Books: Sex and the Seasoned Woman

Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life
By Gail Sheehy
Audiobook read by the author
Copyright 2007

This book is not about how to marinate prior to getting it on or anything like that; instead, it's about women of a certain age. That would be ladies such as myself who are 45 and over, though this book was written more for women over 50. I am not quite there.

Sheehy seems surprised to find out that other women besides herself continue to have sex and fulfilling lives beyond the age of 35. This newsflash seemed a little perplexing to me, considering Sheehy's feminist narrative in previous books.

Anyway, she interviews a lot of women about their love lives, offering up stories about stale marriages that find new life when children grow up, women who divorce and find new loves, that type of thing. She talks about cultivating a new dream in your second adulthood, which seems like a good idea but there was nothing at all here in terms of a roadmap. I think she was talking about that in terms of intimacy more so than in, say, a career, or a new hobby or something. I was looking for something more along those lines when I picked up the book.

She goes into detail about vaginal health and hormone therapy and actually advises women to dismiss studies that indicated hormones offer few benefits. According to her, the study was overblown in the media and the results actually offered proof of good things. I haven't read the study but this did raise my eyebrows. I will have to look this up.

I did not really learn anything from this book but women who are having trouble in their marriages and who are looking for the strength to move away from that may find it beneficial. It may also give a little encouragement to women who think that life is over just because they've hit menopause.