SEX HAS BEEN A DISASTER FOR OUR GENERATION

You recently published a letter from a 73-year-old man who was dating a woman of a similar age. He wanted the relationship to be intimate and sexual, but she seemed happy to just be friends. I am 70. My mother and my friends’ mothers were told that a man would lose respect for you if you slept with him before marriage. We believed this and our sex lives were rubbish as we also thought that ‘nice women do not enjoy sex’. Luckily, I finally realised that this was not true. A 76-year-old friend of mine told me: ‘We got married knowing nothing.’ Another friend said that when she first had sex with her fiancé, she was asked if it was good but replied: ‘How would I know? I have had no other experience.’ Do you think this was a class thing – we are all upper class? It’s so sad that you and your friends were brought up with such negative views on how a woman’s sex life should be. I am not sure that it is necessarily a class thing – I know women now in their 70s and 80s who are similarly upper class with far more liberal attitudes to sex – so much as a wider generational thing. Sadly, I think that when you were growing up, sex was rarely talked about at home and was indeed seen as something that ‘nice women’ didn’t enjoy. This often led to a lifetime of problems and failed relationships, as these women never discovered how lovely sex can be. Sadly, a lot of people are still too embarrassed to talk to their children about sex. I believe, however, that it is important to educate and be educated on this subject – not just the biological facts, but ideally that it is best as part of a loving relationship and that making love to someone you care for deeply, who reciprocates your feelings, can be a wonderful and natural experience. I feel it is equally sad when sex is a meaningless one-night stand, or with someone who doesn’t value you. I am glad you discovered later on that sex can indeed be enjoyable and is not something to be ashamed of.