A Frenchwoman's Guide to Sex after Sixty

A Frenchwoman’s advice for how women—and men—of a certain age can enjoy love, sex, and desire in their sixties and seventies and beyond.

With wit and a soupçon of irreverence, Marie de Hennezel shows that there is no age limit for erotic joy. Through interviews with countless older French women and men, de Hennezel uncovers a plethora of tips for enjoying a rich and satisfying sex life after age sixty. She suggests that perhaps the most important point is to have a positive self-image—to love yourself—and instead of worrying about wrinkles and other outward signs of aging, to cultivate an inner youthfulness, which, combined with a certain maturity, she says, can be sexier than youth all by itself. It is better to skip the plastic surgery and intense workouts at the gym and focus on sensuality, pleasure, and emotional intimacy instead.

Other tips for how to keep that certain je ne sais quoi include forgetting about sexual performance, shifting from thinking about the body you have (how it looks in the mirror) to focusing on the body you are (how it feels), and being able to surrender during love and sex. Bringing a sense of humor and a bit of playfulness to the boudoir doesn’t hurt either.

Marie de Hennezel is an esteemed psychologist and therapist and the author of ten books, including The Art of Growing Old and Intimate Death: How the Dying Teach Us to Live. She lives in Paris.

"Marie de Hennezel allows the reader to deliciously eavesdrop on ordinary elderly people talking about how they keep the fires of passion burning. Not only is sex possible, it’s better. Who wouldn’t want to read this book? I couldn’t stop turning the pages: all these people, my age and older, speaking with such openness about the pleasures that age cannot erase." —Lorna Crozier, author of The Book of Marvels, Small Beneath the Sky, and co-contributor of The Wild in You