性行為的發展

獨居年長女人和男人會面臨著必須到別的地方得到身體親昵接觸和親切關係的問題。遺憾地是，現代文明沒有提供在年老時婚姻之外得到性滿足的腳本。年過半百的單身或寡居者找不到被社會認可的性欲關係的模式，因而被迫自己拿出解決問題的方案。例如，一些年長夫妻處於分居狀態，僅僅相互頻繁地去探望或一起定期休假。有一些人也建立一個共有的家庭，但是為了保有全部的養老金，只是住在一起而不結婚。還有一些人與其他處於相同情形的女人和男人設法以某種形式共同生活。最近以來，許多“老年療養處所（senior residence）”和療養院也開始容忍甚至鼓勵居所內的老人發展性關係。

然而，這些和其它類似的性接觸體驗仍發生在道德的“灰色地帶”，並未獲得社會完全認可。實在有太多這樣的年長者，在其老年未有任何的身體接觸和性親昵（sexual tenderness）就這麼辭別塵世。對於我們社會來說，仍舊有需要投入更大的精力去做的工作，那就是為了老人的性需要創作出多種文化腳本。在發達國家，從未結婚的“單身”的數量正在增加。與此同時，人的壽命通常在延長，因而老年人的性問題甚至在將來可能變得更為急迫。下面的圖表舉例說明美國1970-1994年的這種發展趨勢，除了這種總體的趨勢會持續發展以外，我們也能夠在其它許多國家觀察到類似的現象。

Stages of Development: Old Age

Erotic Behavior 2

Older women and men who live alone face the challenge of having to find physical closeness and tenderness elsewhere. Unfortunately, our modern culture offers no script except marriage for finding sexual fulfillment in old age. Elderly persons who are single or widowed find no socially approved model for erotic relationships and thus are forced to come up with their own solutions. For example, some older couples live separately, but visit each other frequently or take regular vacations together. Some also establish a common household, but stay unmarried in order to keep their full pensions. Still others find some form of communal living arrangement with other women and men in the same situation. Lately, many “senior residences” and nursing homes have also begun to tolerate and even encourage sexual relationships among their residents.
Nevertheless, these and similar experiments are still taking place in a moral “gray area”  and lack full social recognition. All too many of the elderly are left without any physical closeness and sexual tenderness in their old age. It remains a major task for our society to create cultural scripts that accommodate the erotic needs of the old. The number of “singles” who were never married is increasing in the developed world, and so is the number of formerly married women and men who live alone. At the same time, people generally live longer, and thus the problem is likely to become even more urgent in the future. The following chart illustrates the development in the USA from 1970 -1994, but the overall trend continues and can be observed in many other countries.