Flame of passion still burns for many seniors

It seems that once a year or so, news reports begin circulating about senior citizens having sex.

Just this summer WABE in Atlanta reported a story about senior homes offering sex education classes, the Express newspaper in the UK reported that people over 50 “still enjoy healthy sex,” and even The New York Times ran a story in July about Riverdale’s own Hebrew Home.

The simple fact remains: People are annually shocked to find that older adults still have sex – a notion that, according to data from the Center for Disease Control, might have something to do with why the number of sexually transmitted diseases among seniors continues to rise every year.

“It’s amazing to me that in this day and age something as basic as intimacy and sexuality is still viewed as newsworthy,” Daniel Reingold, the CEO of the Hebrew Home said. “We have a society that refuses to see older people as people.”

In 1995, the Home established the first policy on sexual expression for seniors in the country. The policy, according to Mr. Reingold, gives explicit instructions to staff on how to react when dealing with patients who are engaging in sexual activity.

Part of the reason for the policy stems from the fact that there are married couples living at the Hebrew Home, like Arthur ‘Bucky’ Bachner and his wife of 67-years, Selma.  The two have separate rooms, but Bucky likes to spend all day in his wife’s bedroom.

“It’s not a matter of ‘bam, bam, thank you, ma’am,’” he said. “These beds sort of preclude any sexual affairs: if you get caught up in the mechanism here, you’ll get caught up like a pretzel.”

Selma has lost the ability to walk, so she said there is not much of a physically intimate relationship left between the couple. But they said they are perfectly happy to spend time with each other.

“I feel very comfortable with him being here with me,” Selma said. “It’s a feeling when I glance up at him, I just feel good.”

Not every couple at the Hebrew Home checked in together, however. Mr. Reingold said there are many couples that meet and fall in love while at the Home.

“What’s fascinating to me is that when you see a couple here in their 80s falling in love, they think they’re teenagers, and I don’t mean it in terms of sexual prowess, I mean in terms of the beauty of love,” he said. “Love is ageless and the expression of love should be ageless too, in the physical sense, even if it’s just holding hands.”