3. Get more sun.
“You want a reason to stay excited?” says Jonathon, 87, a happily widowed man living in the Villages, the largest gated retirement community in America. “You need to move to Florida. End of story.”
In a study last year at the University of Siena in Italy, researchers discovered that regular exposure to bright light can significantly raise testosterone levels and lead to greater sexual energy and enthusiasm in men with low or nonexistent sexual desire. If moving to a retirement community in Florida isn’t in the cards for you, just make sure you’re getting enough sun.
4. Don’t exercise.
“I spent most of my 20s and 30s at the gym,” says Stan, of Miami. “Now that I’m almost 70, it doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t care if I have a flabby gut. Not caring makes me less self-conscious when I’m naked with a special someone. Actually, being a little out of shape makes me feel sexier.”
That feeling’s not all in his head. Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published a new study in February suggesting that men who exercise moderately or lightly have significantly higher libidos than guys who work out enough to get washboard abs.
If you’re worried about your sex drive slowing down with age, it might be time to get off the treadmill.
5. Let your fingers do the walking.
Don’t get hung up on erections, advises Larry, 64, of San Francisco. “Boning is dessert,” he says. “The main course is everything else. All the tongues and fingers and stuff that young, insecure people call foreplay. That’s not foreplay; that’s f—ing sex, man. If it makes her howl, that’s f—ing sex.”
In a new study on female sexuality by Chapman University, Indiana University and the Kinsey Institute, women who “orgasmed more frequently” claimed it wasn’t a rock-hard erection that kept them satisfied; it was things like kissing, oral sex and manual genital stimulation.
Eric Spitznagel writes for magazines such as Playboy, Vanity Fair and the New York Times Magazine. The author of seven books, including his latest, Old Records Never Die, he is currently cowriting Jeff Tweedy’s memoir.