In Lust We Trust? Masculinity and Sexual Desire in Later Life

Abstract

Recent years have seen increasing discussions of sexuality in later life. Today, continued sexual activity is gradually understood as a positive and healthy aspect of aging, in contrast to how aging historically was primarily associated with asexuality. Old men’s sexual function, in particular, has been a topic of notable interest to scholars and popular media alike, an interest spurred not least by the market introduction of Viagra and other sexuo-pharmaceuticals. If aging men’s sexual function has been the object of extensive discussion, considerably less attention has been given to the question of sexual desire in later life, neither women’s nor men’s. Old men’s sexual desire is a potentially conflictual field as men are often expected to be sexually willing but the old man who shows continued sexual interest also run the risk of being labeled a “dirty old man.” This article focuses on old men, masculinity, and sexual desire through the interview narratives of Swedish med between sixty-seven and eighty-seven years old. In dialogue with Sara Ahmed’s work on queer phenomenology, the article discusses asserted sexual desire as a form of orientation that shapes old men’s heterosexual subjectivities. The interviewees expressed that sexual desire continued to be an important aspect of later life, but sexual desire was also understood to vanish as one aged. For those who expressed a lack of sexual desire, this was sometimes experienced as a “gender trouble” but was also made sense of in relation to feeling old. All on all, intimacy was a central way of making sense of later life sexuality. The article concludes that narratives on intimacy could be understood as ways of retaining a heterosexual orientation as one ages. Through narratives of intimacy men could express a continued interest in sexuality, but in positive and unthreatening ways that avoided the stigmatization of being a dirty old man.

Keywords

sexuality aging sex masculinity later life

In recent years, there has been a notable upsurge in discussions of later life sexuality, both in the scientific literature and in the cultural representations in film and mass media (Scherrer 2009; Vares 2009; Marshall 2010). The long-standing discourse of later life as a time of asexuality is increasingly challenged and described as a “myth” and a misconception (Scherrer 2009; Jones 2002). Researchers have described this as a significant discursive shift where the idea of sexuality as something that vanishes as one ages and eventually disappears altogether is partly substituted with ideas of sexuality as lifelong. These changing attitudes toward the sexualities of older people should be understood in a context of changing cultural meanings on aging and old age in Western countries where people live longer are healthier and lead more active later lives. Continued sexual activity has consequently increasingly become a sign of healthy successful aging (Marshall and Katz 2003).

Feminist gerontologists have for a long time pointed to how men and women confront different realities as they age (Greer 1992; Calasanti and Slevin 2001; Marshall 2006). In terms of sexuality, old women have run the risk of being doubly invisible, as both femininity and old age have connoted asexuality. In contrast, old men have been subjected to the stereotype of the “dirty old man” who is excessively sexual for his age. Although women’s sexualities are to a large extent affirmed in new discourses of sexuality as lifelong, there is still a masculine bias in how sexual activities of old people are narrowly conceptualized in relation to the function and/or dysfunction of the male penis and the possibilities of having penile-vaginal intercourse (Sandberg 2011; Potts et al. 2006). This is partly spurred by the market introduction of Viagra and similar drugs in the 1990s, and there is today a field of research, “Viagra studies,” devoted to sexuo-pharmaceuticals as cultural artifacts (Marshall 2010; Potts and Tiefer 2006).

If men’s sexual function in later life has been the object of thorough discussion, considerably less attention has been given to the question of sexual desire, neither women’s nor men’s. Although it could be considered positive that agist discourses of asexual old age are challenged, the more recent discourses of sexuality as lifelong are potentially problematic in how they seem to take sexual desire for granted. An example of this is an article entitled “Seniors chatting about sex” in the magazine Ottar, published by RFSU, the Swedish Association for Sexual Education, where a Swedish sex counselor is interviewed, and she claims:

Sexual desire and the capability for love do not cease with age. One might suffer from physical illness, function may decline, but the desire remains.

Declines in sexual function due to, for example, illness is thus acknowledged, but sexual desire is understood to be persistent and always there. In her analysis of articles dealing with issues of sexuality in twenty-one gerontology journals, Scherrer (2009) concludes that the sexualities of old people are affirmed. However, she argues,

At the same time that this research, usefully, opens the door to thinking about aging sexualities, it also (unintentionally) positions a lack of sexuality in older adults as a negative characteristic. As aging sexualities are asserted, those with little or no interest in sexual experiences or relationships are rendered discursively invisible. (p. 10)

Scherrer’s criticism is also appropriate in other nonscientific contexts, asserting sexuality as something lifelong runs the risk of othering those who do not desire to be continuously sexually active when old (Sandberg 2015).

Old men and sexuality can be understood as a potentially conflictual field. Men are often expected to be always sexually willing and assertive, and the asexual oldie may then involve not being sufficiently sexual (Plummer 2005). Yet, old men who show continued sexual interest run the risk of being degraded and marginalized as a dirty old man who is inappropriately sexual for his age, where more serene sexuality is expected. However, as noted above, a continued sexual desire is now understood to be a healthy and positive aspect of aging. This article takes its outset in old men and sexuality as an ambiguous field and explores relations between old age, masculinity, heterosexuality, and sexual desire. What is the significance and meaning of sexual desire for the shaping of heterosexual masculinity among old men? What are the meanings of sexual desire; what is one expected to desire and how? How is lack of sexual desire articulated? The article draws on interviews with Swedish men aged between sixty-seven and eighty-seven who all identify as heterosexual. Rather than understanding sexual desire as merely a biological drive and inherent to bodies, I explore how sexual desire is made socially and culturally intelligible and meaningful to old men themselves.

The Study and its Methodology

The discussion of this article emerges from an empirical study that aimed to study sexual subjectivities of old men and to explore theoretically intersections of masculinity, sexuality, and old age (Sandberg 2011). Twenty-two men participated, either through interviews or by writing what I called a “body-diary.” Some men participated both as interviewees and as diarists. The men, born between 1922 and 1942, were white and ethnically Swedish, between sixty-seven and eighty-seven years of age at the time of the study, and all identified as heterosexual. All were formally retired, but based on the primary professions the men had held previously both working- and middle-class men were represented. Thirteen of the men were living with a female partner, either as married or as nonmarried. Six participants were single, being either widowers or divorced. Another three were so called “living apart together,” that is, they were in relationships but lived in separate households from their partners.

The men were self-selected and recruited in three major ways. First, this was by advertising in a Swedish weekly paper. Second, this involved putting up posters in health centers, day-care center, and social venues for seniors. I also presented my research to staff in such places, for them to spread the word to potential participants. Third, I presented my research to a senior citizens’ organization, with a request for men to participate in my study.

The discussions in this article are based primarily on the interview material. The interviews were semistructured and started from the open question “if you were to describe your body, what would you say?” and later in the interview focused more specifically on questions and themes related to sex and sexuality. The analysis of the material was thematic, with inspiration from feminist poststructuralist and discursive perspectives (Braun and Clarke 2006; Søndergaard 2002; Winther-Jørgensen and Phillips 2000). Analyzing sexual desire was not uncomplicated as it was often unarticulated and not raised explicitly by the interviewees. The analytical process thus involved looking for implicit articulations on desire and exploring more widely how the participants made sense of sexuality. For this reason, inspiration was also taken from narrative analysis to grasp a wider biographical perspective on the material (Riessman 2008).

When researching sexuality and sexual desire, there is also need for a reflexive discussion on the risk of what Gayle Rubin has discussed as a “fallacy of the misplaced scale,” when researchers on sexuality give greater significance to sexual activities and practices than to other human activities (Rubin 1984, 278). In an interview with the eighty-seven-year-old Yngve, for example, he returns to the importance of love and tells me detailed stories of how he met the three great loves of his life. When I come back to questions on sex and sexuality, he resists and underscores that what has been important in his life is not sex but love, and love does not require sex in his view. This is a reminder that the significance of sexuality may vary between individuals (and throughout the life course). Where some interviewees described sexuality as highly significant, “more important than eating,” others said that they prioritized other aspects and activities in life. That some old men do not articulate or problematize loss or lack of sexual desire could then reflect the reality that sexual desire and/or activity may not be of major importance to them.

Theorizing Masculinity and Later Life Sexuality through Queer Phenomenology

The most influential discussions on desire outside the medical and biological realm have emerged within psychoanalysis and critiques thereof. In this article, however, I sidestep these discussions and instead take inspiration from feminist theorist Sara Ahmed’s work on queer phenomenology and sexuality and sexual bodies as appearing from particular orientations.

To describe the Ahmed’s theorizing on queer phenomenology requires a brief description of Judith Butler’s (1990, 1993) concepts of performativity and the heterosexual matrix and what these concepts tell us about sex, gender, and sexuality. Butler’s seminal work, Gender Trouble (1990), differed from many of the feminist theories of the time in that it did not claim gender to be merely the social or cultural aspects of sex. Gender was instead, according to Butler (1990, 11), an “apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established.” Sex is thus granted no prediscursive existence but is in fact as socially and culturally constructed as gender. The process whereby people emerge as gendered beings Butler named performativity. To Butler, there are no preexisting subjects who act or perform but, through constant repetitions, reiterated performances, the subject emerges in particular ways. These reiterations are not performed on an individual level, and one does not voluntarily choose to perform one gender or another. To emerge as a woman or a man requires cultural and institutional backup (to be legally and socially read as a woman or man). The performativity of gender is intrinsically linked to sexuality since, in order to become intelligible as a woman or man, it is necessary to desire and to attract the opposite sex, what Butler calls the heterosexual matrix. I will return to and use this concept in my analytical discussion to point to how old men’s expressions of desire for women, or a taken-for-granted orientation to women in different ways, are not only enactments of heterosexuality but in effect are a way of doing masculinity, of taking shape as men.

The work of Ahmed follows in Butler’s footsteps in several respects. Along with Butler, Ahmed (2006) understands bodies to take shape from reiterations, and bodies do not simply appear as gendered and straight, but this is an effect of work over time. Ahmed, like Butler, asserts that there is a naturalized relationship between gender and heterosexuality so that they are lived and experienced as “originary or a matter of how one’s body inhabits the world” (2006, 80). Ahmed’s new contribution, however, is that she brings the queer theoretical discussions of Butler into dialogue with phenomenology, with its focus on bodies and spatiality. Ahmed picks up the term orientation to argue that sexuality is about being oriented, of being “directed” (2006, 68). In the reiterated performances through which sexuality and gender are constituted, bodies are directed toward some bodies more than others.

The emergence of heterosexuality is, in Ahmed’s account, effectively about picking what is closest to us, and our “bodily horizon […] puts some objects and not others in reach” (2006, 66). If we are continuously throughout life directed toward the other sex (think, e.g., of how the little boy or girl is teased for being in love with another child of the opposite sex), choosing a sexual object of the opposite sex is going down a road that has already been pointed out to us. Ahmed uses the path as a metaphor to explain heterosexuality as an orientation (2006, 16). A path emerges as a line in the ground from repeated walking, and it exists only insofar as it is walked upon. We walk upon the path because it is there, but paradoxically the path exists only because we walk upon it. In Ahmed’s argument, heterosexuality as an orientation is, like the path, a line that directs and shapes us but in parallel is also an effect of our work.

To say that lines are performative is to say that we find our way and we know which direction we face only as an effect of work, which is often hidden from view. So in following the directions, I arrive, as if by magic. (Ahmed 2006, 16)

Straight and queer are spatial terms and by thinking of being straight as following a line of direction, of being in line, queer also appears as that which does not follow the predesignated direction, which appears wonky and “out of line,” Ahmed argues (2006, 67).

Ahmed’s focus on lines and on heterosexuality as being “in line” can be fruitfully used to think of aging and the life course. Heterosexuality is a lifelong work and the life course can be understood as a line into which heterosexuality is interwoven and expected. To research old men and sex is thus to research a “path” that has been walked throughout life but which is still continuously walked. When analyzing my material, I realized that in order to grasp how the participant men looked upon sexuality and sex today, when old, it was necessary to also take into account how they discussed and talked of their sexual selves and experiences throughout the life course. Here, issues of time were shown to be important, and the way Ahmed’s work underlines how bodies are taking shape as an effect of time links in with Judith Halberstam’s (2005) work on queer and heterosexual temporalities, which I will discuss later in the article.

Seventeen and a “Chronic Hard-on”: Narrating Past Sexual Desires

When men in my study were asked about sexuality most seemed to think of sexual desire as something natural that was worth keeping up and that the continuation of sexuality in later life was a positive experience. For some, the possibility for continued sexual desire as they aged was even thought of as rejuvenating, as something that made them feel young and restored their adolescent vigor. The participants’ ways of discussing sexuality held many similarities to successful aging discourses where sexual desire is often discussed as natural, positive, and healthy (Potts et al. 2006). One of the interviewees who was very outspoken about the significance of sexual desire in later life was Östen, seventy-seven years old. I asked Östen why he wanted to participate in my study and he answers:

Oh, well I was thinking—that this was something I found positive. I know that there’s so many [preconceived ideas/misconceptions], some seem to think this shouldn’t work when they retire and maybe I didn’t think so either until [I became old].

Clearly, to Östen it is important to counter ideas of asexual old age. He tells me how he and his wife have sex on a regular basis, twice a week, and how he continues to find this to be a positive aspect of life. Later life, he says, is sometimes felt as a dull period and one may occasionally think of “giving up.” But retaining sexual desire and keeping up with sex is a continuous highlight in everyday life and, he thinks, may even work as a substitute for antidepressants. Östen’s perspective, which sexual desire does not have to vanish as one ages, is shared by several other interviewees. But Östen also states:

The difference is that everything was easier before, when you were younger, I mean it’s—it was more easily aroused so to speak. But besides that, I don’t think there are any problems really. But things happen as the years go by, kind of … […] Arousal is stronger and more forceful when you’re younger, and it’s not just to do with that, everything gets more inspired [when you are young].

To Östen, the declining strength of sexual desire is understood as a natural part of aging, something that several others in this study seem to agree with. Sexual desire is conceptualized as less forceful and strong, as taking more time and on the whole as being less present than adolescent sexual desire, which emerges as almost uncontrollable and always present. Edvard, sixty-nine, for example, describes adolescent sexual desire in the following way:

I mean nowadays it’s not like that. If you think about when you were young, you could see—you saw a good-looking woman across the street or something like that. And you could be affected by that, right? Sexuality is also affected. I think it is more about close contact now. You’re not turned on by somebody on the other side of the street (laughs).

Adolescent sexual desire was, in addition, described in a very carnal and corporeal way, as something emanating from the body. Axel, eighty-three, narrates the erection as a constant fact when young: “now, it’s not like when you were seventeen, eighteen, ‘cause then you had a chronic hard-on, almost.” Jakob, eighty-three, talks about how there was probably a greater risk that you would be unfaithful when younger and says, “Well, before, desire won over reason, the blood was probably flowing faster than it does today.” In other words, being young is equated with being more hot-blooded. The links between uncontrollable, carnal desire, and youth are even more evident when Eskil, seventy-five, describes his young self, a man with strong sexual desires:

Well, but I can’t deny that I’m not 20 years old any more, right? I remember that I used to masturbate quite liberally when I was in my twenties. A bit here and there. My dad always entered and looked at the floor. And then I had sort of ejaculated…

Both in Eskil’s almost burlesque depiction of adolescent sexuality and with Axel and his “chronic hard-on,” what is being referred to is a particular male body, with its erection and ejaculation. This body represents strong sexual desire. Furthermore, the way in which this desire is described as strong, uncontrollable, and direct has clear overtones of dominant and prevalent understandings of male sexuality. Through these narratives of a strong sexual desire in the past, the men establish themselves as masculine subjects.

The way in which the men talk about strong sexual desires in youth is often followed by laughter, laughter that cannot be interpreted in any unequivocal way. It could be a way of defusing the situation, when talking about sex as a potentially sensitive topic. But I also understand the laughing to be an expression of nostalgia, of positive feelings, and memories of their adolescent sexuality. Thus, to tell about one’s active sexual desire in the past need not be understood as something that is over but is, in essence, a way of speaking about one’s self today as well. What you have been also tells something about what you are today. Here, thinking through Ahmed’s metaphor of the path becomes useful. Ahmed (2006) argues that heterosexuality, like a path, is simultaneously shaped by and shapes one’s direction. And in this case, looking back and retelling a desire that one used to have, as Edvard, Axel, Eskil, and others do, becomes a way of pointing out a path walked through life, and thus a heterosexual life course takes shape.

Statements about a declining sexual desire in later life do not imply that it is completely gone. Rather the way sexuality is discussed as different acknowledges that concepts such as maturity, consideration, and intimacy now play central roles to constitute an old man’s sexual subject position in later life as different (Sandberg 2013).

Moreover, to narrate sexuality in later life as different, and sexual desire as less forceful, does not imply that one has lost a heterosexual orientation, that one is, in the words of Ahmed, “off line” (2006, 70). Rather, the varying shape and force of desire throughout the life course becomes a matter of timing, of doing the right thing at the right time. The reiterated performances through which heterosexuality comes into being are linked to time and temporality. As Halberstam (2005) discusses, the heterosexuality is linked to specific temporalities, connoted with, for example, reproduction. Intertwined in heterosexual temporalities is also the process of maturation; to be “in time” is to follow the life course along expected lines of maturation. Hence, to be in time is to be in line and vice versa. Following this line of argument, it does not even seem desirable to narrate oneself as having the same strong sexual desire as in adolescence. Maturation to Halberstam (2005, 4) is the “emergence of the adult from the dangerous and unruly period of adolescence,” and this process thus also involves sexuality and coming out of a period of uncontrollable desire into a more serene sexuality. The interviewed men’s narrations of a less forceful sexual desire in later life could consequently be understood as a way of avoiding the stereotype of the dirty old man, someone who is inappropriately sexual for his age.

A Queer Feeling: Heterosexual Masculinity and Lack of Sexual Desire

So far this article has primarily discussed interviewees’ narrations of the maintenance of sexual desire in later life. Although it could wane slightly as they aged, men still talked of sexual desire as something that persisted. Sexual desire was often spoken of as something natural, a biological drive that is “always there,” which is seen in the interview with Ingvar, seventy-three:

Well, you’ve pretty much given up on that. The possibility of sex today is excluded more or less, because there hasn’t been an opportunity for it. But you might have a wish and feeling for it of course. That’s a part of the drive you have, biologically, you can’t say anything else. You might still feel attracted to women. It’s probably completely normal to us guys.

To Ingvar, it is not lack of sexual desire that stops him from being sexually active, but the fact that he currently as a widower lacks a partner. Yet, Ingvar’s story is ambiguous and later in the interview he also articulates what I interpret as a lack of sexual desire. It seems, however, as if the initial articulation of an existing sexual desire is an important way of establishing himself as a healthy man, which is also visible in other interviewees’ self-presentations. As I will go on arguing, lacking sexual desire particularly for men could be a very difficult matter to address as sexuality is often a central aspect in the shaping of masculine subjectivity.

Using Ahmed’s (2006) notion of sexual orientation to think of the reiteration of how bodies are inhabited and directed, what is interesting is to think about whether to lack desire may imply a “lack of direction.” What does an experienced lack of sexual desire do to the shaping of subjectivity? Thinking from Judith Butler’s (1993) heterosexual matrix, men’s expressions of desire for women are part of becoming intelligible as (real) men. Sexual desire for women could then be understood as a compass that directs to and retains men within a heterosexual matrix. This takes its expression in my material through the way in which men talk of constant attraction to women as “probably completely normal to us guys.” But it may also have the consequence that when men lack sexual desire this is experienced as a queer feeling, and something that is not so readily articulated. One of the interviewees who express this queer or strange feeling is the seventy-seven-year-old Nore who has gone through hormone treatment for his prostate cancer. Nore expresses clearly how sexual desire for women is a central part of a healthy man’s sense of self. This does not mean that sexual desire has to imply sexual practice per se but certainly an “interest” in women. Even though lack of sexual desire is a well-documented side effect of prostate cancer treatment, Nore is still puzzled by his absent sexual desires.

Nore:

But, the interesting thing was that the interest in the opposite sex sort of vanished, it was a real personality change. I mean like, if there’s some woman or female friends or something, you notice as a man. Women do that too, how the person is and with a certain interest. That did not exist at all. I found that very queer.

Linn:

Tell me more, you kind of stopped looking, or?

Nore:

Well, the interest that I had had my entire life, I’ve always looked and or appraised or how I should put it. I think everyone—I don’t think that’s anything special, it has nothing to do with you being unhappy in your marriage. That disappears suddenly.

The “queer” feeling that something is wrong and “a change of personality,” a challenge to one’s subjectivity, could be understood as expressions of the everyday life experience of not being able to stay within a heterosexual matrix due to the lack of desire (for the opposite sex). Thinking of sexuality within a Butlerian theoretical framework, consistency between gender and sexuality is vital, and the “broken, failed or abject or unintelligible gender” creates uncanniness (Lindgren 2007a, 53). It is then possible to think that lack of desire as a lack of interest in/desire for women could also be seen as faulty, and result in feelings of discomfort and not recognizing one’s self, even when the old man has the ready explanation of his poor health. If one’s subject position is bound up with feelings of desire, and those feelings are expected to always be there, lack of desire can indeed be said to be challenging or even threatening to subjectivity. In a study by Hinchcliff, Gott, and Wylie (2009), on heterosexual women’s experiences of loss of sexual desire, the participating women, similar to Nore, felt very Other when not experiencing any sexual desire. The women even described themselves in terms of being “abnormal,” “odd,” or a “freak” because of their loss of desire (Hinchcliff, Gott, and Wylie 2009, 455). This suggests that loss of desire is not only experienced as troubling for women in relation to femininity but also for men in terms of masculinity.

Nore’s narrative about his feelings of lack of interest for the opposite sex after his hormone treatment also show how sexual desire is not consistently about desire for sexual practice but may denote a desire in a wider sense, ranging from looking to fantasizing. Ingvar, who above discussed sexuality in terms of biological drives in men, later in his interview expresses lack of desire for sexual practice—to actually have sex with a partner:

I don’t know really, I don’t think so. I don’t feel particularly attracted to sex. I don’t know really. It’s a possible partner who—how they look upon the whole thing, things to do with hygiene and all that. It might feel a bit messy to do it. I don’t know. I don’t feel any need for it.

Ingvar is clearly hesitant in the above quote, he takes pauses and clears his throat, which may point to the possibility that not wanting to have sex could be difficult to talk about. What a potential partner would think about sex is important to Ingvar, if she wanted it, he might have to comply. But Ingvar also points to the embodied character of sex, of sex as something “messy.” There is no elaboration on why the messiness of sex causes dislike (or lack of desire) for sex, but the way in which, throughout the interview, Ingvar talks about himself and his life indicates that his experience and feeling of being old and unattractive shapes his lack of sexual desire.

You’re living alone here, and you’re out for walks. And I usually say hello to people, but damn there are so many grumpy people walking around here. Who don’t even say “hi.” Those who are my age, ladies my age, that isn’t a problem. They are always really happy if you start talking to them. But the young ones, you know, they just “spit at you.” “Why are you saying hello to me, you old fuck?” That makes you stop. It’s difficult to get in contact with younger women so to speak.

I ask him whether it is important to meet a woman who is younger and he says,

Well, there’s nothing wrong with one the same age really. But there aren’t many who are interested in old geezers (laughs).

In these quotes, Ingvar uses the words “you old fuck” or “old geezer” when referring to himself. I believe that these words play a significant role in understanding Ingvar’s reasoning around the difficulties of meeting a new partner. Ingvar does not use these derogatory words only in this particular quote. Throughout the interview, he takes up and uses negative words related to old age to describe himself. Although words such as old fuck or old geezer are partly a humorous jargon, they also convey the way in which Ingvar feels marginalized as an old person. The fact that people regard him as an old geezer affects his feelings about the possibilities of engaging in another relationship and might also in turn discourage or create obstacles to feelings of desire. When discussing what people might find attractive in him he jokes and says “his sports car,” and his lack of desire is then evidently linked to the doubts of whether anyone would find him attractive. Feeling old and unattractive becomes irreconcilable with wanting to/being able to have sex and involving one’s old body in sex is thus described as something messy.

Despite discourses of sexual desire as lifelong and continuing into later life, being old could be a way of some men make sense of a lack of sexual desire. This could imply that experiences of being old make one’s sexual desire drop, but it could also mean that lack of desire is made sense of and related to a narrative of being old. Owe, eighty-four, narrates a specific event as having been important to his changing relation to and desire for sex, in particular intercourse. This event meant a significant change from his earlier life and also a disruption to the social engagement he has had. His narrative suggests that changes in later life, experiences of becoming old, affect if and what kind of sex you desire. When we start discussing sex and sexuality in the interview, Owe talks about it as something positive, but links it primarily to youth, at least where intercourse is concerned. As the interview goes on, we get into why he and his wife stopped having intercourse, something they had rather frequently up until about eight years ago. I ask what happened that made him lose his desire for intercourse eight years ago.

Owe: Well that [happened] at the same time as we sold our summer- house, I lost weight and generally—I mourned that.

What Owe describes can very much be characterized as what gerontologists describe as a transition phase from the third to the fourth age. While the third age is connected with continued activity and engagement with social life and relatively good physical health, the fourth age is more connected with physical decline, social disengagement, and dependency on caregivers, and so on (Gilleard and Higgs 2000; Jönson 2009). Gott and Hinchcliff’s (2003) study of attitudes to sexuality among older people suggests that impotence could be seen as a “potential catalyst for the transition between the Third Age and the Fourth Age” (2003, 66) and that impotence was problematic for those who still regarded themselves as young, whereas for those who identified as old, it was seen as normal. Their study also suggests that impotence might be a trigger for identifying as old. This case might be similar but opposite to issues of sexual desire.

Events involving a transition into the fourth age, when one starts to identify as old, physically, and mentally, do things to one’s experience of sexual desire. Selling the much-loved summerhouse could be regarded as just one example. Moving into residential care; experiencing significant physical changes; and the death of a spouse, other close friends, or relatives might be examples of events that drastically influence experiences and feelings of desire. If we return to Ingvar, his feelings of being old and unattractive are likely to also be shaped by his wife’s death one year earlier. For both Ingvar and Owe, sorrow and depression seem to be important factors in their loss of desire.

Sexual desire, which at first seemed to be something very self-evident and natural, something that is “always there,” a drive or aspect of biology, turns out to be something more complex. Firstly, sexual desire may be understood as an “orientation,” a way in which memories, fantasies, gaze, and “interest” clears the path of a heterosexual line, a reiteration of heterosexuality (doing heterosexuality by telling how one has done heterosexuality). In the cases where men experience a loss of this desire, for example Nore, this could imply gender trouble and a threat to one’s subjectivity more generally. But, as the above narratives of Ingvar and Owe indicate, sexual desire is also taking shape and becoming intelligible through age. Accordingly, sexual desire should not only be discussed in relation to a heterosexual matrix, in which gender and sexuality are intertwined, but also in relation to a “matrix of age,” from which subjectivities emerge and become intelligible (cf. Persson 2010, 326).

But a question that one may raise from the article’s discussion so far is: what is one actually expected to desire? What Owe and Ingvar seemed to have lost desire for was first and foremost intercourse. In the interview with Owe, he returns to the caresses and intimacy that he and his wife still enjoy, desire for intimacy and touch is apparently not gone. And Ingvar’s expression of dislike for what he describes as messy sex is a perhaps more an expression of a lack of desire for particular kinds of sex than a lack of desire for intimacy and physical contacts altogether? Next, I will argue that the old men’s ways of emphasizing intimacy and touch may be understood as expressions of sexual desire and may even propose a rethinking of desire outside the realms of coital and genital sexuality.

Intimacy as (a)Sexual Practice—Intimacy as Heterosexual Orientation

Owe: I still find it nice and pleasurable to see my wife naked, and likewise she enjoys looking at me. And that’s really fantastic, when you think about it, that you’re able to feel that way after 85 years.

The narratives on desire and lack of desire that have been presented in this article clearly reflect desire as something wider than longing for intercourse, indeed something even beyond feeling arousal. The words of Owe above serve as an example of how looking may also be an expression of desire in different ways. Owe says that he has no need for sex anymore and that this is something that belongs to youth. But at the same time he also speaks of how he enjoys seeing his wife naked and describes how they are physically intimate together, narratives that are filled with pleasure and desire. This could involve him fondling her or them lying together holding each other. Owe also tells me that “in the mornings when I leave [her bed] she always feels my old [penis]” and he laughs quietly when saying this. Rather than this being a way of making him erect, her way of touching him is part of a “nice feeling,” and a way for them “to keep the contact,” Owe says.

Owe’s descriptions of a physical relationship with his partner that does not necessarily involve erection/lubrication/sexual excitement/intercourse resonates also in the narratives of other interviewees. A recurring way of describing sexuality in later life was the term “intimacy,” of being close to a partner both physically and emotionally (Sandberg 2013). The men described how they increasingly started to value and in some cases even discovered a sexuality that was not primarily focused on penile-vaginal intercourse. As several pointed to, these “intimacies,” such as cuddling, touching, and so on, could be understood as sexual practices but were not always. The demarcations of what counts as sexual, nonsexual, or asexual are not always readily made and consequently it is not unambiguous what is desire or lack of sexual desire. If intimacy denotes a wide range of practices, from fondling, holding each other naked or scratching somebody’s back, it destabilizes the boundaries between sexual, nonsexual, and asexual. Moreover, for old men, whose sexuality is often made sense of in relation to erection and penetration, intimacy may also open up to new sexual paths, new orientations to desire.

Conclusion

Contemporary discourses on later life sexuality have primarily focused questions of sexual function, and most notably the maintenance and/or enhancement of men’s erections as they age. Sexual desire in later life has gained considerably less attention and is often taken for granted in successful aging discourses were sexuality is understood as a positive and healthy part of aging. This article has sought to complicate discussions on sexual desire and explored meanings of sexual desire among old men themselves, and to explore the role of sexual desire for the shaping of heterosexual masculinity among old men.

As shown in the article’s discussion, the men in my study often understood sexual desire as something natural and positive that continued also in later life, in accordance with successful aging discourses as well as traditional masculinity discourses. However, these old men also expressed how sexual desire was not as strong and “fiery” as when they were younger and told humorous stories about themselves as very “randy” persons when younger.

Although a decline in sexual desire was often understood as natural and inevitable, it was often complicated for the interviewees to articulate experiences of lack of sexual desire. A lack of sexual desire was sometimes experienced as a gender trouble, a challenge to one’s male heterosexual subjectivity. Lack of sexual desire was also linked to experiences of becoming very old, for those who felt that they had become old this also shaped the way they experienced the own potential for attraction and what to desire.

Intimacy became a significant way of making sense of one’s sexual desire in later life and thinking through Sara Ahmed’s theorizing on sexuality as an orientation, the narratives on intimacy could be understood as ways of retaining a heterosexual orientation as one ages. Talking about one’s sexual self in terms of intimacy keeps the men within a heterosexual life course and additionally describes a sexuality that is “on time.” For old men to continue to express the same strong desire and longing for sex as they held in youth would be problematic as it does not conform to expectations on sexuality throughout the life course. Signifying and making sense of sexuality in terms of intimacy is a positive and unthreatening way of presenting the sexual subjectivity of old men. Where some sexual practices could potentially be understood as “dirty” or inappropriate for an old man, the intimacy narrated by men in this study shapes later life (hetero)sexuality as appropriate, healthy, and positive.

Evidently sexual desire need not constantly manifest itself as a desire for sexual practice, and for the men in this study, it did not seem to be sexual desire for intercourse that was most important. A claim to still have an interest, through looking or fantasizing, or the proximity of an actual partner, seemed to be sufficient as an orientation, which shaped masculinity and heterosexuality. Sexual desire is not something that needs to be constantly done but is more about retaining an imaginary possibility of sexual practice (cf. Lindgren 2007b, 29). Thus to express less sexual desire or even lack of sexual desire did not necessarily position the men in this study as asexual, as they actively maintained a heterosexual orientation in other ways.

Footnotes

Author’s Note

A version of this article has previously been published in Swedish with the title “Lita till lusten?: heterosexuella äldre män och innebörder av lust” in the research anthology Livslinjer: Berättelser om ålder, genus och sexualitet (2010, eds. Ambjörnsson and Jönsson, Makadam förlag).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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