Midlife sex: The new normal

If you could see your sex hormones pulsing through your body right now, you'd witness a minute symphony of chemicals and hormone receptors playing on a molecular scale. After menopause*, the orchestra becomes even more Lilliputian.

The power this tiny universe of cholesterol derivatives wields upon your body, your brain and your sex life is outstripped only by your ability to overestimate the impact of its actual effects. (Consider the case of a certain fountain of youth-chasing/former Three's Company star whose ThighMaster sales have gone the way of the Chia Pet, and who hoovers estrogen like a teenager chugging Red Bull at a rave.)

Which is why it may be news to some that, as you age, changes in your body and libido aren't a disease; they're normal. So too is the decision to seek treatment that will help you shag like a bunny until you're 90. Also normal? Forgoing intervention altogether and still checking every erotic fantasy off your sexual to-do list, or never having intercourse again. Bottom line: It depends not on your hormones, but on what your heart says.

This is your sex life on menopause.

Your libido on menopause

"We talk about sex here."

So say the signs on the doors at Winnipeg's Mature Women's Centre in the Victoria General Hospital. Richard Boroditsky, the centre's medical director, is the one who put them there. "The biggest reasons we get women consulting us is for low libido, painful sex, decreased sexual desire and the lack of an available functional partner," he says. "Less than 15 per cent of these women ever wind up needing intensive sexual therapy."

The libido-dousing effects of husband-hating notwithstanding, Boroditsky cites other psychosocial factors as prime suspects in the instance of low sex drive: stress, ingrained repressive attitudes or not being turned on by a partner. Case in point: "I once asked a woman if she was sexually active," says Boroditsky. ‘No,' she said, ‘I just lie there.'"

Throughout adulthood, most of us experience a gradual arousal overhaul as our ovaries slow their production of testosterone. Testosterone is the chemical largely responsible for sexual response, desire and fantasy, and lower levels may mean a kinder, gentler sexual response. Or to put it another way: "Basically, that spontaneous horniness you had in your twenties? It's gone," says Boroditsky. "It's normal for your sexual response to become a bit slower; you need more stimulation emotionally and physically, and your orgasms can take longer and lose intensity."