FEBUARY 2026 SULLYGRAM:  One of the great pleasures of aging is putting fears to rest. Fears are powerful emotions that serve us well, quick response guards that keep us from hurt whether physical, emotional or psychological. Surprise a baby, surprise an animal, and the first response is invariably fear. Instinct. Better to be safe than sorry, right? Give a smile to a lion and you may not have time for a re-do by the time you recognize the threat. Which explains why fears are over-active. And the younger you are, the stronger (and more irrational) the fears. You can almost say that, in general, fears scale down as age scales up.

They change, of course, but you won’t ever run out of fears. Some may be overcome or tamp down, shrinking to frets and anxieties. And many types linger simply out of habit and vanity. The thing about age is it fine tunes the margins and sweeps out clutter you should have thrown away decades sooner. Best of all, letting go of fear relics frees you to new paths of joy and fulfillment.

We carry so much unnecessary baggage through life: borrowed fears, conditioned responses, guilts based on social lies, shifting marquee values that are meaningless except as facades, ulterior motives, pecking orders, jealousy, veneers, pretenses and insecurities. If you separate real physical fears from the stresses and societal hypocrisies you graft on yourself, life takes on a historical context free of double standards. Maybe you live with a violent partner. Maybe your neighborhood sucks. Maybe you have enemies. But maybe your enemies include yourself. Aging reveals our myths and vanities. And myths and vanities prop up castles of cards that come down in the winds of time.  

The BIG D – fear of death – is probably the #1 latecomer to our lives. Which is ironic, because the possibility of dying was always there. What weighs in as aging becomes palpable is the certainty. Again, ironic. Because not letting it fester in your mind might avoid the very stress that could do you in. That said, some people look forward to death, feeling less and less connected as the world around them diminishes by attrition. My father wished for years that it would hurry up, and in his 90s he chose when to die by not taking medicines that were keeping him alive. In any case, if you fear 1000 things that might kill you, you will be wrong at least 999 times.

Oh, dear. Didn’t intend to write all this. Intended to write of Valentine’s month and specific fears about love, sex and romance. Back on track now. Read on, if you will…  

Oddly enough, as a writer (therefore a student of human nature) and something of an introvert, I’ve always enjoyed candor from people. It can come within minutes of a meeting, maybe because I’m a nonentity to them or maybe they sense I’m analytical but not judgmental. Whatever the reason, I happen to know a lot of individuals, seasoned and not so seasoned, who have given up on love and sex because they feel love and sex have given up on them. Still surprises the hell out of me that this loss can come at almost any age, though it is often a growing cynicism by someone in their forties, married or not, and definitely increases as they go through life. Women seem to give up on themselves after three or four children; men at mid-life crisis time. Not gonna unpack that here, because where I’m going with this is that it’s a choice (surrender?) that doesn’t have to be. Cheers for those who are truly and actively bonded with their mate, but for those who are disillusioned, insert the phrase “quiet life of desperation.” Moreover, if you give up on love, self-signaling that you are out of the game of mating, nature will oblige you with decreased longevity (my opinion, and there are exceptions). Your vitality, immunology, regenerative potential, DNA, stem cells etc. go thumbs up or thumbs down in sync with your attitude.

You are born to love…to seek out a mate and propagate yourself as all living things do. And in higher order beings the rites of romance are complex. We are freighted with doubts and despairs but also endowed with exquisite passions of the mind. The poet in all of us comes out eventually…whatever poetry there is. What else can restore your balance when you trip over the speed bumps of reality? If you have a soul, if you have a heart, if you have a mind, listen to the cantos and odes of life each day. You are mortal, but your destiny is in the freedom of the stars…and the older you are, the closer you are to returning to those stars.             

So, from the standpoint of freedom acquired with age, Love & Sex rank high on the list of passions with benefits. Consider the sudden freedom that post-menopause gives a woman, or that post-provider/protector gives a man. Provider/protector roles may have drastically changed in the last half century, but they still hold emotional nuances from millions of years of basic training, evolutionary echoes deep within our gender needs. Female/male. Attract/protect. Very sexy, very reflexive.

Act your age, say the sooths, but what the hell does that mean? Some humans are horny; some aren’t. Easy to see that a woman past menopause might be thrilled just to be relieved of birth control, monthly cycles, wearing bras, feeling captive to what’s between her legs and even the ostentations of a lascivious past. Maybe she adds physical sex to the list she doesn’t want, while retaining a desire for sexuality, companionship, warmth, respect and intimacy sans penetration. Or maybe she aches for the sweet sting of raw carnality and to know she can still satisfy a man (ten extra libido points if he’s a decade younger).

An aging male, too, is freed from expectations but pays a much easier price physically. Sex with younger partners may be a more realistic cliché for him than for that older woman seeking carnal fulfillment. If his needs have always been comparatively simple, his fantasies are more simply satisfied. Or if his needs are more complex, he may discover the possibility of fully ranged relationships with mature younger women who are attracted to success and stability (include gold diggers) or to intelligence and wisdom (sapiosexuals). His sex drive may actually intensify, fed by libido and psychological freedom as age differences have become less socially significant, especially in the arts, career professions and corporate circles.

Lots of ways people get their needs filled. And lots of reasons a man or a woman might cherish independence. Include simplicity, healing after the shell-shock of too much drama, freedom from responsibility, discovering new fulfillments, avoiding vulnerabilities, and a focus on smaller pleasures –different strokes for different folks. The range of stimulation in both men and women changes, refines and broadens, if only because living refines and broadens. What attracts you?

Finally, I don’t mean to be dismissive of sexual disinterest for any reason. Doesn’t seem to matter to those for whom – well – for whom it doesn’t matter. And each gender faces the possibility of surgical/medical treatments that could affect desire. Again, I’ve been surprised at the openness of both men and women to confide about their experiences with surgeries and hormonal changes. I take it as a sign that there’s no great stigma to them. Men who have gone through turp, and women through a variety of procedures, may be perfectly content to be free of sexual effort. But it also seems that, for most of us, a decline in sexual activity has more to do with boredom fed by couch-potato living than loss of libido.

Speaking for those who, like myself, have noted no meaningful change in their sex drive, there is no expiration date for sex. The only caveat I take from life is that emotions can profoundly affect desire with a love-sex partner. Emotional baggage and conflicts need to be resolved in order to fully engage with another person. Maybe you feel guilt for an abortion. Maybe you outgrew your partner over time. Maybe you even learned the hard lesson that you had to separate love and sex in order to save one from the other. My advice? Take the gifts that age gives. They can be had no other way. And tell Cupid to take his best shot.

SOOOO…‘tis Valentine’s month, don’tcha know? A chance to remember what it’s all about. Young or old, February 14 is a running start, an excuse to by-pass any emotional hurdles in your path. Hell, even if you solo, it deserves fantasy treatment. Skip the off ramp, move into the fast lane, and put the pedal to the metal!

Photos below: this dude and Elm Creek.

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan