If you’ve been following this series, you already know that menopause is not the end of your erotic life. Also, you’ve learned that modern science is finally catching up to what many women already knew about their bodies. Now let’s talk about how to reclaim your erotic self when hormonal changes start affecting your desire, comfort, or arousal.
Reconnect with your Body and Rediscover Pleasure at any Age
Part 1 of my series gave us the real story from real women. Most are thriving, relieved to be done with their periods, and having better sex than ever. Part 2 provided data, including The Lancet’s landmark call to ditch the standard “just give them hormones” model and the SWAN study’s findings on self-care and quality of life.
Part 3 is where we get practical!
Based on anecdotal reports and peer-reviewed clinical research, including a landmark series published in The Lancet, the single most powerful starting point in a woman’s post-menopausal erotic life is not a pill, a cream, or a procedure. The most powerful tool in maintaining a sex life is your attitude and body awareness. Like any adult skill, eroticism can be learned, practiced, and deepened at any age.
Self-Care: the Missing Piece
Post-menopausal women face a specific challenge. The body has changed. Hormonal shifts affect lubrication, sensitivity, and the speed of arousal. Some women experience vaginal narrowing or decreased elasticity. Others notice that orgasms feel different — not necessarily worse, just different.
Medicine’s answer is usually pharmaceutical. My answer, as a clinical sexologist, is to start with your own body first. Not because medication is wrong — sometimes it’s exactly right — but because no prescription in the world can replace the knowledge you already possess about your body.
Persistence Leads to Pleasure
The women most successful at finding happiness in menopause overwhelmingly discovered this for themselves. They experimented. Sometimes they failed. But failure didn’t stop them. They didn’t give up or get dramatic. Instead, they did what women have always done and kept trying new twists on old routines.
Their persistence was a key to success. If you discover that it doesn’t feel “right” or “the same as before,” don’t give up. Try something a little different. And when something doesn’t work, drop it and try something else.
Navigate the Grown Woman You Are
Learning to navigate your changing body can open the door to new kinds of pleasure. Be grateful you are alive, because that means change is not just possible, it’s inevitable. But this time, you get to decide which change you want. It’s not inevitable that you’ll age quickly; you will get older in years, but you don’t have to feel or act old.
Do you want to stop having intimacy with a beloved partner? That’s a valid choice. It is still worth knowing that menopause itself doesn’t eliminate the possibility of intimacy. Or do you want to continue your intimacy? If so, you’ll need to adjust to your changing body and discover your new normal in bed.
The women who contributed to Part 1 figured out new ways to enjoy their sensuality. They tried different toys and positions. Some included trying different partners. They adapted. They stopped trying to have the sex they had at 30 and started having the sex that works at their current age. The results, in their own words, were often spectacular.
You can get there too. Here are two ways to begin.
2 Exercises to Reclaim Your Erotic Self
1. Meditate Before Shame
If you’re grappling with shame, whether about sex or your body, this meditation can help ease your brain out of that pattern.
Return to one of your earliest body memories, perhaps an innocent bath, a swim, lying in bed, before ideas about what was ‘appropriate’ or ‘dirty’ took hold. That neural pathway still exists. You will be reconnecting with something that was always there.
Spend ten minutes meditating on this memory. You’re young again. Did swimming feel good? Did you enjoy baths? The warmth, the scent of soap, the tingle of clean skin?
Don’t complicate it. Let it remind you that your body’s capacity for pleasure is older and more resilient than your shame.
2. You Are Your Body
Every part of you, inside and out, from scalp to toes, is you. You are your body, and your body is you. How often do you treat it that way? Inhibition isn’t just about being uptight about sex. It can also show up as disconnecting from parts of your body, or treating them as less acceptable or less “you.”
Let’s turn that around so you can appreciate yourself at a holistic, whole-body level. Take a soaking bath. Skip the soap for now. Adjust the water to your preferred temperature and submerge as much of your body as possible. Close your eyes and breathe deeply.
Run your fingers over your body, reminding yourself: this is all you. Every inch belongs to you. Each part of you belongs equally to your identity. Your whole body is clean and renewed in the bath. Let it relax fully in the cleansing water.
Feel free to touch any or all parts of this living body. Think about how small you were at birth—and how your body has grown, changed, and reinvented itself over time.
Your body’s beauty, mystery, and miracle live here.
The Bottom Line
Medicine will keep advancing. New treatments for menopausal symptoms are coming, and some of them are genuinely promising. But the most important thing you can do right now costs nothing and requires no prescription.
Know your body. Trust your pleasure. Reject the narrative that says your erotic life has an expiration date.
Your Free Guide to post menopausal sex is coming soon to Pleasure Literacy. This free book includes 3 additional exercises to try, the two shared above, plus all three blog posts in the series, and some more personal guidance from me! All this info in one juicy little free PDF for all the women who love to know the FACTS!
If you’re a woman 50+, you definitely want to download your free copy and share it with friends. I’ll be working on it this weekend and hope to get it into the Pleasure Literacy shop early next week.
Photo credit: Centre for Ageing Better on Unsplash
