.
What did this couple need as they matured into the retirement years? He wanted and valued a deeper sense of sharing and connecting with her as he risked his feelings and was tender and playful. She desired this, too, but she also wanted an autonomous identity—to feel competent and in charge of herself- Her job helped create this feeling, and her greater sexual initiative was affirming. It was a time for reevaluating selves and the relationship. They needed healing and a grieving through to acceptance of the many losses they were experiencing.
Lovemaking became an important part of the healing. Neither minded living with ambiguity and uncertainty as much as they used to. They trusted their intimacy and found they could connect, separate, and reconnect more easily. In fact, sometimes the wife needed this process as she launched into her own career and endeavors. Both also wanted to know they were heading toward a stable retirement and that there were some things they could count on. Sex evolved into something very special in helping to meet these varied needs and staving off environmental pressures. This husband and wife entered into a very intimate time—a second, or maybe the third or fourth, honeymoon.
Later life losses. As a couple moves into their seventies and eighties they are well into retirement and facing the fact of losing each other eventually, as health deteriorates. It is a time when suffering can build character as you transcend yourself and let go of control. You may fight to establish new boundaries as you set up new ground rules concerning leisure routines and chores. Don’t isolate, or become too codependent. Sexually, the older body will creak and groan, but don’t let inertia set in. Continue to enjoy sexual closeness even if it doesn't frequently include intercourse—though it may. Fight for your privacy if you are living with your children, and enjoy the fruit of many years of bonding and sharing. Say nice things to each other, and hold each other close. You will start to fear losing the other person, and it will be okay to desperately clutch the other one near now and again. Sex can have a transcendent beauty in this time of life, admirable for a younger couple to emulate.
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