Better With Age

I love sex.

I’m 63, and I love sex.

I’ve never wanted to be married or have children. I adore being single, I cannot wait to die alone, and I date younger men.

I’m outspoken about all this because we don’t have enough role models who demonstrate how to live fulfilling lives outside dominant social expectations. I’m one of the happiest people I know.

I began dating younger men 20 years ago, accidentally. My ad agency was asked to pitch for an online dating brand. To experience the client’s product—and the competitive landscape—I had to date online. I was honest in my profile about everything, including my age. To my surprise, I was inundated with messages from much younger men. I hadn’t previously considered this as a dating strategy, but thought, Hey, works for me! I’ve been happily dating younger men ever since.

Dating younger men changed my life. Sex with younger men delivered what I like—lots of stamina and short recovery periods. But their behavior in bed also brought home something else: When we don’t talk about sex in the real world, porn becomes sex education by default—and not in a good way. 

I launched MakeLoveNotPorn in 2009 as an educational website contrasting “porn world” with “real world.” In response, thousands of people from around the world poured their hearts out to me over email, sharing things about their sex lives and porn-watching habits they’d never told anyone. I realized I’d uncovered a huge global social issue. So I turned MakeLoveNotPorn into the world’s first user-generated, human-curated, social sex-video-sharing platform. Our slogan is “Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.” 

If porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, MakeLoveNotPorn is the documentary—an honest, unique window into the funny, messy, loving, wonderful sex we all have in the real world. The platform normalizes and destigmatizes sex: It provides sex education through real-world demonstration.

I designed this online space to celebrate the full, glorious spectrum of human sexuality. Our members and our MakeLoveNotPornstars (as we call our contributors) are all ages. Our many older members tell us how much they appreciate that we showcase the natural human desire to have really great sex for as long as we possibly can. 

In service of even more older people having even more hot sex, I asked our older MakeLoveNotPornstars to share their advice for ensuring great sex in your later years: 

Communication is key

Great sex comes out of great communication. My confidence in being explicit about what I enjoy (and don’t) has increased with age, and I see the same in our older MakeLoveNotPornstars. Our #senior videos are often tagged #chatty, proving that talking is one of the hottest things you can do in bed.

Embrace sexual values

MakeLoveNotPorn exists to demonstrate that values like empathy, sensitivity, generosity, kindness, honesty, trust, and respect are as important in bed as they are in every other area of life. Couples who have been married for 20 years, are still having great sex, and are sharing it on MakeLoveNotPorn model trust, openness, and honesty that benefits our entire community.

What makes you hot is you

Popular culture sends us daily messages claiming we are not desirable unless we are conventionally attractive, skinny, and above all, young. But what attracts someone to you is you—your unique being. And that makes your body hot as hell to them, because it’s yours. The sexiness of older bodies—and the love and appreciation expressed by and for these bodies—positively radiates through the screen in our videos, as it should for real-world bodies at every age.

Pleasure is adaptable 

There is no “one size fits all” approach for having great sex or for navigating how it changes as we age. Our older MakeLoveNotPornstars candidly share how they manage their sex lives through menopause, chronic pain, reduced flexibility, and increased sensitivity. The wonderful truth is that these changes drive exploration and experimentation. A happily married couple in their 50s wrote to us, describing how the husband had survived prostate cancer but was left with permanent erectile dysfunction. Their therapist recommended MakeLoveNotPorn. The couple told us their sex life was now the best it had ever been in their 27 years together—because we had helped them explore all the wonderful ways for partners to enjoy themselves and each other without penetration.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach for having great sex or for navigating how it changes as we age.”

At MakeLoveNotPorn, we’re changing the culture around sex. We’re showing the world that the older you get, the better life gets, and the better sex gets. As one member wrote to us: “I’m 73 years old and have been made to feel like a dirty old man for the sexual desires I still have. But isn’t sexual fulfillment, when shared in consensual relationships, one of the real joys of human life? Thank you for providing a community that helps me feel I’m still a vital, sexual human being.” 

As are we all.