A lot can change in a lifetime – marriage, divorce, our health – and along with this, our sex life alters, too.
I’m 54 and the one thing I didn’t predict was that at this stage of life I’d have a partner ten years younger than me.
That’s a libido boost in itself, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to shore things up with proper sleep, exercise and a healthy diet too. These all give you the best chance of a thriving sex life post-menopause, after all.
Sex has always been important to me. I spent years as a sex columnist on Sky Magazine (remember that?), where my cult following earned me the label ‘Britain’s agony aunt with attitude’.
I know how to address intimate problems – I know how to keep both sides of a sexual partnership happy, and how to make sex the glue that keeps a relationship vibrant and strong. Indeed, at my age and with my experience, is there anything about sex I don’t know?
Well, yes. Paradoxically, I also know that sex can wither and shrivel to nothing if you don’t keep learning and practising. Which is how I find myself sitting opposite Marie Morice, a clinical sexologist – a type of sex therapist – and fierce advocate of sexual empowerment for midlife women.
Sex columnist Karen Krizanovich is 54. She didn’t predict that, at this stage of life, she would have a partner ten years younger
Marie coaches her many clients in workshops, groups or one-to-one sessions. I definitely feel odd asking someone else about sex, but if anyone can tell me what I don’t know about nurturing a fulfilling sex life way past our sixth decade, I have a feeling it’s her.
My aim is to continue enjoying my much-younger partner and making him happier in bed, I tell her. We agree I’ll have four hour-long sessions.
Happily, Marie is like the friend you want to take everywhere. She’s a statuesque, slender and fit 48 with an easiness about these sorts of intimate matters (she is French after all).
Good sex is worth working at, she says – and I fully agree – so that’s my big intention. Read on to find out what I learned, and how to fire up your libido too…
Session One: How to mix it up in the bedroom
Marie starts by making daring suggestions about spicing things up: What about bondage? Remote-control sex toys?
While these suggestions may appeal to others, they’re not for me. I long for simpler days when spontaneity was sexier than gadgetry. I once met my partner at the door wearing a bikini and holding a martini, and that did the job.
Is there a new tech-free technique I can learn that would be fun for him and me?
Marie mentions ‘edging’, which sounds like something you do on a sewing machine but would definitely get you kicked out of The Great British Sewing Bee.
Marie Morice, 48, is a French clinical sexologist – a type of sex therapist – and fierce advocate of sexual empowerment for midlife women
‘Edging is orgasm delaying to achieve a bigger, better sensation as well as prolonging climax,’ she says. ‘It’s also called surfing, peaking or teasing. It involves stopping orgasm in yourself or your partner right when you’re on the edge of climax.’
Some people, Marie explains, claim they have longer orgasms by doing this, potentially lasting up to a minute.
But I’m bad at delayed gratification, whether that’s shopping, pudding or sex.
I mention it to my younger stud that night. While most men would spit out their drink in shock, he laughs and says it sounds boring. I ask if he’s willing to help with my homework anyway, which, of course, he is.
Marie says getting in the mood is vital, but that only succeeds in making delayed gratification even trickier. We have a go, and it sort of works. Maybe we didn’t reach the ‘extra intensity of finally letting yourself jump off the orgasm cliff’, as she put it, but it was still nice to roam the foothills.
Session Two: Menopause can make sex better
‘We can commit to sex the same way we do the gym or the office,’ Marie says. In practice that means not giving up when menopausal problems – vaginal dryness, hot flashes, night sweats, weight gain, mood swings, anxiety – threaten to derail the whole train set.
‘Use lubricant if you need to and do it without apology. Get your partner involved – it’s fun!’ Hmmm, is it?
Marie insists she practises what she preaches, and that conventional wisdom around menopause – i.e., that it flattens carnal passions to a pancake – just isn’t true.
On the contrary, at the age of 45, she found she had a raging libido. The fact she was newly divorced after almost two decades of marriage, and that she’d just stopped birth control, also had something to do with it, of course.
‘It’s a lot harder to notice your body – and your mind – changing when you’re on the Pill,’ she explains. ‘Once I stopped taking it, it took me a while to readjust. I realised I was going through perimenopause [the years before periods stop] but my libido was through the roof. That was not something I had heard about before.
‘Contraceptive access for women is fundamental,’ she says. ‘But it’s interesting to see how our libido can be suppressed by the Pill. In menopause, of course, there is freedom from the worry of pregnancy.
As women age physiologically, they are able to have even deeper orgasms, says Marie. Their sex lives don’t have an expiry date that stops once the biological clock say no more babies
‘Part of what I do is to help women and their partners transition from reproductive and recreational sex to just recreational sex. As we age physiologically, women are able to have even deeper orgasms and pleasure. Their sex lives don’t have an expiry date that stops once our biological clocks say no more babies. Quite the opposite.’
Session Three: Tackling body anxiety
I was plagued by body issues when I was younger, and found in my 40s that I wanted to have sex but not ‘make love’.
Looking into my lover’s eyes during the act was impossible. I didn’t want a deep and meaningful experience, or rather I did but wouldn’t let myself have it.
Does that mean I was avoiding something, I ask Marie?
‘Eye contact can be intimidating, as we’re exposing our innermost selves,’ she says. ‘But it can encourage more intimacy. I’d recommend first practising for short periods of time outside of the bedroom, until you become more comfortable doing it for longer or during orgasm.
‘Sit facing each other, set a timer for five minutes and gaze into each other’s eyes. Then stand up and hug your partner. Repeat on a regular basis.’
If we can both keep a straight face, this is something I am willing to try.
Not that I’ve ever seen sex as a very serious experience. My idea of romance is laughing a lot and telling jokes afterwards.
She suggests my jokes are a distancing tactic to avoid intimacy. Marie is a champion at reframing things so they’re more positive. And I do think she’s right: jokes fill the post-coital silence when we should be basking in, well, the post-coital silence.
No surprise that I’m not a big cuddler, either. Marie tells me off, saying I shouldn’t think of cuddling as clingy, but rather a show of affection. The next time I see my partner, I give him a big soppy cuddle, and I don’t feel as cringey as I thought I would. But I’m not sure how he feels about it.
Where Marie and I differ is on the use of sex toys. I don’t like them and as a sex columnist never recommended them. I find they often make people less sensitive and sex with a partner less pleasurable.
However, Marie encourages women to buy them for themselves. ‘Sex toys can be an incredible way to build sexual self-esteem and for women to own their pleasure,’ she says.
Happily, we are both big fans of the Kegel8, which consists of a ‘probe’ attached to a an electronic device that controls it.
It’s not a sex toy but a pelvic floor exerciser, principally designed for those with issues caused by childbirth, but which, as an added bonus, can really help strengthen vaginal muscles and potentially achieve stronger orgasms. Your partner may notice the difference, too.
Session Four: Closing the ‘pleasure gap’
Marie says there is often a large pleasure gap between couples. ‘Research shows that 50 per cent of women fake orgasm but only 25 per cent of men do the same.
‘There are lots of reasons for middle-aged women faking it –out of habit, out of not knowing how they achieve orgasm at all, to spare their partner feeling inadequate or simply to get ordinary sex over with.
‘It’s fine if your desires are different from your partner’s,’ says Marie. ‘It’s important not to lay blame on anything, or shame anyone. Simply say to your partner that you’d like to try something different. Most partners are eager to please, even if their idea of pleasure is different to yours.’
And yet, there’s an accepted discrepancy that rankles. ‘A recent study showed that 91 per cent of men but only 64 per cent of women usually orgasm during sex,’ says Marie. And it seems like we’re settling for what’s clearly an unfair situation.
Marie is fierce on debunking the myth that women achieve orgasm during penetrative sex. ‘Science has proven that most women need clitoral stimulation to climax and yet it is treated as an afterthought. Women need to understand that and be clear about how they achieve orgasm.
‘At the end of my four sessions, I realise quite how much I don’t know about sex,’ says Karen. ‘It’s both sobering and enlightening. Marie has given me a lot of knowledge and skill as well as hope’
‘That doesn’t mean telling your partner they’re doing it all wrong. It’s better to say, ‘I like this, can we try this?’ than focus on how penetration isn’t doing the job for you.’
This is why Marie is so keen on me knowing my own anatomy. ‘You may think of the clitoris as a small thing, but it is only the tip of a pleasure-centre iceberg,’ she says.
‘In reality, the clitoris is a complex interior and exterior network of erectile tissue with more than 10,000 nerve endings. Compared to the penis, which has only about 4,000 such nerve endings, the clitoris is much more sensitive.’ Learning more about your body really does help. The key, she says, is bigging ourselves up – understanding that nothing withers or loses its power unless we let it.
‘When you think of yourself sexually, stop yourself before you say, ‘At my age’. Your age needn’t have so much impact!’
Sex, Marie explains, can also be a great healing force, either after bereavement or divorce.
‘Sex with someone else can work wonders after coming out of a long relationship. But women also need to be aware that post-divorce sex can stir up some potent feelings.’
Marie makes it clear that it’s all too easy to confuse your feelings in these highly charged scenarios. ‘It’s not love that you’re experiencing. It’s sexual excitement combined with the power of intimacy.’
It’s a sensation a lot of women have forgotten or maybe never recognised in their marriage.
At the end of my four sessions, I realise quite how much I don’t know about sex. It’s both sobering and enlightening. Marie has given me a lot of knowledge and skill as well as hope. She’s opened my mind. And, as the late great sexologist Dr Ruth would say, ‘When it comes to sex, the most important six inches are the ones between the ears.’
- Find out more about Marie Morice, sexologist and founder of Lilith your Life, at mariemorice.co.uk
