The lack of sexual referents beyond 60

More than half of people over 65 have an active sex life, according to the 2025 National Sexual Health Survey. However, we find it hard to imagine them having sexual relations.

We've been made to believe that with menopause and erectile dysfunction, the world ends. As if desire had an expiration date. But reality is different: the body changes, and sexuality does too, but that doesn't mean it disappears.

And it's that we love talking about active aging until the activity is sexual. That they go hiking, ballroom dancing, or take Italian classes seems fantastic to us. That they go on dates, masturbate, or have a full sex life already makes us more uncomfortable. Here the question we need to ask ourselves is: is the problem that they do all this... or that they force us to imagine that we will also get there?

Perhaps it's because we've hardly ever seen older people living their sexuality naturally. As if reaching a certain age obliged them to become beings without sexuality. If we never see older people living their sexuality naturally, we end up thinking it's not normal, and that causes many of these people to experience desire with guilt, shame, or in silence. We find it very difficult to understand the idea that we are sexual beings from birth until death. It seems that there are only a few years when it is legitimate, and the rest is governed by absolute silence. 

Perhaps the problem isn't that sex disappears with age. Perhaps what disappears is our ability to imagine it. And that is indeed a loss. We don't need older people to have more sex – they already do –; we need to stop behaving as if they don't.