It’s a myth that women don’t want sex as they age, study finds

It’s a myth that women lose interest in sex as they enter midlife and beyond, according to research that followed more than 3,200 women for about 15 years.

“About a quarter of women rate sex as very important, regardless of their age,” said Dr. Holly Thomas, lead author of an abstract presented during the September 2020 virtual annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society. “The study showed substantial numbers of women still highly value sex, even as they get older, and it’s not abnormal,” said Thomas, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

“If women are able to speak up with their partner and make sure that they’re having sex that’s fulfilling and pleasurable to them, then they’re more likely to rate it as highly important as they get older,” she said.

“That’s actually quite refreshing, that there were a quarter of women for whom sex remains not just on the radar but highly important,” said Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director for the North American Menopause Society, who was not involved in the study.

“Studies like these provide valuable insights to health care providers who may otherwise dismiss a woman’s waning sexual desire as a natural part of aging.”

Myth busting

It’s true that past studies have found that women tend to lose interest in sex as they age. But women’s health practitioners say that attitude doesn’t jibe with the reality they see.

“Some of the prior studies had suggested that sex goes downhill and all women lose interest in sex as they get older,” Thomas said. “That really isn’t the type of story that I hear from all my patients.”

One issue, she said, is that past studies took a single snapshot of a woman’s desire at one point in her life and compared it with similar snapshots in later decades of life.

“That type of longitudinal study would just show averages over time,” Thomas said. “And if you look at things on average, it may look like everyone follows one path.”

The study presented in 2020 used a different type of analysis that allowed researchers to follow the trajectory of a woman’s desire over time, Thomas said then.

“We wanted to use this different type of technique to see if there really were these different patterns,” she said. “And when you look for these trajectories, you see there are significant groups of women who follow another path.” How do feelings about sex change over time?

The research, which analyzed data from a national multisite study called SWAN, or the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, found three distinct pathways in a woman’s feelings about the importance of sex.

About a fourth of the women (28%) followed traditional thinking on the subject: They valued sex less during midlife years.

However, another fourth of the women in the study said the exact opposite. Some 27% of them said sex remains highly important throughout their 40s, 50s and 60s — a surprising contradiction of the belief that all women lose interest in sex as they age.

“Sex is going to look different,” said Faubion, who is director of the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Women’s Health.

“It’s not going to look the same at 40 as it does at 20; it’s not going to look the same at 60 as it does at 40, and it’s not going to look the same at 80 as it did at 60,” she said. “There may be some modifications that we have to do, but people in general who are healthy and in good relationships remain sexual.” Women in the study who highly valued sex shared the following characteristics: They were more highly educated, they were less depressed, and they had experienced better sexual satisfaction before entering midlife.

“Women who were having more satisfying sex when they were in their 40s were more likely to continue to highly value sex as they got older,” Thomas said.

There could also be socioeconomic factors at play, she added. For example, more highly educated women may have higher incomes and feel more stable in their lives with less stress.

“Therefore they have more headspace to make sex a priority because they’re not worrying about other things,” Thomas said.

The study found another factor important to both lower-interest and high-interest pathways — race and ethnicity.

African American women were more likely to say sex was important to them for the duration of midlife, while Chinese and Japanese women were more likely to rate sex as having low importance throughout their midlife years.

“I do want to emphasize that it’s much more likely to be due to sociocultural factors than any biological factor,” Thomas said. “Women from different cultural groups have different attitudes … different comfort levels about getting older … and whether it’s ‘normal’ for a woman to continue to value sex as she gets older.”