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Key points
- New scientific research reflects shifting cultural attitudes about single women at midlife.
- By midlife, women are often more open-minded about sex and intimacy.
- Life after divorce often involves new sexual experiences.
- There are some women at midlife for whom sex is not a priority.
What are the sex lives like for the growing number of women who are single in midlife?
In a recently published article in the Journal of Family Theory & Review, “Sex and single women in midlife,” Penn State sociologists Nancy Luke and Michelle Poulin reviewed 11 small studies in which single women between the ages of 45 and 65 were interviewed in depth about their sexual attitudes and experiences. The studies included disproportionate numbers of white heterosexual women from high-income countries, such as the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. The single women included women who were previously married or previously in committed romantic relationships as well as lifelong single women, but the discussion focused primarily on the women who were divorced or had experienced a romantic breakup.
Many of the single women said that their sexual experiences in midlife were more positive than when they were younger. Others had little interest in prioritizing sex. Some reported mostly negative sexual experiences.
Greater Sexual Pleasure
Some women experienced their life after divorce as an opportunity for new sexual experiences. If their sexual experiences in their marriages were uninspiring, they sometimes found their new sex lives to be more passionate and exciting. Some felt more confident about knowing what they wanted and asking for it. Others engaged in more sexual exploration and enjoyed those new experiences.
The midlife women sometimes reported that, as they aged, they felt more comfortable with their bodies, less concerned about being people-pleasers, and more entitled to sexual pleasure. To some, menopause was freeing, as they no longer worried about the risk of getting pregnant.
They were also more open-minded in how they thought about sex and intimacy. Some challenged the notion that intercourse was the only kind of sex that counted as “real sex” and valued other sexual experiences as well, such as oral sex and masturbation. Some also said they enjoyed touching, cuddling, and companionship, and it didn’t matter to them whether they also had sex.
Those expansive attitudes are characteristic of people who are single at heart, though they were not included in the studies. People who are single at heart understand that intimacy includes far more than just sexual experiences and that love encompasses much more than just romantic love.
Sex Is Not a Priority
Some midlife single women said they just weren’t interested in sex anymore. That could happen for negative reasons, such as a hit to their confidence following a breakup, bad experiences in previous romantic relationships or in initiating new ones, perceiving fewer opportunities to find new romantic relationships, and feeling less sexually empowered after menopause.
The scholars also describe a more affirming perspective they found in the writings they reviewed, whereby “the decision to pursue celibacy, or to focus on other facets of life, is a demonstration of sexual agency itself.” The single women who wanted to be single were especially likely to value their independence, their friends and relatives, their work, the control they had over their lives, and the opportunity to pursue their interests.
Findings from a small study suggested that midlife women who were more financially secure were less interested in dating or sex. The authors speculated that they may have felt free from needing to take into account whether having a romantic partner would lighten their economic burdens (as, for example, by splitting the costs of living rather than covering them all themselves). They also noted that when wealthier women did have sexual relationships, they had more power in those relationships and more confidence in asserting their preferences.
What Luke and Poulin do not acknowledge—probably because it was missing from the articles they reviewed—is that people such as asexuals may have never felt much sexual attraction toward particular people. Perhaps what some of them experience in midlife is a growing confidence in being who they really are, rather than trying to conform to norms and expectations about their sex lives.
Negative Sexual Experiences
Many of the women in the 11 studies grew up during a time when attitudes toward sex were less positive. Some felt embarrassed about their midlife bodies. Some still believed what they learned when young—that masturbation was shameful; they couldn’t enjoy it and maybe did not even try.
Some of the midlife women had experienced psychological or sexual violence in their past marriages or romantic relationships. That left some of them reluctant to re-partner.
Not too long ago, negative stereotypes of the sexuality of midlife and older women prevailed, not just in popular understandings but even in scholarly writings. The perspectives that Luke and Poulin reviewed are relatively new. They don’t deny the potential negative implications of aging, but they acknowledge the ways in which single women in midlife can feel even more sexually empowered and free than they were when they were younger. That includes the freedom to have the sex that they want or to have no sex at all.
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