I’m an Aging Man: Who Would Want Me?

Dear Dakini Leah,

I just turned 64, and my whole world is turning upside down. I feel depressed, like I just want to go to sleep and not wake up again. It feels like this has been creeping on me for a long time. Who would want to date me? I have debilitating arthritis, and will have to have surgeries on my knees and hands. I’m recovering from a stroke and don’t have full mobility despite several years of physical therapy. I look in the mirror and see a wisp of a man where once I was strong. I can’t ski much anymore, and my mountain biking days are behind me. Who is going to want me? All of this is only going to get worse as I get older. I get on these dating sites, and all the women want someone tall (I’m not), athletic (I can’t anymore) and financially stable. I am that, but I don’t want a sugar baby. Is it even worth learning Tantra at this point?

Jerry, basalt, CO

Hey there, Jerry,

Your letter really touches my heart. I can hear that you are a tender-hearted man who recognizes that his physical body no longer reflects the virility and strength of his heart. Of course that depresses you! 

I’m willing to bet somewhere inside you, you KNOW you have something priceless to offer a woman, but you’re not sure how to express it now that your body is aging. You’re uncertain she will be able to see it, especially on a dating site. 

I imagine you feel isolated, but now is a good time to remember aging is something everyone–if they’re lucky–goes through. Do you know any men your age who aren’t experiencing the physical effects of age? Everyone will lose the physical vitality of youth in one way or another. Not only that, but all of us carry emotional baggage from the decades before us into our sunset season. You are never going to meet a woman, either, who isn’t struggling with physical and emotional health in SOME way as she ages. Many women feel as you do: “Who is going to want me now that my breasts are sagging, or I deal with depressive disorder or my vagina is drying with menopause?”

What most people only know intuitively–but we don’t acknowledge as a culture–is, as we age, we have so much more to offer a partner that we could never have offered in our younger years. So much more than physical vitality: Wisdom. Experience. Expertise. A mature compassion born of pain and scars. Wholistic expression of mind, body, and spirit that we never could have tapped in our youth, because it didn’t exist yet. Perhaps the best gift of all is an unbreakable, internalized self-love tempered by the fiery loss of external factors like physique and athleticism. 

So my questions to you are these: will you learn to love yourself as you age? What amazing gifts can you offer now that you wouldn’t have been able to as a younger man?

A good therapist can help you work through depression and renew your emotional health.

Tantra can help you develop your spiritual and sexual gifts. Tantra has daily practices to help you cultivate the energy of your body to maximize your physical health–especially the health of your lingam (penis). Tantra can help you harness the energy of your chakras to share it with a partner–delicious!!! Tantric sex techniques will show you how to slow down and court the feminine in women–skills feisty younger men really struggle to master, but wise older men can understand with much more grace.

Keep in mind the self-love and confidence you can learn in Tantric practice are wildly attractive to the kind of woman who is ready to share with you on these levels.

What do you think might happen if you take this two-pronged approach to dating? First, to discover and cultivate the priceless value of your age. Second, to see women through that same lens?

Dakini Leah

Do you have a question about sex, Tantra, or relationships? Send it to Dakini Leah at LivingInTantra@gmail.com