Last weekend, I sat watching my husband of three decades wearily rake up the winter debris from around our garden.
There was a time when seeing David sweating under the physical labours of an outdoor task would have set my own pulse racing. I remember one child-free weekend when I enjoyed the sight of him hurling broken branches onto a bonfire so much, I leaned through the kitchen window urging him to come inside and tend the fire that had suddenly ignited in me.
But that was years ago now, when David was still relatively young and fit; when he would stride around the garden, his muscular arms making light work of it all, and still have plenty of energy left for me.
There is nothing sexually alluring about watching a 64-year-old, whose arms have wasted away from decades of desk-bound teaching work, pause to lean on his rake and sigh with exhaustion every five minutes.
Although seeing David huddle into his coat as he watched the winter rubbish burn did make me long for him to come into the house like in the old days. Sadly, though, it was from pity rather than desire – he looked like he could do with a warm cup of tea and a snooze on the sofa.
Because the truth is that the strong, sexy man whose brooding dark looks I fell in lust with 35 years ago sadly no longer exists. He’s been replaced by a grey-haired old fella who I love to bits, but I just don’t fancy any more.
Harsh as it may sound, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
As a young woman, the blueprint for what I found sexy in a man was a thick head of hair, a toned body and youthful good looks – and that hasn’t changed one bit as I’ve got older. Why should sparse grey hair and an elderly physique fill me with desire now when it hasn’t at any other time in my life? Even if the old man in question is my own husband.
Men and women are equally attracted to younger partners even if they don’t realise it, a study has found
It was all so different when we first met, back when we were both in our 20s and David exuded sex appeal.
We were introduced at a birthday party for a mutual friend and spent the rest of the evening huddled together in a corner, the sparks of sexual attraction flying between us.
That night, he took me back to his place and I never really left. We spent most of those first couple of weeks together in bed. I’d never fancied anyone half as much as I did David. The sex was exciting and hugely satisfying; better than anything I’d experienced before.
A big part of that was how I felt aroused as much by the sight of him, the thought of him, as I was by whatever took place physically between us. There was a strong sense of having met, in David, my perfect sexual match.
All these years later, I can still picture exactly what he looked like back then: the sharpness of his jaw, the way his fringe flopped slightly over his eyes at certain angles, the tautness of his bottom when he walked naked across the room. And how it felt to lie in his arms, which were beautifully toned from the tennis he used to play regularly before the commitments of work and family life got in the way.
I know it sounds like I objectified him, but isn’t that what everyone does when they first connect with a sexual partner? After all, it wasn’t his love of books and old films or talent for identifying birds through their song that turned me on.
The appeal of those things – and other elements of his personality, such as being a loyal friend, and caring passionately about the environment before it entered the public consciousness – came later, as we got to know each other beyond our enthusiastic love-making.
Within a month, I’d moved out of my parents’ home and in with him. When we got married 32 years ago, I walked down the aisle knowing that the man I fancied more than anyone on the planet was waiting for me at the end of it. Which might not sound like a strong basis for marriage, but all these years and two kids later we’re still together, so it was clearly a good enough start for us.
But the thing with lust is it doesn’t last. It relies on the object of it defying time and staying young, supple and fanciable. Which is a magic trick that, along with most of us, David hasn’t managed to pull off.
I realise I’ve just made the sort of crass comment that, traditionally, we associate with men. Older ones, to be precise, who look unfavourably at their partners’ ageing bodies and then let their eyes wander to the younger women they find so much more fanciable.
But while society has long recognised the concept of men being attracted to young women regardless of their own age, it has only recently been forced to consider that older women might be attracted to younger men in much the same way.
Last month, the publication of a study from the University of California revealed that men and women are equally attracted to younger partners – even if they don’t consciously realise it. Meanwhile the older woman/younger man age-gap relationship is also the premise of the erotic film Babygirl, in which Nicole Kidman plays a high-powered chief executive who has an affair with a much younger intern.
All of which challenges the common assumption that women prefer older partners, no matter their own age.
To my mind, being attracted to an ‘older man’ is only the case when you’re in your 20s and, amidst a sea of male immaturity, a man who has a few – but only a few – years on you seems like the better bet.
I love my husband for who he is, and love sharing with him the life we built together. We have a beautiful home, two wonderful sons and two grandchildren whom we adore.
Looking at his face fills me with warmth; I still feel like my hand fits perfectly in his. But I can’t pretend to fancy what he has become.
What’s more, I fully expect him to feel the same way about me.
I’m not remotely immune to the ravages of time. In fact, ageing has probably cost me even more in terms of sexual appeal than it has him.
The pert breasts, the bouncy bottom and various other youthful physical attributes that David used to tell me, fairly graphically, drove him into a sexual frenzy have sagged in much the way you’d expect they would in your average 60-year-old woman.
When we occasionally have sex – perhaps once every couple of months now as opposed to several times a week when we were younger – it’s less about lust and more about an itch getting scratched.
I’d be amazed if, while we’re in the throes, David’s excitement has much to do with my own ageing body. I fully expect him to be picturing himself making love to someone young and nubile.
Certainly, that’s the fantasy playing out in my own head. Although, in an act of loyalty, the younger man I’m imagining is based on my memories of David in the past.
Because it’s really not as though I go around lusting after every good-looking young man I pass in the street. My template for the sexiest man on the planet remains the younger version of the man I married. And he cannot ever be replaced.
It doesn’t hurt me to believe that my husband is now unlikely to fancy me any more than I do him. It’s not a conversation I’d ever want to have with him, because of the enormous potential for it to cause hurt. But I do hope that David feels that I’m similarly irreplaceable.
Talking to a friend about this recently she said it seems perverse that there’s this assumption that a couple can’t stay in love without also fancying each other to the very end.
‘Wanting to sleep with an old person feels like a really weird kink,’ she said, admitting she’s completely shut up shop in her own 35-year marriage. ‘I love my husband, but the idea of having sex with him turns me off, not on.’
Honestly, I think most women my age feel exactly the same way.
Jane Evans is a pseudonym. Names have been changed.
