Giving Advice on Sex and the Senior Citizen

LAGUNA HILLS — He spent three hours choosing the perfect bouquet to give his date, a charming gesture that made him half an hour late picking her up. He worried all evening about kissing her good night. He felt clumsy. Nauseated. Silly.

He’s 73, on his first date in seven years, and undergoing a resurrection of the senses that seems to be pervading his generation as never before. So consumed is he by these vaguely familiar emotions that he is writing anonymous letters to an equally mature advice columnist for guidance.

“Am I too old for all this?” he asked in a recent letter. “Am I crazy to think I can go back and do it all again?”

At Leisure World in Laguna Hills, where the average age is 72, many residents are rediscovering love. And sex.

They are increasingly interested in finding out what they can and cannot do in the bedroom in their golden years, despite the embarrassment surrounding the topic.

Luckily for them, there’s Helen Greenblatt, the Ann Landers of Leisure World, which she too calls home. Every other Friday, the 78-year-old psychotherapist pens an advice column for her lost and libidinous peers, folks who write or call or interrupt her online bridge games with their pressing, sometimes heart-wrenching questions.

How do I tell my mate that I no longer want to have sex with just her?

Am I out of line to expect to sleep with my boyfriend while we are guests at my daughter’s house?

Should I be using a condom, even at my age?

Greenblatt’s column, “Ask Dr. Helen,” has become the Leisure World Voice newspaper’s star attraction, more sought after now than club announcements or coupons. The column is tacked on random bulletin boards, marked with circles and underlining, an occasional smiley face or exclamation point. It is read in dining halls and sun rooms, on benches and shuffleboard courts. Poolside seniors fold the paper into a neat crop around the article and settle back in their chaise longues to devour the full dish of the day.

Yet even Greenblatt suspects that the sudden popularity of her 6-year-old column has less to do with the quality of her homespun advice than with the emotional climate among today’s senior citizens overall.

“We are finally realizing what a wonderful time it is to be a senior,” Greenblatt said. “There’s an awakening going on out there. I wouldn’t call it a sexual revolution, but stuff is stirring. Things are brewing. When people talk about ‘getting enough,’ they’re not just referring to sleep anymore.”

The phenomenon has left many of the 19,000 residents of Leisure World--the nation’s largest age-restricted community--brimming with emotions that have long eluded them. Widows get butterflies over upcoming blind dates, and grandfathers write love letters. Couples live and sleep together but don’t get married for fear of losing their pension benefits.

Such vivacity appears to be on the rise among older people everywhere, manifesting itself in the form of singles clubs and dance groups and weekly mixers--anything that activity directors can do to satisfy their residents’ demands for action. They are keeping calendars and keeping up.

Gerontology experts say the trend indicates just how much senior citizens are enjoying a renewed sense of purpose--a delectation for life. They’re flying into space and earning college diplomas, publishing books and exploring the Internet.

It’s a touching change, said Dr. Jessie Jones, a Cal State Fullerton medical professor who manages the Lifespan Wellness Clinic for the elderly and refers to Leisure World as “a living laboratory” for studies on aging and senior sociability.

“Thanks to the latest in health and fitness research relating to the elderly, our grandparents are relishing life again,” Jones said.

Included in that is a life of intimacy, which also has been reinvigorated in part by recent pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as the anti-impotence medication Viagra.

An annual survey released this fall by the National Council on the Aging found that of the nearly half of all Americans age 60 or older who engage in sexual activity at least once a month, three-fourths find it as good as or better than it was in their 40s. More than half of the respondents said they would like to have sex more often.

The numbers have risen slightly every year since the survey began in 1990, when fewer than 25% of the seniors polled said they were sexually active or wanted to be.

The results “underscore the growing importance of sex among older men and women,” said Neal Cutler, a research director for the nonprofit group.

“When older people are not sexually active, it is usually because they are widowed, lack a partner or because they have a medical condition,” he said. “But every year we see it become more of an issue for them. It’s an important and vital part of their lives.”

In a recent national study on aging, researchers at the Lifespan clinic surveyed more than 7,000 older Americans, ages 60 to 90. An overwhelming majority said they were more satisfied with the quality of their lives than ever before, a finding Jones attributes largely to medical breakthroughs that have enabled seniors to feel better while living longer.

Average life expectancy for people born this year is 79, compared with 76 in 1996. Centenarians--people 100 and older--are now the fastest-growing age group in America.

“Even chronic diseases and disabilities, like hypertension and hip and knee replacements, are being treated more effectively than ever,” Jones said. “It’s allowed elderly patients to stay more active, which makes them feel better mentally, which in turn gives them emotional boosts that prompt them to indulge more freely in the daily pleasures of their worlds, including intimacy.”

And when Leisure World residents have questions about their relationships, Greenblatt is ready with down-to-earth, sometimes salty advice.

She calls a woman’s private parts “Fort Knox” and has warned particularly lustful seniors not to “relinquish it without getting a receipt” (translation: don’t fool around without some kind of commitment). She has assured single, male 70-year-olds that masturbation is normal and healthy, providing that it’s done in a place where there is “no one around to watch who doesn’t want to be.”

She is a marriage counselor, a sex therapist, a physician for the heart. Her advice is backed by a master’s degree in counseling and a PhD in psychology, the latter earned when she was 70. She started “Ask Dr. Helen” after the Voice’s editor discovered her work in a monthly senior health article for a Laguna Hills hospital newsletter. Wanting to try something new, Greenblatt agreed to dole out advice to her anonymous neighbors.

“In the beginning, her stuff wasn’t about sex at all,” said Jerry White, editor of the 16,300-circulation weekly distributed free to Leisure World residents. “But it didn’t take long for it to go that way. Helen just had this immediate connection with the readers, and they opened right up. It was like they were waiting for her, and there she was.”

Six years later, she still writes the column for free.

“Oh, yeah, this is a real piece of work,” said fan Harry Lehman, 74, his bifocals perched on the tip of his nose as he scanned a recent column at the community room. “I get such a kick out of reading this stuff. How can you not? It’s funny and a little sad sometimes, but it’s never dull. Like a real soap opera is what I think.”

A New York native and mother of two, Greenblatt has been married for 25 years to her second husband, a retired truancy officer who proposed six months after the couple met. Greenblatt still smiles whenever she speaks of him or hears his name, a reflex that has cost her years of gentle ribbing by her friends.

“He is a doll, just a doll,” she said of Jerome Greenblatt, 83. “We just have this energy, Jerry and I, the same energy we always had. It’s physical and it’s mental and, yes, we have a lovely relationship on both fronts. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we try to practice what I preach too.”

It can be startling to hear frank and earthy talk about sex come from this small white-haired woman with the soft voice and manner. Greenblatt drives--seldom more than 20 mph--a white Maserati convertible.

She owns a private marriage counseling practice in Laguna Hills, where the majority of her clients are too young to live in her neighborhood.

“They think I have wisdom,” she said of the couples who sit on the wicker couch across from her. “But what I really have is plain old experience. And my experience tells me that today’s seniors are a lot like today’s youth.”

Take, for instance, one 72-year-old woman who wrote about how viewing an adult video with her 75-year-old boyfriend had intensified their sexual relations. She worried whether her response was normal.

Greenblatt sought to reassure her.

“Be grateful that you have found an elderly gentleman still interested in exploring the sensual mysteries of life with a woman who has a similar interest,” she wrote.

Only recently have researchers begun looking at the benefits of social connections such as these in helping the elderly stay physically and mentally fit.

In a book published earlier this year called “Successful Aging,” Robert L. Kahn and Dr. John W. Rowe write that lifestyle choices--more than genes--determine how well people age.

The gerontology specialists cite 10 years of research showing that “for the aging, strong social ties are even more important in preventing illness than genetic background.” Researchers also found that memory decline can be reversed in seniors who maintain emotional relationships, whereas loneliness can cause illness and shorten life spans.

Kahn, a University of Michigan professor, said social interaction becomes increasingly integral to a person’s health as he or she ages.

“With the average life expectancy now hovering around the 80s, senior citizens are reaching out more socially,” Kahn said. “Physically, they feel better than ever, so they’re getting around more. And mentally they know they have time for companionship. They want it and they need it and it’s good for them.”

In that sense, “Ask Dr. Helen” has delivered a different kind of security to the people behind the concrete-block walls surrounding Leisure World--proof, in black and white, that they are all connected and that they are not alone.

The mood is contagious, and many residents are catching it from Greenblatt.

Recently at Clubhouse 5, Charlotte Berry sat by the pool and giggled over the latest column, which included a letter from a woman who was impatient to have sex with her new boyfriend, even though she complained that he didn’t change his shirt every day. Another woman, 69, was worried about what her neighbors were thinking when her boyfriend stayed overnight at her house.

“I know they see his car,” she wrote. “He’s always here.”

Greenblatt’s response? “It’s too late to worry about your neighbors. You’re a big girl now. Have fun and enjoy love.”

“I just love it,” said Berry, 66. “Some of these stories make you think your life really is fine after all. Just fine.”