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Description

Good sex is our lifelong birthright. Joan doesn’t believe in love at first sight. But when she saw Robert, there was no doubt about lust at first sight. And she let him know.

 

Find Joan on Twitter @JoanPrice

 

As expected, Good Sex contains mature themes and may not be appropriate for all listeners.

 

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Joan Price

Joan Price  00:00

I first met Robert, when he walked into the line dance class I was teaching. I looked into his ocean blue eyes. I saw the warmth and friendliness. I don’t believe in love at first sight. My eyes went up and down his gorgeous body. This was lust at first sight. And when I looked at him, I tried to remember to breathe. I was 57 years old, and he was 64. He was wearing a shirt that had buttons, and had the first couple of buttons open. I was so enthralled by him, that as I taught the class, I kept losing my place in the dance I was teaching, because I wanted to just on the spot, open the rest of them, and see where that tuft of white hair that was peeking out of his shirt went.

Joan Price 

Well, he kept coming to my class. And we would spend time together in the dance room choreographing together and practicing together. We started taking walks after class, and all of our conversations were impersonal, I kept trying to push the personal and I wasn’t getting anything back. So finally I decided I would take matters into my own keyboard. And I typed out an email to him, telling him how much I was enjoying our emerging friendship, and how I loved dancing with them. And I said, “I have to confess, I am powerfully attracted to you, and I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to dance with you without footwork.” The send button held so much power. But I sent it and he responded quite quickly.

Joan Price  02:02

He said, “Yes, I am attracted to you, too But, I don’t do casual sex and I don’t get into sex quickly. Could we just continue getting to know each other and not push anything for now?” Now you have to understand something at the time I sent that email. We had been getting to know each other for nine months. Oh. So I said to him of course we don’t have to rush. Shortly after that. I got another email. “I change my mind.”

Joan Price 

Hi, I’m Joan Price, and you’re listening to GOOD SEX. I’m a sex educator, a writer, speaker. And good sex is our birthright lifelong. We never age out of good sex. I was always a rebel. So if my parents told me I was supposed to do something or think something I would go to the other direction automatically. And this was one of those things where I was told not to have sex. So yes, I did have sex with my boyfriend. I do not have orgasms with my boyfriend. Neither of us knew how to make that happen. My sex education consisted of my father who was a gynecologist obstetrician. And his explanation to me, was to hand me a pamphlet about menstruation and to tell me how girls got pregnant and why I should not do it.

Joan Price

There was nothing about desire, there was nothing about pleasure, nothing about why I might want to do it. It took learning things one step at a time. It wasn’t until my first necking session. Does anyone still say necking? I don’t know why it’s got that our necks are actually not involved. My first necking session with my boyfriend. I was a sophomore in high school, and he was a senior. And I got so turned on. I thought I had invented something. So that’s why I say the first time I learned about sex was lacking in information. Robert and I made a date to take another walk and we shared our 1st kiss, our 2nd or 3rd our 20th.

Joan Price  04:52

We couldn’t stop kissing. In fact, we didn’t stop kissing for seven years. During that date, we made another date to meet at his house for the first time, where we both knew that our interaction would become sexual. And that was the beginning. But it was some years before we decided to live together and even longer before we decided to get married. But during the seven years, we did go through that progression. And it was the great love of my life.

Joan Price

We were as close as could be until cancer took him in August 2008. Was ripped me to pieces, I’m there to start crying talking about it. But that’s alright. For a long time, people always ask me, “do you still think about Robert?” all I could do is grieve, I say only when I breathe in and out. That’s what I take with me. Every day. I was already a sex educator, how could I be just continuing to hide under the covers, and not having sex with anyone and at first not even having sex with myself? Because I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear it. Every time I tried. All I saw was his ocean blue, warmth and friendliness. And I would start to cry. And it wasn’t a release for me. It wasn’t a relief for me. It wasn’t a joy. It was just a reminder that I would never do that again.

Joan Price  06:51

At the time Robert died. My book Naked at Our Age was just in its first moments of conception. He asked me please keep doing your work. And I owe it to him and to everyone who needs this information to keep doing this work. So I did. And I went on then to write another book about senior sex, The Ultimate Guide to Sex After Fifty. But one thing I hadn’t written about yet was the grief journey. It took me 11 years before I was ready to write the book, which is now called Sex After Grief. It was important to me to write this book because it is possible to come out the other side. But we all do it in different ways. And I did it in a lot of different ways myself, sex with an old boyfriend, sex with someone I barely knew lots of online dating some dates that got sexual, most did not, some sent me driving home crying out loud in the car.

Joan Price  08:14

Don’t be dead anymore, Robert. I really did scream that. Eventually, I work on this and on everything else about my grief journey with grief counselors, and I can’t recommend them enough. Because there’s no one way to come back to your own sexuality, right with right in quotes. And you know, things will not work until they do work. That’s the thing. I am very lucky right now that one of my online dates three and a half years ago, led to a connection that persists now with a widower, someone who lost his wife shortly before meeting me. And one of the joys in this relationship is that we both feel absolutely free and comfortable and appreciated. When we want to tell a story of our deceased spouse.

Joan Price

How we loved before and the person we love before and the kind of relationship we were in before taught us some things about how to love, we know better what we have to give because we loved before. My partner today and I laugh a lot about old people sex. I want to get in a different position but I have to work through how to change position on the bed so that it doesn’t hurt my neck. It doesn’t hurt my knees. I don’t land hard on my elbow when I’ve reached the position I want. And we’d just go, “old people sex” and we burst into laughter. That’s part of good sex.

Joan Price  10:07

Good sex to me is pleasurable to the point of joyful, is sexually satisfying meaning great arousal and go to orgasm. That if I am with a partner that I am giving as much as receiving and receiving as much as giving. Everything I do with this topic of senior sex is because of what I shared with Robert and I look around any room in my house and Robert is there. But that doesn’t mean that him being there and in my heart can’t coexist. Because the more love we give, the more love we receive, the more love we have to give. Thank you for listening to GOOD SEX. I have written several award-winning books about sex and aging. I have a blog where I review sex stories from a senior perspective. I have webinars that you can delve into a topic, so you can find all of this and much more at joanprice.com

CREDITS

GOOD SEX is a Lemonada Media Original. Produced by Claire Jones and Matthew Simonson. Our supervising producer are Kryssy Pease and Xorje Olivares, and our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Music is by Dan Molad with additional music from APM music and sound design is by Matthew Simonson. If you like GOOD SEX, the show, not you know, why don’t you rate and review us on iTunes. And you can follow us on all social media at @LemonadaMedia. Thanks for listening!