This is #11 in a series of essays on aging.

I don’t like writing personally about sex. It should be a private matter, I think. Therefore, I’m not going to say too much about aging and the loss of sex. I will say this: it happens.

Of course, it varies tremendously. In his nineties, New Yorker editor Roger Angell wrote in fury about busybodies trying to keep elders from sex. He meant himself. I can’t imagine that anybody cared about his sex life all that much—other than he.

Generally, interest in sex declines with age. (Maybe not, with Angell.)  It doesn’t disappear, it just gradually diminishes. It’s chemical: our production of hormones decreases. This is where it gets strange. Because while the body certainly changes, the mind changes less.

Some years ago I was talking to a friend, and I mentioned how odd it was that this powerful preoccupation, a focal point of thoughts for my whole life, was gone. “Gone,” my friend said, “but not forgotten.”

He put it well. A lifetime of sexuality trains your mind. You tune in to certain signals. Your eyes follow certain people. Sex can be a compulsive attraction. If my experience is any guide, those signals still operate as you age, but there is no corresponding response. No compulsion. It’s like flicking on a light switch when the electricity is off. Nothing happens. And that surprises me, time after time.

There’s nothing tragic in this. Good sex is a great gift, but if the drive is gone, you aren’t missing anything. If you lost interest in eating oysters, it would be the same—the oysters are still there, but if you don’t care, so what? In the last few years I’ve lost most of my sense of smell. Do I regret it? Not really. I miss smelling the roses, certainly, but I don’t miss some awful and disgusting smells.

Those are not true comparisons. Sex is a consuming drive, so close to our core. Unlike oysters, unlike the sense of smell, it is a huge and omnipresent force in your life. It binds you to your spouse. It enlivens you. When it’s gone, you miss it. It leaves a noticeable gap, like a huge tree that has fallen. You’re living in a different world now.