One of society’s more durable assumptions is that people over 50 don’t have much sex — or, at least, aren’t too interested in it.
Not true, says agony aunt and life coach Keren Smedley. An expert on age-related issues, Ms Smedley, 57, aims to dispel the mythology that nobody over 50 enjoys a physical love-life in her latest book, Who’s That Sleeping in My Bed? In it, she addresses a range of sex and relationship issues for baby boomers.
She tells People: “I realised that a lot of the questions — general and personal — I was being asked were about being older. We are a generation that is doing things differently to our parents and I felt that there wasn’t much literature around, so it seemed like a good idea to write a book.”
The book follows the success of her previous publication Who’s That Woman in the Mirror: The Art of Ageing Gracefully. Ms Smedley, a member of the British Association of Counselling, says 50 is an age of transition. “It’s an age where you have opportunities to do things that you may not have had before. It’s a time to have a rethink about your life and relationships. We should embrace this age, focusing on what we
can do, not what we can’t.”
Aimed at both men and women, the book features a selection of self-help tests and charts to help readers clarify and define key issues. Mother-of-three Ms Smedley is a former advisor for Saga and the agony aunt for magazine Woman’s Weekly. She also runs Experience, an organisation which provides relationship workshops for over-50s.
