Getting More Out of Your Love Life
By: Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: 2004-05-14 15:41:00-04:00
Tips from Sue Johanson:
1. Skip burgers and fries. Good nutrition makes you feel much better, and makes for better sex. "Eat junk food," she says, "and all you want to do is fight over the remote control."
2. Games are good. Try phone sex—he on one extension, she on another. Try hide-and-seek, on the floor, in the dark, in the nude. "Find each other, then have fun under the coffee table."
3. Toys work, too. "Go to a sex store together, buy small, low-cost items to start, check them out, then invest more once you know what you like."
4. Choose a time when both feel ready for lovemaking. Wake up your partner at midnight with caresses and a sultry "Hi, big guy!" Someone with arthritis may do best in the morning, after a good night's sleep. "When we were young," Johanson points out, "we could never have sex during the day—the kids would hear."
5. If you have a physical restriction, or just the aches and pains of aging:
- Take an anti-inflammatory 20 minutes ahead of time.
- Together, take a romantic hot bath, with lights low, and candles and incense by the tub.
- Keep extra pillows nearby in case of leg or foot cramps.
- Have cream or gel handy.
- Warm the bed with an electric blanket.
6. Pleasurable positions? Spoon-fashion. Side-by-side. The X position. Or female-on-top. Try chair sex: It's easy on the joints.
7. And try the following books:
- Her latest, Sex, Sex and More Sex (Regan Books, May 2004).
- The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability (Cleis Press, December 2003), by Cory Silverburg, Miriam Kaufman and Fran Odette.
- The New Love and Sex After 60 (Ballantine Books; Revised edition, January 2002), by Robert Butler and Myrna Lewis. "Get the book and stand well back!"
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