“But some of the women had more than one partner; some had what they called ‘f… buddies’, they didn’t want the hassle of a relationship but were still very sexual. ‘ They’d had long-term relationships where the sex was never about them, or they’d got caught up in the baby thing and running a house.”
When one of my newly lovestruck older friends, a widow, tells me over lunch, “You don’t know what good sex is until you’re 70”, I can’t help thinking she’s either had a lot of bad sex until now or a treat lies in store at 70.
“Post-menopause is not the doom and gloom everybody necessarily claims,” Malta says. “It is for some women but for a lot it isn’t. ‘ A lot of them discover for the first time that they can actually pleasure themselves. Some women said to me, ‘I’d never had an orgasm in my life until I got divorced and found a new partner.’ ”
And of course, the sexual possibilities can be more limited for women
Other couples are happy to close the book on that chapter. “I’ve seen enough dicks in my life,” a 70-year-old Melbourne woman who doesn’t wish to be named tells me frankly. “I couldn’t face all that at this stage. Happily, the man I met said, ‘Look, that part of my life is over for me’ – he has some health issues – and I thought, ‘Thank heavens.’ But we’re very physically affectionate with each other. Lots of snuggling. Very warm and very loving.”
Put it down to biology, social conditioning or just another inequity of gender, but it’s easier for older men to seek out much younger partners – and be congratulated for it. Warren Marsh was perhaps unusual in that he consciously wanted someone around his age and stage in life; in other words, retired. Nick , on the other hand, had been married to a woman his own age, yet since his divorce he has consistently dated women at least 10 years younger, sometimes 25.
Instead, it’s suddenly, wow, all those feelings are back and a lot of women go, ‘I want sex
“It’s partly about the sex,” he says, “and probably about something in the male psychology, refusing to accept you’re not young any more. So you are likely to be drawn to the younger woman because you’re going to be more attracted and – this sounds awful – because it does something to your sense of self. It kind of defies the inevitability of the ageing process and it makes you feel younger. For men, it also falls within the possible.”
It can be a knotty business, this late-life love. For one thing, a much higher chance of encountering more “in sickness” than “in health”. What are the care obligations in a relatively new partnership?
“We’d been together for a few years when the man I’d met developed Alzheimer’s,” says a Brisbane woman who wishes to stay anonymous. “We were living separately and I’d never been madly in love with him but after he was diagnosed, I felt I couldn’t leave the relationship, so I stayed. I ended up feeling both resentful and guilty in equal measure. Guilty that I was resentful.”
On a more subtle level, there’s also the whole issue of having to explain yourself and your long and eventful life to the new person, and their friends. “If you’ve been in a relationship for a long time, you’ve had someone who has witnessed your life, who’s been through thick and thin with you,” says Maggie Owens. “If you meet someone when you’re 60, they don’t know who you are and you have to tell them. It’s so boring. It takes so long – and it’s hard to enda norsk kvinna ‘pitch yourself’.”