Blog
Wed 6th May 2009
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How old is too old?
I was asked to go into a residential home for older people to work with the staff group because they had problems with two residents that were having a relationship. When I arrived, there was a group of health care assistants, ranging in age from about seventeen to twenty-seven years of age. The staff group were having problems with two residents in the home that had come in as widow and widower, but had started having a relationship. Both of these people were in their eighties and this was seen as sweet by the staff, especially when they walked along the sea front hand in hand, or when he bought her flowers. The problems began one afternoon when a member of staff had walked into the lady’s room, only to find the pair of them in bed, getting to know each other better.
Intolerance
The staff group were full of intolerance and disgust, using phrases like ‘the thought of it makes me feel sick’. The thing that fascinated me about this was how this group of people felt it was ok to make a private couple’s sex lives, whatever their age, a public concern. So I thought, well, let’s see if it works the other way around.
Once they had quietened down, I turned to the first woman, in her early twenties, and asked her ‘When did you last have sex?’ She was, understandably, a bit put out by this, and rounded on mered-faced and angry, asking me ‘How dare you ask me such a thing?’ So I turned to the next one and asked, ‘When did you last masturbate?’ The room was starting to get a bit angry now as people were starting to wonder, and worry about, what I would ask them. Once they had stopped shouting at me, I pointed out that their sex lives were, and should always be, a private matter between themselves and anyone that they chose to be intimate with, and that they should extend the same courtesy to the couple upstairs. I also pointed out that, if they were lucky, they would, one day, still be alive and sexually active in their eighties.
We then had a discussion about the other side of sex: companionship, sensuality and cuddles, self-esteem and feeling wanted and valued, and generally about the joy of being touched. In the end it was a good session, and although some needed some follow-up work to deal with their natural intolerances, most of the people there grew emotionally in those two short hours.
One powerful side-effect of this issue was that the home manager talked to the residents. They shared how they were never touched unless someone had to do something to them, and generally about how much they missed such non-verbal communication. The result was that the home provided reflexology, aromatherapy and, for the brave, full body massage.
Intolerance is never good, and in doing so we diminish others. However, touching is amazingly good. It has wonderful healing properties, imparts comfort and support and gives people a sense of worth and value. Human beings are, like all primates, natural touchers. Just nip down to the zoo and watch the chimpanzees, they can’t keep their hands off each other.
I knew a woman once who was as slim as slim but was blessed, or burdened depending on your point of view, with the most enormous bosoms. She always remarked that men never knew what she looked like because they never looked at her face. Her bosom, that to all the men that knew her was seen as her asset, was to her a burden, because she could not stand to have them touched. As this was the one thing that any man that went near her wanted to do, her intimate relationships never quite worked.
Who would you like to touch?
Accepting that if you touch the wrong person in the wrong way you will end up in handcuffs, take some time to look at your own sensual world of touch. Who do you touch and perhaps also, who do you need to touch, hug and so on? Also are you touched? There may be a ‘someone’ that you would like to touch you. If you are suffering from touch deprivation go and have some reflexology or, if you dare, have a full body massage, might be fun. If you are one of those people who hate being touched, or if there is a particular part of your body that is a no-go area for touching, you have a problem and you need therapy – I mean that.
You were given a body to enjoy, and bodily enjoyment is not a sin, it is the pleasure of owning a body.
Take care
See you Friday
Sean X
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