Baby Boomer Sex

Used to be, old people sat on porches, it was harder to get old, anyway. If they did back manage when to reach old age, they frequently lived in the homes of their children, where privacy may have been defined differently than it is these days.

For roughly 350 years in America, ever since the Puritans arrived with their notions of restricted behaviors and pleasures, perhaps, it was that way.

Then along came the 20th century, with its World Wars, and, from 1945 into the early 1960s, its boom in babies produced by the Greatest Generation, 76 million of them born within our borders.

There were two things the Greatest Generation was famous for not talking about, in general: One, what happened to them on the battlefields of Europe and in the Pacific. And two, anything having to do with that three-letter word: S. E. X.

For some, four-letter words were a lot easier to say than that single three-letter word.

Clearly, the Greatest Generation had sex, at least 76 million times. But as they aged into their 60s, did they continue celebrating the great gift of intimate touch? If they did — and we can only guess in the affirmative — they didn’t do it openly.

“My parents never had a conversation about sex. It was not something we talked about,” recalls Terry Tincher, a 69-year-old Fort Myers resident who grew up in Ohio, echoing countless other boomers. “We never discussed any part of it. It was never taught, nothing.”

Which raises this question: What about baby boomers, none of whom are young anymore? What happens when they retreat behind closed doors? Do these oldies, self-touted as the generation of “free love,” actually share physical intimacy, also known as sex?

“Guess what?” says Patricia Horwell, a freelance writer and editor based in Sarasota County.

“We do it.”

The Happy Reality

And if that’s the whole story, it’s not the whole nuanced story.

If you’re aging, you may be at the just the right place to enjoy sex.

A display of birth control pills from 1968. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / COURTESY PHOTO

“There are studies showing that older adults are very actively wanting to have sexuality into their 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s, and giving themselves permission — that it’s OK,” says Linda Lipshutz, a couple and family therapist in Palm Beach Gardens.

That’s a good thing, given the numbers.

In Sarasota County where Pat Horwell lives, for example, the median age is 56.6 and almost 35% of the locals are 65 or older. In the United States, the 65 and up crowd numbers just under 16%.

And elsewhere, Florida now includes three of the top four target cities chosen by baby boomers retiring into novelty and, they hope, sunshine and good times, according to SmartAsset, a financial asset company.

In 2022, Clearwater was No. 1 for people between the ages of 55 and 74, followed by Orlando and Cape Coral at Nos. 3 and 4, St. Petersburg at No. 10 and Miami at No. 20.

In Clearwater, boomers account for 27% of the city’s population, but that figure is higher — almost 30% — for Cape Coral and lower, at just over 16.5%, in Orlando.

Mimi and Terry Tincher. COURTESY PHOTO

In the state as a whole, just over 21% of the 23 million or so residents are 65 or older, which puts us at No. 2 in the country for the highest percentage of so-called elderly, behind Maine.

That means a lot of things for the state’s economy, culture, voting patterns and future.

The nation’s elderly population grew almost 35% in 10 years between 2012 and 2022, according to Consumer Affairs, reporting estimates from the American Community Survey.

As open as baby boomers can be about formerly taboo subjects, many may still exercise the inherited, great American tradition of just don’t talk about it, especially if it makes you uncomfortable. Don’t talk about subjects like religion, or politics, or… how’s the weather where you are (and sex)?

So, what are all these boomers, the people born between 1945 and 1964, doing behind their closed doors?

LIPSHUTZ

Permission

First of all, they may have to give themselves permission, as Lipshutz points out.

“We almost have to have a sense of humor about our sex life — to know that our bodies may not look the way we wish, that weight may not be distributed to places we wish. And we have to learn not to be self-conscious.”

Therapists, she adds, widely suggest that “older people focus not on the outcome but on pleasure and enjoyment of the experience.”

That works, especially for those wise enough to take advantage of that attitude, Lipshutz explains.

“A 2016 study shows that peak sexual experiences begin in midlife and beyond. And age can have a positive relationship to sexual quality of life.

“Nearly 80 million Americans came of age during the social and sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s — a rebellion against their parents’ society, and in general — and about a third of this generation is now single.” They’re people divorced, widowed or never married.

A poster from the 1980s at the height of the AIDS crisis. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / COURTESY PHOTO

“For many baby boomers, their interest in sex shows no sign of slowing down.”

That’s as it should be, suggests Dr. Ivan Seligman, a Neapolitan now retired, who got within a couple hundred miles of Woodstock in August of 1969, when he was about 15, but didn’t make it to the culture-altering music festival, an iconic moment in the evolution of baby boomers.

He’s justifiably proud but realistic about his generation, and the challenges it’s confronted.

“Boomers brought forth Woodstock and Viagra, ‘free love,’ Women’s Lib, Playboy and Gloria Steinem,” he says.

“Boomers now are adjusting to texting, sexting, choosing our pronouns, and are bewildered as they sort through all the non-binary gender possibilities.”

It sure didn’t start that way.

“Boomers’ early cultural references to sex were uptight, reflected in movies with couples sleeping in separate beds in the 1950s and ’60s,” he says. “Then cultural mores loosened up with films like ‘The Graduate,’ and Woodstock stoked thoughts of ‘hippie casual’ sex without commitment, love, or fear, as ‘The Pill’ and other birth control types proliferated from the ’60s onward.”

This poster advertised the iconic Woodstock Music & Art Fair that took place in August of 1969.

It was a seeming whirlwind.

“While the birds and bees haven’t changed, the laws against those seeking marriage other than ‘Bob and Betty’ have loosened — then tightened like a noose against the thought of marriage for ‘Barry and Bruce,’ or ‘Amy and Alexandra.’ While Roe v. Wade’s concrete right to abortion was decided in 1973, it was then dissolved in 2022, all in just a lifetime.”

There’s more, he says. All of it is part of the sexual lives of boomers.

“For those of us anticipating the promised Golden Years in our 60s to 70s, the linking of sex and love has ripened from young lust and novelty, to now wearing a patina of experience and wisdom.”

DAVIS

In the Beginning

Terry Tincher’s journey as a boomer could be a prototype — born in the first half of the 1950s when Eisenhower was president, Elvis was just getting rolling, and men came home expecting their wives to have dinner on the table.

Tincher is anything but prototypical.

He grew up in Ohio, in the Church of Christ. When he went off to college at the University of Cincinnati, he met a girl named Mimi.

“She was a Catholic — I call her a Shi’ite Catholic, like the Muslims. They were totally believers.” He’s chuckling when he says this.

They hit it off and shared an apartment as friends, at first. But it would have looked bad to the folks.

“Her parents would come down from Toledo, and I’d move all my stuff next door into the apartment of this little gay guy who was a friend of mine.

“We pretended we were them because we thought it was the right thing to do.”

It wasn’t.

“Thank ( expletive) god we’re from this generation, where we gave a lot of people the ability to live their lives openly and freely.”

Terry and Mimi have been married for 50 years.

“Thank goodness we have a society that in general made the ability for people to live their lives out loud and not be judged, possible,” Mr. Tincher says.

“Our kids are 42 and 36, and they have kids of their own. Some are married. Some not. Some are in long-term relationships. Some divorced.”

Then comes the important part, the part so different from their parents’ generation, he concludes.

“Everybody in this family has been MO’d to lead their lives without being judged.”

Marching Orders Forward

MO is Tincher’s abbreviation for Marching Orders.

And it wasn’t all peaches and cream, or good grass and lots of sass.

“People born from the ’50s on took all the chances,“ he says. “And we saw half our gay cronies kick the bucket because of AIDS. But we did let people be who they wanted to be.”

And despite some of the stereotypes, they proved that boomer love, with all its sexual liberation, could be as enduring as any that’s ever existed.

“That picture of the couple on the famous Woodstock album cover?” Mr. Tincher says. “They (stayed together!) We looked at that, and we understood it.”

The couple, Bobbi and Nick Ercoline, were married for 54 years. Bobbi died last year.

For Stephanie Davis, a writer and friend of the Tincher family squeezing into the generation just behind the boomers — Generation X — love and intimacy could be downright dangerous.

Her experiences gave her a different view, including of boomers.

“I came of age in the ’80s — married and had my son when I was a teen. When we divorced three years later, AIDS was such a huge fear. I missed the whole boomer-free love era of the ’70s. Sex was something to be very, very careful with — I remember exchanging HIV test results with potential partners. Usually, it just wasn’t worth taking the chance — too scary — and at the time, we didn’t know enough about it.

“For myself, I had a couple of very long-term live-in relationships before I married Todd (her husband, Todd Blanton) 20 years ago. It’s weird — I never really ‘dated.’”

Nowadays, she says, characterizing herself as “something of a Yenta,” the ways of the boomers have seemingly vanished into the once-upon-a-time, at least in custom and opportunity.

“I love putting people together if I can — but it’s so hard because dating is now almost exclusively online, and the internet is the Wild, Wild West.”

Still, as Lipshutz points out, the online dating site Match.com “cites the 50 and up age group as the fastest growing demographic. So, our generation, the boomers: Even if we lose partners by death or divorce, we are open to the possibility that we can have romance in our 60s and 70s.”

For Seligman, looking back on the boomer life he and many have led, “love has become a tapestry with rich, enduring threads, interwoven through decades of societal change, and hopefully some personal growth, still strong despite wear and tear.

“And sex, morphed from a near athletic pursuit of pleasure to blending in a deeper connection with lasting affection and familiarity, is not the race to the finish line it once was; it’s more like a leisurely walk through the park, appreciating the view, and maybe, just maybe, stopping for a nap!”

He compares it to fine wine: “less about the quantity, more about the quality, and occasionally surprising with its hardiness and vigor.

“Passion does not fade with age, it just evolves, finding new depths and connections.”

Amid so much change in sexual practices and experiences, perhaps, baby boomers nevertheless have something of permanence and enduring truth to pass on to children and grandchildren, or to every generation that will have to evolve on its own, too.

Have some fun, sure, and shift that up into the joy gear, if possible. But, suggests Lipshutz, “Don’t give up addressing it.

“What we can give our children and grandchildren are values. The value of close relationships and family and intimacy — not to take intimacy for granted.”

As a boomer herself, and as a therapist, she answers a simple question like many others in her generation — with a simple answer, one that may not have been fully apparent yet to 400,000 Americans who made it to Woodstock.

Are sex and love intimately related?

“It may be my bias,” she answers, “but, yes. Yes, they are.” ¦

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