Date Night Doesn’t Work

"How do you get your love life back when ‘date night’ is more likely to produce snoring than sex? We’re a couple in our 70s, and we’re struggling to avoid becoming like our friends, who tell us sex isn’t important to them anymore. It is important to us and we enjoy it when we do it, but the frequency has fallen off and we can go weeks between times. We read that it’s important to schedule regular dates to keep the romance going, so we’ve started doing that. We get dressed up every Saturday night and go out for a nice dinner. Then we come home, light candles – and start yawning. Help!"

Joan answers:

You’ve got the ‘date’ part right, but not the time of day. Change your ‘date night’ to ‘date morning’ or ‘date afternoon’ and delay your meal until after sex, and you’ll see improvement. Maybe romantic dinners led to good sex when we were young, but they don’t now. Here’s why:

You need blood circulating to the genitals for engorgement of the penis and clitoris. As we get older, we don’t have the blood rush that we used to for easy arousal and dependable orgasms. Eating before sex makes that even more problematic, because the blood flow is going to the digestive system, not to the genitals.

Besides, as you’ve noticed, big meals, however romantic, make you drowsy, and nights are more conducive to sleep than sex. Trying to have sex at night after a meal makes arousal and orgasm more difficult – if not impossible.

Once you shift your sex time to earlier in the day and before eating, you’ll see a change. You’ll be more alert, you’ll get aroused more easily, and that romantic dinner will taste even better after good sex!