Posted July 1, Reviewed by Chloe Williams. As part of the ongoing English Longitudinal Study of Aging ELSA , a team of British and European researchers assessed the sex lives and happiness of almost 7, coupled participants—3, women, 3, men, average age For ELSA women, the moves that brought the greatest satisfaction included: kissing, cuddling, hugging, mutual whole-body massage, and oral sex—but not intercourse. The men expressed a bit more nostalgia for intercourse, but otherwise concurred with the women's erotic preferences.
The women in the ELSA study, age 50 to 89, did not consider intercourse a major contributor to happiness or sexual satisfaction. Many studies agree that, assuming reasonably happy relationships, women of all ages enjoy intercourse, especially holding men inside them. But only a small fraction are consistently orgasmic from vaginal intercourse—depending on the study, just 5 to 20 percent.
Meanwhile, around 95 percent of men are orgasmic during intercourse, which explains why the ELSA men thought more fondly of it. But by age 60, around 90 percent of men have erection difficulties, and even with drugs, may no longer be able to twist the sheets like they used to. The ELSA study corroborates the two findings of a great deal of previous research. Lovemaking remains important to most people late in life. But vaginal intercourse usually drops out of their erotic repertoire.
Fortunately, when older couples—or lovers of any age—jettison intercourse, they can still enjoy marvelous sex by focusing on kissing, hugging, cuddling, mutual whole-body massage, and other types of play. Many older adults, especially men, have a hard time transitioning from sex organized around intercourse to sex without it.
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But sex coaches and therapists almost universally recommend this shift to older couples. And as the ELSA study shows, with or without intercourse—mostly without—almost all the older adults in the study said that regular lovemaking contributed to their happiness.
