The gap between desires and reality in sexuality of males and females aged 60 and over: Results from the Berlin aging study II (BASE-II)

Sexual activity, sexual thoughts, and intimacy among older adults: Links with physical health and psychosocial resources for successful aging.

“…Our results square well with conceptual notions according to which attachment and accompanying feelings of security and acceptance persist across the life span and become-relative to other facets of sexuality-even more prominent and less concealed in old age when sexual activity and sexual desire lose intensity (Beier et al, 2005). Supported by neurobiological findings in long-term relationships (Acevedo, Aron, Fisher, & Brown, 2012), such focus on attachment is also mirrored by current trends in sexual counseling and therapy for older adults (Beier & Loewit, 2013) and efforts in questionnaire construction (Kossow et al, 2018). Our results are also consistent with conceptual notions and empirical evidence that emotional functioning is robust and effective into old age (Carstensen et al, 2003), with feelings of intimacy remaining relatively stable when people are in their 60s and 70s.…”

“…This suggests that although self-regulatory processes may contribute to decreased levels of sexual thoughts among nonpartnered older adults, they still wish for more sexual activity and physical intimacy than they actually have and such wishes are obviously difficult to satisfy. It would be of interest to further investigate whether nonpartnered older individuals might have a wider range of solitary sexual activities (Beier et al, 2018; Das & Sawin, 2016).…”

“…Parts of the data on sociodemographic, physical health, and psychosocial variables have been used in Gerstorf et al (2015); Hülür et al (2016); Mueller et al (2016), and König et al (2018). Parts of the larger sexuality data have been used in Kossow et al (2018) and Beier et al (2018). The approach we use in the current study to measure facets of sexuality and how these relate to factors of successful aging only minimally overlaps with these earlier reports.…”

“…Sexuality. The three facets of sexuality considered here were measured using 11 items drawn from a more comprehensive 145-item sexuality questionnaire (Mundt, Beier, & Pauls, 2009), which combined multiple questionnaires (Ahlers, Schaefer, & Beier, 2002, 2004) that were designed to obtain clinically oriented information on different aspects of sexuality, including sexual dysfunctions (see Kossow et al, 2018). For the current study, we selected the subset of items that indexed the three facets.…”

Perceived Importance and Enjoyment of Sexuality in Late Midlife: Cohort Differences in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA)

“…Of note is that numerous studies have inferred the importance of sexuality in later life from the frequency of sexual activity reported by study participants. However, such operational definition is questionable, for example, because of the interest-activity gap (Pfeiffer et al, 1969), which indicates that sexual interest in later life often exceeds actual sexual activity (Beier et al, 2019). Thus, empirical research should aim at using more direct measures of the importance people attribute to sexuality.…”