Love Endures

The Desire for Sexual Intimacy Can Survive After Mental Abilities Decline. How to Balance Patients' Needs With Ethics, Safety Concerns?

Daniel Reingold was fielding my questions about the love lives of seniors when he suddenly turned the tables.

"So, what would your mom do if she visited your dad and he was sitting on the couch holding hands with another woman?" asked Reingold, the executive vice president of the Hebrew Home for the Aged in New York's Riverdale area.

I paused, thinking about the scene. My dad lives in a small group home for elderly people with memory disorders. My mom lives five miles away and visits.

"Ah, yeah, right, good question," I muttered. "I guess I should ask her."

"Nah, cross that bridge if you come to it," suggested Reingold, contradicting a central message in the award-winning video he and colleagues produced last year. The video, "Freedom of Expression," and an accompanying training manual are making the rounds among leaders of nursing home and assisted-living facilities. Their message: Be prepared for intimacy among the elderly, regardless of living arrangements and mental or marital status.

I'd just as soon not cross that bridge for now, thank you. I doubt I'll ever need to, I told myself. Despite his memory disorder, my father remembers and loves his wife of 52 years and was never a skirt chaser. But he is a nice-looking, charming guy -- who happens to be living with four single gals. And, well . . .

So maybe I shouldn't have been too surprised when later that week one of the residents at his house greeted me by saying, "Hey, where's my boyfriend?!"

"You mean my dad?" I replied. She did.

"He's married!" I blurted. She seemed surprised and a little disappointed. Dad appears clueless about the whole matter.

The bridge I stumbled across was nothing compared with the bumpy road facing some families. Thanks to books like "The New Love and Sex After 60" (Ballantine, 2002), many of us 40-somethings accept the idea, however much it makes us squirm, that the elderly have intimate relationships. But seniors with dementia? Including those living away from home and their lifelong spouses? Jumping (so to speak) into bed with comparative strangers?