Better with age

An old friend Tracey Cox made a flying visit to Sydney this week and I was so sorry to miss her.

She was in town for a brief 48 hours to promote her new book: Great Sex Starts at 50.

It’s about having the best sex in the second act of your life.

She notes on her website:

Fifty today is a completely different story than it was. We’re much better educated about sex than ever before. There are solutions to almost all age-related sex problems. Lots of us feel more confident sexually than ever before. Less worried about what others think, more interested in getting what we want.

Older sex isn’t inferior sex. It’s just different sex.

If you get your attitude right, it’s completely possible to continue having sex for a very, very (very) long time. Couples in their late 80s report having highly satisfying sex.

Stirring words!

I met Tracey when I started working at Cosmopolitan magazine in the early 90s. She was the deputy editor and I was the new, wide-eyed sub-editor.

Her specialty was writing the educational sex articles for Cosmo and she was so good at it that she’s now an internationally renowned sexpert and has even designed her own range of sex toys, not to mention also having a weekly column with the MailOnline, the world’s largest English speaking news website, and a weekly radio show, The Tracey Cox Show.

Meanwhile, my experiences at Cosmo as a Dyke On A Bike, judge at Miss Nude Australia and condom tester have merely become amusing anecdotes at dinner parties.

DD was very impressed when I told him Tracey was an old friend, as he’d seen her lots of times on the tellie when he was living in the UK.

When I moved to Singapore to become editor of Singapore CLEO and scandalise the locals with stories about “How to blow like a pro”, Tracy would stopover at my place on her way to Australia to visit her mum.

Once I moved back to Australia, we caught up occasionally after I had kids, but it became increasingly hard – her career was based in the UK and my ability to travel was curtailed by work, child-raising and a marriage break-up.

Our relationship has whittled down to the occasional email and following each other on Instagram.

She messaged me yesterday to apologise for not having time to catch up and to say how happy I look in my Insta photos. I replied that we both look very happy!

After decades of being single following her marriage break up, Tracy remarried a few years back –  she met the love of her life, Miles (above, on their wedding day), at age 50.

As Tracy noted to Femail: “We’re polar opposites in others (attitudes to spending and money, cautious vs risk taking, procrastinator vs why not do tomorrow’s stuff as well as today’s today. No prizes for guessing who is who.)

“But these somehow work to bring out the best in each other. I am nicer, kinder, calmer and more peaceful because of him.

“His family say the same about Miles: he’s a better person after meeting me.”

It feels a little familiar to my later-in-life love story, though I’m not entirely sure DD is a better person after meeting me, he just has more excitement in his life with all my dramas and drinks events.

Missing Tracey on her Sydney visit made me realise how much I miss her generally.

She’s such a warm, funny, smart woman.

Maybe I’ll get to London one day for a glass of Champagne with her.

I’d love that.

As for her new book, here’s another plug for it via an interview she gave to 7News:

“Use it or lose it – start having sex … Start talking about sex more when you’re older, not less.

“Be sure to initiate sex, because that can be a way to get your libido back – to be the person who’s asking for it rather than being the person who’s hassled for it.

“Just doing that one simple thing can revive your libido. If you think of yourself as a sexual person, as somebody who loves sex, you will have a high sex drive. It’s all in the brain, and it’s all about the attitude.”

Love your work, Tracey!

Song of the day: Berlin “Sex”