The Older Woman and Her Sexuality

There was a time when the “older woman” held an important place in our sexual mythology. She was the knowledgeable woman of the world, the one who understood both the mysteries of a woman’s body and the workings of a man’s body, needs and desires. She was the one who was beyond the confines of mere convention, the one who could teach a young boy how to please his lover and the older man a deeper appreciation for the ways of love.

Whether that “older woman” ever really existed or not is hard to know. What does seem clear is that if she did, she has lost her way. Young, hard-bodies, images of models, the beautiful thin actresses shown in magazines, advertisements and articles on beauty and sexiness….. all this knowledge about sex seems to have put the older woman out of business. Which is ironic in a way, seeing as all this so-called knowledge about sex has come at a very high price, the diminishment of sexuality, which was the very thing that that “older woman” possessed in abundance.

In those days, “allure” was the word that came to mind. Now, more mature women who find themselves confronting their sexuality and their sexual being react like a deer caught in the headlights. They are not sure what to make of their sexuality. If there is mystery involved, it is that their sexuality is a mystery to themselves!

Take Alice. At forty-one, Alice was divorced. Her son was off to college and her daughter, at sixteen, was fairly independent.

“The divorce was difficult, no question. It was long overdue, don’t get me wrong. But it was difficult nonetheless. So many emotions…” She smiled a quick smile. “And Mike and I were as amicable as I could have imagined under the circumstances. He wanted what was best for the kids. He wanted me to stay in the house after the divorce. He said I deserved it after all those years.

“So I know I was more fortunate than most in terms of the divorce itself. But that somehow didn’t make it a whole lot easier. Still, the divorce was nothing compared to the moment my daughter looked at me and told me she thought I should get out there again.

“Get out there? Date?”

Alice was incredulous at the thought of “getting out there” and going out on a date. She hadn’t been on a “date” since she was married – at twenty-two. And she’d dated Mike for three years before that.

“The very idea of it made me nervous,” she sighed. Rather than think about dating, she had immersed herself in either work or her kids both during and since the divorce. She was not blind to the irony that just when her life was “falling apart” she was finding herself exactly where she’d always wanted to be professionally.

She shrugged. “Still, I knew I couldn’t be so slavish about work. I wasn’t a kid anymore. My years for really fighting to get higher on the ladder were long gone. I didn’t want to be so devoted to work. I wanted to enjoy life – to do all the things I felt being with Mike kept me from doing.”

Alice found herself exactly where many women who have raised families and then found out that the man they’d married was not the man that they wanted to grow old with. At forty-one, Alice was hardly “old” but she sure didn’t feel young anymore. And, when she was most honest about dating, she knew that she was most frightened of the first time she would have to kiss a man again, the first time she would be naked in front of a man again.

The first time she would make love with a man other than Mike.

“I couldn’t imagine…” she sighed. “I just didn’t think of myself as being attractive in that way.” Which was one of the consequences of her failing marriage and of being taken for granted for so long.

She suffered through what seemed to her to be hours in front of the full-length mirror, studying in minute detail every flaw – real and perceived – that she could identify on her body. From “crow’s feet” to frown lines, to “sagging boobs that were never big enough anyway” to a stomach that she felt “could have been flatter” and hips that “could have been narrower” to a rear end that “could have been… well, never mind…”

She did what many women do. She joined a gym. And she dedicated herself to getting in shape. What she didn’t say out loud was that “getting in shape” for her meant making her body more attractive so she might contemplate getting “out there” again.

Her body was never going to be an eighteen year old’s again, but it could be “as good as this forty-one year old can make it!”

Still, the thought of going out on a date, of making out filled her with dread. Most of the time. Sometimes, it filled her with real excitement. “If I could have only gotten rid of the nagging fear that my teenage daughter knew more about sex than I did!”

Alice might not have felt ready to start dating again but there were more and more objective indicators that it was time. Several men at the gym spoke with her about going out. She always said no, she wasn’t ready but there was no denying that the attention was more than a little flattering to her.

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