When it comes to taking a first date from a classy restaurant to an all-star
romp, it turns out mother might actually know best.
More than a third (37 per cent) of 1,000 people ages 50 to 65 surveyed
recently by boomer lifestyle site wanobe.com and PARSHIP.com said they would be
willing to have sex on a first date.
That’s double the number (18 per cent) of under-40 singles willing to
strip down and let loose on a first encounter.
Surprised? I was.
But Agneta Owen of lavalifePRIME’s Boomer Lifestyle website (www.prime.lavalife.com)
and fellow boomer says people in their 50s and 60s are comfortable and confident
about sex and the life they lead. “They know who they are at this point in their
lives,” she says. “They don’t care what other people think. They feel so
comfortable in their own skin that it’s about ‘What I think is right for me,’
rather than ‘What other people think about me.’”
Add to that years of experience both between the sheets and out and the
results start to add up.
Boomers also have the advantage of growing up in a time very different to
the preceding generation, points out Lisa Daily, dating coach and author of Stop
Getting Dumped. “People who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s had things like the
invention of birth control pills that really made unattached sex very desirable.
Whereas Generation X (people in their 30s and 40s), we grew up with the terror
of all the things that could happen if you were not more chaste,” she says,
referring to AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. “Instead of sex
being something that you deserve to have, for Generation X it was something you
had to be careful of.”
The survey suggests that’s not so for our parents’ generation. But before
you go thinking your mom is a tramp, do know she expects something more, like a
good dinner first. According to the survey, of the boomer women willing to sleep
with someone on the first date, 76 per cent expected their date to take them for
dinner … and pick up the tab.
And men, I don’t think we’re talking McDonald’s drive-through.
“For women, respect is a really big factor (when it comes to sex),” says
Daily. “So the dinner thing is symbolic. It shows they’re not just a booty
call.”
One area boomers still haven’t gotten it right in the bedroom is when it
comes to sexual safety. Turns out most boomers forgo the use of condoms.
“When the sexual revolution came around, for boomers and people older
than boomers, pregnancy was the worst thing that could happen to them,” says
Daily.
