Guest post by a female sexual therapist

I have two answers for you in relation to this argument. A young couple just beginning sexual life has a tendency to think that successful sex experience is a matter of tricks and techniques. This is not entirely their fault. Rather it is the fault of book and porn,  which over-emphasize the importance of techniques.

The great determining factor in the success of any human relationship is how you feel about the other person, not how you think you feel, but rather how you really feel.

That is why groups of young couples coming together under experienced leadership to explore the future marriage relationship make such a valuable investment in time and spiritual energy.

“Of course,” you say, “I know how I feel about my partner. It’s love.”

This answer is not a final one, nor is it necessarily a good one. For it to be a good answer depends upon the kind of love you feel. There are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world. Embodied love, Agape, Eros, the sense of connection between the Lover archetypes in different people.

My second answer is this: nobody ever knows all about sex. The most remarkable fact about sex is that it is never the same and is always new. It changes as you change and as your partner changes.

And both of you are changing every minute that you live. Because many couples fear what the years will do to their sex drive, they should know that the sexual experiences of a couple in their fifties and even later, can be beyond any power to describe, deeper and more enthralling than in their twenties.

The reasons are numerous. In middle age, the couple already has lived and loved together for many years. They have explored on a wide frontier the beauties and satisfactions of sex.

They have weathered many storms together. Gone is the superficiality and sham. Now, after the poses, the stresses and strains of the earlier years, there is no longer need for pretence. They feel free and at ease with each other in their sexual expression. They are emotionally mature, forged in the crucible of life. And they are emotionally open with each other.

Furthermore, middle-aged couples have emerged from the child-bearing years. Thus, they need no longer cope with the inevitable anxieties of possible pregnancy.

A woman past menopause very often feels emancipated, and many feel they can now really enjoy sex. Significantly, the sexual drives of many women accelerate after menopause for just this reason.

Indeed, there is even sexual satisfaction in store for the elderly. We rarely see or hear anything about sexual fulfilment in persons aged sixty and beyond. Yet we know that many are physically capable and we know, too, that sex is important to many couples in the past-sixty age range.

Despite what you have been conditioned to believe, sex in this stage of life can be as vital a force for couples as it is two, three or four decades earlier.

Why might people be afraid of sex, which is one of the most fundamental human drives, and potentially one of the most rewarding? I think there are many reasons, some obvious, some not quite so obvious.

Most fundamentally, it’s important for a man or woman to be able to trust the opposite sex sufficiently to become as intimate as one needs to be to have sexual intercourse.

Now, of course, it’s possible to have sex without feeling any emotional connection to your partner. I’d assume that’s the basis of most transactions between clients and sex workers.

For many men, this probably represents an extremely convenient way of having sex, without actually having to form any emotional relationship or risk intimacy and closeness with another person.

Lack of Trust

And why might somebody be lacking in trust? Of course, this usually comes down to childhood experience.

When somebody has been treated in a way that diminishes their trust in other people, particularly as a vulnerable child, it can be hard for them to re-establish trust later in life, and form a deep, meaningful relationship. One of the best ways of using shadow work is to heal the emotional wounds of childhood. And this applies as much to sex as anything else. Yet because sex is one of the things where we most expose ourselves to people, this can be one of the hardest things of all for people who have been abused in some way to get over.

Sex is naturally anxiety provoking. You expose yourself at a deep level to another person, and all of us have a deep fear of being judged, not unreasonably, since most of us are judged all the time, every day in life; and sex is a place where one is most vulnerable and the judgments can be harshest.

For example, despite the so-called liberation of women over the past few decades, most of us still operate to the standard whereby men are expected to take the lead and initiate during sex, and often to be responsible in some way for the woman’s pleasure as well.

Under such pressure, a man may well feel he is likely to be judged adversely for failing to measure up in some way. That might be as commonplace a  concern as penis size, it might be a concern around premature ejaculation, it might be a concern around attractiveness or ability to bring his partner to orgasm.

The problem is, in part, that these fears are never voiced openly, and communication between partners is often lacking in any kind of relationship, let alone a sexual one.

Gender roles in sexuality

What’s ironic, too, is the fact that most women are probably just as fearful of being judged by their male partner — breast size, bodily appearance, scents tastes, ability to please the man … all of these things, and more, represent a woman’s fears that are equivalent to the man’s fears around penis size and sexual competence.

But it is rather easier for a woman in a sexual situation to be passive and simply accept the man, who by his very nature does need to take a more active role in penetration and thrusting.

For this reason, perhaps combined with the comments I made above about a lack of trust, many men will find it extremely difficult to avoid anxiety at the thought of sex, no matter how excited they are.