The hardest part of characterizing love, romance, and sex over fifty to people under fifty is that the really good stuff doesn’t lend itself to explanation—anymore than the results of meditation or the experience of nirvana or the body/soul connection during orgasm are easily described.

Perhaps, it is impossible. Certainly, revelations, epiphanies, aha moments, and eye-openers of all kinds seem to require that the seeker of truth have within his/her experiences at least a clue to the answer, a key to the door.

In my sixties, I find that my greatest joys—my deepest sexuality, my fondest loving moments—are often side-by-side with despair, loss, or confusion. Maybe that is more like being sixteen than being forty.

A good question:  Why try to share with younger people? Because when I was younger, I was interested and it seemed no one wanted to open that Pandora’s Box.  Plus, I think hearing it, might make things nicer for people when they get older and might make things nicer for the older people they are around until then. It’s just a hunch.

When I was young, I heard all the jokes and the disparaging remarks about older people being sexual, how their bodies were disgusting to see, sex between them disgusting to imagine. Yet, I saw that it was only older people who seemed to have relationships devoid of struggle, blessed with contentment. Younger couples could be deliriously in love and then spew hateful words. Not all older couples were balanced and happy, but the truly happy couples I knew were all beyond their 20s. And the older they got, the more likely it was they were satisfied with each other.

Please share your Fifty Shades of Graying: Love, Romance, & Sex After Fifty  ©2013 Ariele M. Huff

For my blog/POD book, I want your stories, opinions, poems: 250-350 words or less. I’ll use your name, maybe photo unless you request not. You can choose your own nom de plume to be anonymous, if you’d like. Please include current age.  I’m also looking for a handful of younger people submissions—their views on love after 50. So, a teen, a 20s, a 30s, a 40s is kind of my initial idea. We’ll see what happens as I explore this new territory!  Send to ariele@comcast.net. Honesty is highly desired, but vulgarity isn’t. 

 Examples of short contributions:

“It’s About Time”

I was relaxing and enjoying the day with a friend, and all my six plus decades. “How would you like to have that!” he exclaimed in typical fashion as a pretty young woman walked past.

“Nope” I replied as he looked at me, mouth half open and a skeptical gaze. “Honest truth,” I said adding, “and no, the fires of passion have not gone out. Don’t you remember all that stuff when we were young? Performance anxiety, are we doing it right? Am I going too fast? Am I going too slow? Mostly excitement and hormones, and when it was all over, you were out of breath and out of everything else, wondering if there was anything more. Time and experience DO matter in romance, love, and sex. A lot of those questions from years ago are gone now. You can have old knees but a young heart, and your libido can develop a few more gears to improve the ride. Now, the journey getting there is as exciting as the climatic arrival. In fact, when you’re done, it’s still may not be over. You can just shift gears and keep going. The ride can last for days. Remember Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast?—an ongoing experience.” I looked at my friend.

“Time to go,” I said. “I’ve got an experience waiting at home.”  Milt Footer

 Love does not have to come in a small box bought by a secretary, sex does not have to be necessary or a chore, and “I Love You” does not have to be a ten-pound  box of chocolates or a bouquet of flowers bought at the discount flower shop on the way home. Connie Campbell

"SEX & LOVE"

Sex is friction.

Love is commitment.

Hormones dress them up,

like literature and cinema.

the form survives.

Ariele M. Huff

From The Perks of Aging: Blessings, Silver Linings, and Convenient Half-Truths

available on lulu.com