"That's not going to happen to me!" my friends and I insisted as we segued into our postmenopausal years. Nope, we were convinced that things would stay fun, frequent, and fully satisfying as we aged, stereotypes be damned. We needed, wanted, and deserved great sex and assumed we would have it. Lots of it.
But it turned out, some of us were wrong.
Consider my friend Jenny*, 60, who reminisces about the weekends she used to spend luxuriating in bed, having sex. "After menopause, it was as if someone pushed a button, and my sex drive, while not totally gone, has diminished hugely," she says. "I went from someone who really cared about sex a lot to, 'I could have it; I could not have it.'"
It also didn't help that sex, all of a sudden, became intensely painful. "It felt like I was going to be torn or ripped open. My husband and I would have to give up," she says, wistfully.
Jenny, who lives in the Northeast, certainly isn't alone struggling with this nasty later-in-life surprise. During perimenopause—the transition period when the ovaries begin to close up shop—and menopause—officially 12 months after a cis woman's last period—estrogen production tapers off, which can wreak havoc on the body and a once-flourishing sex life. With 51 being the average age of menopause, a woman may have been dealing with these frustrations for a decade or longer by the time she turns 60.
Many find themselves facing down the twin, interrelated problems of dwindling desire and uncomfortable—sometimes even excruciating—sex. The vagina can get narrower and shorter. The tissues become thinner, drier, and less elastic. Research shows that up to an astonishing 84 percent of postmenopausal women experience dryness, burning, pain or other very unsexy sensations, while one study found that more than half report struggling with low sexual desire.
When you realize that approximately 1.3 million U.S. women enter menopause every year, you can grasp how huge a problem this is—and how confounding it is that these symptoms have been shrugged off for so long. Until recently, women like Jenny may have turned up at the doctor's office for a cursory, possibly condescending consult and sent home without much help or even sympathy ("Who cares about your orgasm?" may have been the extent of the "treatment").
But increasingly, there's evidence that a sea change is underway. |
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