‘IT’S JUST A DIM MEMORY’

Liz Hodgkinson, 80, is a writer and lives in Oxford.

I am genuinely pleased for all those couples in their eighth and ninth decades whose libidos are still soaring. Sadly, mine is not. In order to enjoy an active sex life in your later years, you need the right partner.

If, like me, you are single, libido tends to take a swift downward dive, if it does not disappear altogether.

Sex? What’s that? To me, it’s just a dim memory.

I’m a perfectly healthy older woman of 80 who is not yet bent double, shuffling around on a Zimmer frame and rattling with prescription pills. I’m lively and active, I go to the gym, take long walks and definitely have a spring in my step. I embrace social media – and I’m certainly ready and willing for some new adventures. This shouldn’t be surprising, because my generation is, after all, the longest-lived and healthiest elderly generation in history.

So, it would be lovely if I could add sex back into the joys of my life. But where, oh where, might I find that special someone? It’s not for want of trying. Since my very attractive and charismatic last partner died 20 years ago, I have been on so many dates and, even now, am sometimes propositioned in the street by men asking if I would like to go for a drink. But there was no quickening in the loins or anywhere else and, after one dismal date, that was it. It was hopeless, and I quit the dating scene for good four years ago. The older men I met were just not interesting enough to enthral me, and with the younger ones, there was nothing in common.

But it may not be too late. Just the other day, a neighbour told me that her 82-yearold mother had fallen in love after several years of widowhood. ‘She was so lonely,’ my neighbour said, ‘and then my daughter introduced her to a chap she thought might suit Mum. Well, there was instant mutual attraction, and they are blissfully happy together. Mum now has a complete new lease of life.’ So, before I fall into decrepitude and forget I ever had a libido, could there still be a Mr Right out there for me? Stranger things have happened.