Elders and Sex: Who Gets to Decide What is Proper?

You see an older couple walking hand in hand down the street, staring into each others eyes and grinning. Their hands are clasped.” Ah, cute,” you think. Then they giggle and – kiss. Yikes! Aren’t they kind of old for that?

Our society has marginalized people over fifty when it comes to love and sex. The “ick” factor is natural, when one thinks of his or her parents. Who wants to think they ever did that? Of course the fact that you and your siblings exist is a clue, but still, it’s just something most of us don’t care to think about.

But parents age. Some are widowed or divorced and they remarry. Still, we’d rather not know too much information about their intimate life.

Then there’s your grandparents. Yeah, your grandparents. Most of us have seen stories where a couple of elders are getting married at the local nursing home. He’s 81 and she’s 86. We vacillate between thinking “cute” and “what are their families thinking, allowing this?” We wonder if they are clear enough, mentally, to be getting married.

And that, of course, is the issue. With people living longer in assisted living and nursing homes, more romances among elders are blossoming. Just what does the home allow these folks to do? How intimate can they get without getting into trouble with administration and families? What are their rights as adults?

This could be a nursing home or assisted living administrator’s ongoing nightmare. On one hand, we want elders to have the best quality of life they can have, whether they live at home, in assisted living or a nursing home. Often – hopefully – that includes friends. And some of those friends may be of the opposite sex.

Many of these elders choose an assisted living center so they can be in comfortable surroundings with services provided and lots of social activity. The family thinks this is terrific. But when Grandpa announces that he and his friend Millie are in love and want to get married, the response is generally one of stunned silence. Can’t you just be friends? You know – play cards and go to the movies together? What do you mean you want to get married?

A tougher situation is when there is uncertainty about the elder’s mental stability. A friend of mine tells me his dad, who has Alzheimer’s disease, used to go into a woman’s room at the nursing home, and take off his clothes, clearly intending to get into bed with the woman. He’s not sure that the man had any other intentions, but no one at the home wanted to find out. And what about the woman? Was she a willing participant? Did she want him there? And if she did, is she competent to decide?

The sticky question is this: When do people lose their right to chose what they do sexually? Yes, with dementia there are times when sexual “acting out” is evident in public and the person has to be distracted and sometimes removed from the situation. It can be self-stimulation or undressing in public.  But what about love?  What about consensual sex?