Sex and the Seasoned Woman

books:

	• Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life Gail Sheehy Random House, 2006 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Sex and the Seasoned Woman

It's about time someone with authority spent time researching the reality of sex after age 50 for women like us who have wondered if our continued sensuality is a perverse joke on the universe. If you're younger than 30, look at your grandparents; they're probably still having sex and loving it. Ah, life is still good when you're in your 60s!Write in Style: Using Your Word Processor and Other Techniques to Improve Your Writing

Outstanding!!!

Gail Sheehey's book turns over the old stereotypes about women as they age. It provides new insights and perspectives that are valuable for every woman over the age of 40 and their partners.

for more information click here

Give Yourself Permission

I remember reading Gail Sheehy's book, Passages, during my sojurn in Montana in the late 1970s. So, it was with interest that I picked up her new book, Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life. After I finished reading the book, the word that came to mind was, "permission."

Gail Sheehy is the author of 15 books, as well as being a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. She is also a tireless researcher and it shows in the work of the book. The book has both statistics and people's stories -- the right combination to make any work come alive.

Sheehy divides women who are in mid-life into five groups (with one percent undefined):

*Passionates (40% of Total): "healthy, independent, sexy women anywhere between their late forties and eighties, usually working and able to take care of themselves," half of which are divorced and over 50.

*Seekers (20% of Total): "healthy, single women to indicate they are 'hungry for sex' or will 'never give up'" who are still looking for love and not having much luck.

*WMDs (Women Married, Dammit!, 15% of Total): "frustrated by marriages that have been emotionally dead and sexually moribund for some time, or who feel victimized by a mate who is a chronic drinker, adulterer or poor provider, etc." They don't leave and they don't change.

*SQs (Status Quos, 12% of Total): "not necessarily unhappy, just resigned...they feel the status quo is preferable to the risk and discomfort of change."

*LLs (Lowered Libidos, 12% of Total): "women who have given up on sex or who 'grin and bear it'" and have "experienced lowered libido since menopause."

Where do you fit in these groups? The good news is that the groups are fluid. You may find yourself a WMD at the moment, and then a profound shift occurs and you leave behind the person who is dragging you down -- which may be you. Knowing where you are, the awareness of your choices, gives you the permission to change if you want to.

The second permission that shows up in the book, is that mid-life relationships aren't like the ones that women experienced in their 20s and 30s. They may choose to remarry, but they may also choose to have a relationship with someone that is defined more by the commitment to the relationship and less by sharing a home. Relationships can be, by definition, short-term. They can be with old lovers, young lovers and even other women. In short, this is a time that women can put themselves first and say what they want -- and get it.

Another permission that was given was the gift to know yourself sexually. You can experiment with being outrageous. Passion Parties, "the premier sensual products company in the United States and Canada," abound. Just as the book, Our Bodies, Ourselves, encouraged us to use a mirror to look at our labia in the 1960s, Passion Parties encourage us to figure out what turns us on now -- and use it!

Finally, Sheehy reminds us that we are responsible for our lives and loves. It is up to us to take care of our bodies and minds. We are definitely still able to have and enjoy a sensual and loving relationship with a man and we don't have to discard parts of ourselves to get it.

I encourage you to read Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life. It will give you permission to be the bodacious woman you already are!
Casey Dawes, Wise Woman Shining ([...])

for more information click here

Sex and the Seasoned Woman

Excellent read and so true. What women want after FIFTY...Why did we
wait so long!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experience. . . . She can be alternately sweet, tart, bubbly, mellow. She can be maternal and playful. Bossy and submissive. Strong and soft. . . . The seasoned woman knows who she is. She could be any one of us, as long as she is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of life.
In her most groundbreaking work since Passages and The Silent Passage, bestselling author Gail Sheehy reveals a hidden cultural phenomenon?increased vitality in women?s sex and love lives after fifty. Sex and the Seasoned Woman is the story of an intimate revolution taking place under our very noses.
Boomer generation women in midlife are open to sex, love, dating, new dreams, exploring spirituality, and revitalizing their marriages as never before. This is a new universe of passionate, liberated women?married and single?who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age and are now realizing they don?t have to. As life spans grow longer and as societal constraints continue to loosen, older women?once free of the exhausting demands of young children, needy husbands, and demanding careers?find themselves ready to pursue the passionate life. They embrace their ?second adulthood? as a period of reawakening.
Written in Sheehy?s singularly compelling style, combining interviews and research, this book gives voice to more than a hundred fascinating and colorful women. The inspiring stories tell of wives who reinvigorate their marriages after their children leave the nest as well as divorced, widowed, and long-single women who find new dreams and new loves. Sheehy delineates a crucial link between cultivating a new dream and reopening the pathway to intimacy and sexual pleasure. She also examines the latest medical breakthroughs addressing symptoms that have unnecessarily curtailed women?s sex lives.
From women who find their sexuality reawakened by a younger lover, to couples whose marriages survive health crises and grow stronger, to women who finally find a soulmate in their sixties, to stories from seasoned sirens in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, these portraits cover an enormous range of experience. In them, Sheehy locates the universal patterns that enable us all to recognize and understand our own lives.

for more information click here