Sex File: He wants to have sex all the time, is his libido normal for a man in his 60s?

Many women your age would gladly trade places with you.

I started dating a man several months ago — we're both in our 60s — and the sexual chemistry has been quite something. The trouble is he wants to have sex all the time. I thought I had a relatively high libido, but he initiates sex most evenings, which is more often than I want or need. Is this normal? I thought sex drive slows down a bit with age.

You are correct. Men's and women's sex drives tend to slow down with age, so for a man in his 60s, your partner has an unusually high libido. In the full version of your letter, you mention that you are certain he isn't taking Viagra or any other drugs for erectile dysfunction. This aspect is less unusual than you might imagine, given that research by the US pharmacy chain CVS suggests that men over 60 account for only about a third of Viagra sales.

Many women your age would gladly trade places with you. All the research shows that after the age of 60 most men experience a host of sexual difficulties. In 2019 a University College London study explored declining sexuality and wellbeing in older adults and examined sexual changes in 2,614 men over 50. The researchers found that 37% had experienced a decline in sexual frequency while 26% had difficulty achieving an erection in the past year. The study found that this decline in sexual activity was associated with more depressive symptoms and lower life satisfaction in men, but not in women.

Sexual difficulties impact sexual frequency, which is why older people tend to have less sex. Ten years ago I conducted a survey of 5,000 people and found only 5% of heterosexual couples aged 45-55 had sex every day; 42% had sex weekly; 31% had sex monthly; 15% had sex annually, and the rest never had sex. Another study found that people aged 55-64 have sex twice a month on average and those aged 65-74 have it once a month.

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Your partner is not Portuguese, is he? A 2018 study from the University of Oslo explored sexual behaviour in European men aged 60-75 and found that men in Norway, Denmark and Belgium had sex two to three times a month, while men in Portugal had sex one to three times a week. The study's authors suggested that this proves that men in southern Europe have more sex than men in northern Europe, but I suspect it had more to do with the Portuguese data being collected by phone rather than survey, which may have led to a degree of exaggeration.

Your partner's high libido may be related to the relationship being fairly new, when sex tends to be more frequent. Even so, it's fine for you to tell him that you would like a night off. Sexual relationships require a degree of give and take, and it sounds as if you are doing a lot of giving. I suspect that this is a finite problem anyway. After about six months to a year sexual frequency tends to stabilise. Psychologists use the term 'habituation' to describe how humans stop responding to a new stimulus when it has been presented over and over again. Or what some of us might call boredom sets in.

However, some people become addicted to the dopamine buzz of a new sexual relationship and pursue a string of new partners, leaving a trail of broken hearts. Hypersexuality and the 'pursuit of the new' drives certain sexual behaviour. If this is the reason your man is so sexually driven, it probably won't be your problem for too much longer.

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