It seems that everyone wants to talk about sex and yet we rarely do.  Sex gets maximum air time in the media leaving us to believe that everyone else is having a great time.  Nationally our obsession with sex is rivaled only by our shame and discomfort with the topic. Movies would have us believe that you have to be young, thin and gorgeous to be having good sex.  Sex and Marriage therapist David Schnarch PhD tells us that we should not expect to have great sex until our senior years because we do not fully mature emotionally and relationally until that time.  Seniors having sex?  We can barely imagine it. 

For most of us the myth that only the young enjoy a healthy libido is reinforced by the reality of our over-tasked, emotionally undernourished lives.  We are simply too busy for sex.  Some women lose our libidos as we have babies lose our figures.  Others lose our libidos as we shift into a goal oriented, list making life style.  For some, our relationships lose the emotional connection we need in order to feel intimate.  What ever the reason- many of us lose our sex drive and the passion, power, and life giving force that goes with it.  Recently of friend of mine told me her MD had prescribed sex as a cure for middle age maladies like fatigue, mild depression, and chronic aches and pains.  Even the medical establishment recognizes the importance of having a ‘healthy libido’. 

To put it in the terms the ancients would use life is sustained by balancing ‘Eros’ and ‘Logos’.  The ancient Chinese called this ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’.  Karl Jung called it ‘Masculine’ and ‘Feminine’ energy.  We live in a culture which relies heavily on ‘logos’; a masculine way of being in the world.  Women often take on the mother-load of the task oriented, list making way of life as we take charge of children, family life, community activities, jobs, and a personal life all at once.  We are the ultimate multitaskers.  Women are living in the energetic of ‘Logos’; the logical, linear, concrete world.  Our sexuality resides in the world of Eros.  This is a dreamy, romantic place where time does not matter and our emotions and senses preside.  Remember that place?  

How can you find ‘it’ amidst the business and chaos that mid-life presents.  One of the keys is to find your sense of play.  How do you play?  Do you do enough of it?  Join a pottery class, fly a kite, and go to a museum.  Do this for you and not for your kids or your job.  Second, find your senses and indulge them.  Take a bath, get a massage, go bird watching, listen to music.  Again do this freely and often.  Finally, attend to your need for deep connection.  Don’t wait till your partner is ready to do this.  Do it for yourself.   Join a women’s group, go out with friends, go to therapy, or take a mediation workshop.  Do what ever it is that you strongly desire and need.  For example, if you are lonely and crave conversation establish a way of getting that on a regular basis.  The first aphrodisiac starts way before you get to the bedroom.  The initial fore has to do with nurturing you self; deeply caring for your self, finding out what you need and desire and getting it for your self. 

 The second step is doing all this more.  Much more.  Most of us meter out self care like we were on a diet or about to go broke.  We find all kinds of reasons why we can’t do it.  Our kids are too demanding, our jobs too important, and our partners too busy or needy… Then we wonder why we feel tired, depressed, or numb.  We are tired because we do not rest, we are depressed because we have feelings we fail to acknowledge, and we are numb because numbness is the body’s natural response to trauma.  We live in a frenzied state very close to (if not exactly like) the fight, flight response animals have to life threatening situations.  Regular self-care and frequent nurturing are imperative to sexual health and well being in general. 

After we feel nourished we can begin to explore our sexual self.  This is a journey of discovery about our bodies and souls.  It involves relationship; relationship to our selves, our bodies and our lovers.  It is a journey which requires maturity, presence and trust.  It is not for teenagers or twenty something’s.  It for those in mid-life or older.  If you are ready for that journey there are many ways to proceed.  You can go to a tantra workshop, explore sexual massage, seek an expert with whom you can discuss your sexual concerns, attend one of the sex parties being thrown across the country, buy a book on sex, and have the courage to begin discussing the issue with your partner or a close friend.  But remember, the key to better sex starts way before the bedroom. It has more to do with how you treat your self than how your partner treats your body (although consideration and technique play an important role).  You have to give yourself the foreplay you need if you want to have good sex.   We all know women need foreplay.  Now we have to realize that in today’s busy-ness we need to take steps to find our way back to our feelings, senses, and imaginations first.  Luckily, we can do this for ourselves.  We do not need to convince our partners to do it for us.  Go play, and then play some more and then see what happens.