Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. This study examines how married straight and lesbian women understand sexual changes in midlife. Sexual satisfaction is key to marital quality, yet marital sex typically diminishes in midlife. Little is known, however, about how married straight and lesbian women make sense of midlife sexuality. Inductive and deductive analyses were performed on interviews with a convenience sample of 16 straight and 16 lesbian mostly high-status married couples in Massachusetts.
Lesbian and straight women suggest that sexual activity and desire diminish over time due to health, aging, and caregiving events, yet lesbian women additionally emphasize the importance of weight gain, caregiving for adult parents, and shared experiences of menopause.
Women further describe distress when their sex lives diverge from norms specific to marriage and their sexual identities. Moreover, women report relationship work designed to maintain or reignite sex; when compared with straight women, lesbians describe more work and a stronger sense of duty to keep sex alive and uniquely describe medical providers as unhelpful in addressing sexual challenges.
Stressful events common to midlife, such as becoming a caregiver for an aging parent or the onset of chronic illness, pose challenges to a satisfying sex life. For example, midlife and later life individuals who reported a decline in physical health also reported diminished sexual activity and satisfaction Lindau et al. Midlife challenges affect women in both straight and lesbian marriages, yet existing studies primarily focus on straight marriages and grant little insight into how women in lesbian marriages navigate sex amid significant midlife events.
These gaps in research limit our knowledge about the experiences of sex and sexuality among married women during midlife. Gendered cultural ideals related to sex and sexuality inform how women make sense of midlife events that challenge sex and sexuality as well as the work women invest in their sexual relationships.
