This week in Savage Love: Old times

I’m a nearly-80 straight male, with undiminished libido. I have no problem with it, just a persistent curiosity. Like, why now? And why so various? And is it common among us old geezers? Male and female? I’m more sex-obsessed than ever before, including adolescence. Until my sixties, tits were my sexual focus, and other body parts were strictly subsidiary, whether I was looking, fantasizing, masturbating, or fucking. Now butts, bellies, assholes, cunts, legs, arms, shoulders are equal turn-ons. Well, I do have one problem: Women aren’t interested in me “that way” anymore. The secret smiles in public are no longer complimentary or inviting or challenging. They’re just fond, polite smiles for a nice-looking old man. The availability of porn plays a big part in my obsessions. It primes the pump visually, mentally and physically, by showing more body parts and what can be done with them. Lack of a steady sex partner may also explain my obsession—but I was sometimes without a sex partner when I was younger and I wasn’t similarly obsessed. So is this the usual pattern? Does being relieved of the stress and distractions of work free all retired men—and women—to be perpetually horny or what?
Geezer Energy Rocks Id And Titillates Retired Isolated Chap

“I don’t have statistics for GERIATRIC, but I can tell him that wherever his libido falls on the ‘none’ to ‘yowza’ scale, he’s normal,” said Joan Price, author of Naked At Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex. “While it’s true that most seniors see their libidos decrease or at least mellow, I hear from people like GERIATRIC all the time—older folks who feel exuberantly sexy.”

What explains the sudden surge in libido experienced by some seniors?

“There’s a freedom to sex in our older years,” said Price. “We may still get those ‘at your age’ restrictive, shaming messages, but we’re happiest and most fulfilled when we ignore them. So I would advise GERIATRIC to enjoy his charged libido and not to worry about whether it’s a ‘usual pattern.’ Who cares? It’s your pattern. You do you!’

And Price says there are women who’d be down to do you, too.

“As he sees it, his problem is that the women he desires ‘aren’t interested,’” said Price. “As I see it, his problem is that he’s not actively seeking out women who are.”

Your days of picking up women on the street may be behind you, GERIATRIC, but they’re supposed to be behind us all. Instead of making women feel unsafe when they’re out in public by assuming a smile is a signal of interest, Price suggests looking for connections online.

“GERIATRIC needs to polish his seduction skills and get on the dating sites,” said Price. “He needs to show a potential bedmate what he has to offer—and I don’t mean a dick pic. He needs to woo a woman with his words—at least to begin with—and, most importantly, he needs to show interest in who she is as a full person, not just the body parts that turn him on.”

But don’t get on dating sites if your bullshit detectors were removed with your gallbladder. If someone seems too good to be true—if someone seems too young and too hot to be interested in a guy your age—they’re almost certainly a scammer. And if a flirtatious exchange becomes a sob story becomes a money beg, hit the block button. I’m a firm believer in intergenerational romance, GERIATRIC, but for safety’s sake you should stay in your generational lane. That means getting on Our Time and/or Silver Singles instead of Tinder and/or Plenty Of Fish. For while there might be a small handful of hot twenty-something gerontophiles in your area, the odds that you’ll find one are too slim to bother trying. And you’ll have better luck going after women closer to your own age.

“Libidinous older women are out there, I can assure him,” said Price. But you’ll have to do the work, GERIATRIC, “since most will want to feel safe and appreciated as well as desired before they invite him into their beds.”

Finally, GERIATRIC, seeing as the horny old man has been a cliché for as long as men have existed, I don’t think you should blame online porn for your predicament. Some people’s libidos ramp up as they age, like Price said, and it sounds like you’re one of those people. Maybe instead of seeing porn as the cause of all your problems, GERIATRIC, you could see porn as your friend. Solo sex can be good sex and porn is there to help you enjoy it.

Follow Joan Price on Twitter @JoanPrice. You can find Price’s books and the educational film she made about senior sex with porn star and sex educator Jessica Drake at her website www.joanprice.com.

P.S. We’re not really fighting.

Not all encounters with gays count as “gay encounters,” FOOT, but seeing as this was clearly an erotic experience for the elderly guy and you knew it—you weren’t being secretly perved on—I’m going to side with your wife. Even if you didn’t get off on it, even if you were just enjoying the massage, you knew the other guy was getting off on it.

Your boyfriend was either playing head games—meaning he was fucking with you on purpose—or he lacked the emotional intelligence and/or impulse control to realize why sharing something like that, at a moment like that, was a bad idea. If he’s the kind of guy who enjoys tormenting the women he dates, BLAB, he would’ve done similar or worse things by now. (And a woman he dated a quarter of a century ago probably wouldn’t be on speaking terms with him, much less one of his closest friends.) Assuming he hasn’t done similar or worse—I’m guessing you would’ve included other examples in your letter if he had—perhaps he deserves the benefit of the doubt here: He said something stupid and thoughtless, he couldn’t come up with a good explanation for why he said it, and doesn’t like to be reminded of it. As for Susan… He’s known her for 25 years. If he wanted to be with her, he’d be with her. And he may be reluctant to get together as a group because he worries—perhaps not without cause—that you might bring it up. If he’s given you no other reason to suspect he might be cheating on you, cram this ancient blowjob down the memory hole.