Myths and facts about sex as we age
(The Dallas Examiner) – It has often been said that “love makes the world go round.” Without love, there would be no human existence.
Despite the myth that one’s sexuality ends once people get older, senior citizens often need intimacy and love in different formats to live a happy, healthy and fulfilled life, according to Holly Glover, director of education and family support services at the James L. West Center for Dementia Care in Fort Worth.
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Glover, who is also a professional counselor and licensed dementia expert, discussed why sexuality does not end at a certain age during a webinar titled, Sexuality and Aging, hosted by the Area Agency on Aging of North Central Texas Sept. 10.
“This particular topic is one that we always have a lot of interest in because it’s something that we don’t talk about often, and so we want to make sure we talk about it and talk about how this is about sexuality and aging services and everything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask. When we talk about those difficult topics, these are the things we’ve got to be talking about with our families,” she said.
Sex as we age
Sexual well-being is a component of general satisfaction with life, according to Glover.
“We are all sexual beings and that does not go away because somebody gets older, that does not go away because somebody develops dementia,” she stated.
When it comes to human sexuality, Glover said people react a certain way due to different eras and time periods people have lived in that determines their attitudes toward sex.
“It is the generations that we’re working with,” Glover said. “So, if we start out with that generation that was called the greatest generation. These are the people that were born before 1936. They’ve lived through World War II, the Great Depression. They are very cooperative. They tend to put the public interest above their own interest. With the public interest above their own interest is uniformity.”
She went on to the next generation, those born between 1937 and 1945, which she said were called the silent generation.
“These ages are a little bit off right now, but these are the folks that lived through when we went through the advent of TV and telephones, and they grew up having a lot of respect for authority. They are loyal. They were hard workers,” she said.
She then focused on the baby boomers.
“Those of us who work in the field of seniors and aging, here’s our target, right,” Glover said. “Here are baby boomers. In five years, all of our baby boomers are going to be over the age of 65. They lived through the Cold War. They were all about exploration. They place a higher value on their sexual health and their sexual rights than previous generations because they actually talk about it, and have always tended to talk about it, where their parents, the generation in front of them, may have been very, very modest.”
After Baby Boomers, comes Generation X, which Glover said holds a different mentality towards sexuality than previous generations.
“They are used to different gender roles,” she said. “There’re greater expectations about remaining sexually active and many people, from the baby boomers up, and of course, this is just in general. It’s not everybody, but they link quality of life with sexual vitality. And then we’re going to go into a little bit on Gen X, because we are certainly starting to see plenty of people develop dementia, live in assisted living and in memory cares who are in their 50s. Just the reality of it.”
Other generations today include the Millennials and Generation Z.
“Where did we come about that sex was a taboo topic during the first half of the 20th century?” Glover asked. “But then again – those baby boomers with new generations – we started having social change. And what started happening in the 1960s was that birth control became more available. And in the 1970s, women’s lives, feminism, gay rights and other topics, people started talking about it more.”
Basically, the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s changed the culture in the U.S. and how people view sexuality today and how nursing homes or care centers deal with residents of all backgrounds, according to Glover.
Residents who live in residential settings that have sexual expressions might pose a conflict for some.
“I did not use the word behaviors,” she stated. “Those of you who’ve watched our programs know that we don’t talk about people with dementia having behaviors. They’re doing the best they can with what remains or having expressions. So let’s talk about sexual expressions in that residential setting. What tends to happen is that the staff views it as a problem, or the staff views it as a source of conflict. And we’re actually going to look at residents rights. I’m going to focus on resident rights in Texas.
First consider variables such as cognitive status and sexual orientation.
“There is an increase in difficulties for some to exert their sexual rights, and what does that look like,” Glover said. “So let’s just jump right in, and let’s talk a little bit about LGBT aging and sexual health. We don’t just have heterosexuals. We have lesbian, we have gay, bisexual, transgender. We’ve got to be aware and be able to provide services and have a welcoming environment. There’s lots of ways we can do this.”
Glover explained that if you are a provider, one is most effective if they avoid behaviors such as assuming all older adults are heterosexual, that older adults’ sexuality is fixed, absolute and lifelong.
“All of these are things that we tend to assume about the senior population, and it’s incorrect,” she said. “It is so important that we train our staff when we’re interacting with older adults. There is actually a safe zone, welcome triangle. It’s LGBT friendly language, and it indicates to clients that this is a space where people are safe, where people are welcome, and where people are included. It can help to facilitate that open and honest discussion around sex and sexual health.
“People over the age of 50 grew up in a time when LGBT people were less accepted than they are today, so it made it even more difficult to disclose their sexual orientation. So what we have found in senior living is that there are an awful lot of older adults who are choosing to come out later in life. Not only is it challenging for them, it may be challenging for their families and it can be challenging for staff. They are at a very high risk for social isolation.”
Glover shared that in the first 10 years of working at the dementia center, nobody even knew about sex and intimacy or even knew anybody had any affair.
“Intimacy and the enjoyment of one possibility, regardless of sexual orientation or sexual differences, we’ve taken quite a good step here on that road to developing an environment where residents who do actually interact with each other don’t feel threatened or shut out from that part of their life that they still wish to experience before they tell us,” Glover said.
Sexuality vs. intimacy
“Think about our expectations for those professionals working in senior care,” she explained. “If someone has lived with another person for 40, 50 or 60 years and slept in the bed next to another person, and that person has either died or they themselves have developed dementia and have to be placed but their normal for the last 30, 40, 50 or 60 years is to sleep in the bed next to another person. And then we find a woman going down the hallway and crawling into the bed with a man. Is that sexual? No, that’s not sexual. That’s her looking for what is normal to her.”
As far as intimacy, humans need intimacy, whether it is a hug, kiss or just a touch. Intimacy is not just the physical act of sex, Glover pointed out.
“You hear couples say that they just want to be able to sleep together. They were talking about sleeping together, putting their arms around each other, kissing someone, good night, without people coming in and waking them up,” Glover said. “You heard the frustration in their voices. And what about those spouses and partners that come and the gentleman who was there and he said, I get a chance to hold her and touch her. And it’s not touch for care, because this is very common, especially in memory care, that the only touch a resident, a patient or a client might receive is when someone is changing their clothes or bathing them. But where is tender, emotional, intimate touch? You saw what the man was talking about, putting his arms around his wife, kissing her and dancing with her is intimacy.”
Glover shared a story of a couple where the husband and wife were in their 50s, and his wife had developed dementia. The husband stated that the most intimate times he ever had with his wife were at mealtime, late into his wife’s disease, he would always assist her at mealtime.
“He talked about how she would look in his space, and he would pull her up really, really close to him and what they shared during mealtime. We’ve got to be able to see that ourselves,” Glover said. “You may have noticed in the one video where he was talking about being able to hold his wife, or lay in the bed with his wife, the yellow Velcro that he had pulled across the door, that’s what that particular facility had for whenever a husband, a wife, a partner, wanted to be alone, they would pull the yellow Velcro across so that they were in there and nobody would bother them.”
Companionship
Glover then discussed the different types of intimacy such as companionship, which does not require sexual intercourse. Furthermore, the topics of sexual abuse and sexual assault were mentioned.
Sexual abuse is any non-consensual contact, and sexual assault warrants medical treatment, Glover said. The older generation is not immune from sexual abuse or sexual assault and those need to be reported to authorities.
Glover also mentioned how one can avoid sexual harassment or inappropriate language by either sex by making light jokes such as I’m married, see my diamond ring for women who are being harassed and vice versa in order to calm the situation down when one is faced with that dilemma.
In conclusion, there are several ways that have been found to be most effective for families in maintaining an intimate connection with loved ones experiencing dementia or other cognitive impairments by a simple hug, touch, or just by visiting them often and not abandoning loved ones or older adults who have a right to intimacy and love.
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