性行为的发展

独居年长女人和男人会面临着必须到别的地方得到身体亲昵接触和亲切关系的问题。遗憾地是，现代文明没有提供在年老时婚姻之外得到性满足的脚本。年过半百的单身或寡居者找不到被社会认可的性欲关系的模式，因而被迫自己拿出解决问题的方案。例如，一些年长夫妻处于分居状态，仅仅相互频繁地去探望或一起定期休假。有一些人也建立一个共有的家庭，但是为了保有全部的养老金，只是住在一起而不结婚。还有一些人与其他处于相同情形的女人和男人设法以某种形式共同生活。最近以来，许多“老年疗养处所（senior residences）”和疗养院也开始容忍甚至鼓励居所内的老人发展性关系。

然而，这些和其它类似的性接触体验仍发生在道德的“灰色地带”，并未获得社会完全认可。实在有太多这样的年长者，在其老年未有任何的身体接触和性亲昵（sexual tenderness）就这么辞别尘世。对于我们社会来说，仍旧有需要投入更大的精力去做的工作，那就是为了老人的性需要创作出多种文化脚本。在发达国家，从未结婚的“单身”的数量正在增加。与此同时，人的寿命通常在延长，因而老年人的性问题甚至在将来可能变得更为急迫。下面的图表举例说明美国1970-1994年的这种发展趋势，除了这种总体的趋势会持续发展以外，我们也能够在其它许多国家观察到类似的现象。

                 按年龄与性别统计1970年与1994年独居成人的百分比(左：女性；右：男性)               Percent of Adults Living Alone by Age and Sex (left: female; right: male) 1970 and 1994 资料来源：美国人口调查办公署(Source:  U.S. Census Bureau)                               

Stages of Development: Old Age

Erotic Behavior 2

Older women and men who live alone face the challenge of having to find physical closeness and tenderness elsewhere. Unfortunately, our modern culture offers no script except marriage for finding sexual fulfillment in old age. Elderly persons who are single or widowed find no socially approved model for erotic relationships and thus are forced to come up with their own solutions. For example, some older couples live separately, but visit each other frequently or take regular vacations together. Some also establish a common household, but stay unmarried in order to keep their full pensions. Still others find some form of communal living arrangement with other women and men in the same situation. Lately, many “senior residences” and nursing homes have also begun to tolerate and even encourage sexual relationships among their residents.
Nevertheless, these and similar experiments are still taking place in a moral “gray area”  and lack full social recognition. All too many of the elderly are left without any physical closeness and sexual tenderness in their old age. It remains a major task for our society to create cultural scripts that accommodate the erotic needs of the old. The number of “singles” who were never married is increasing in the developed world, and so is the number of formerly married women and men who live alone. At the same time, people generally live longer, and thus the problem is likely to become even more urgent in the future. The following chart illustrates the development in the USA from 1970 -1994, but the overall trend continues and can be observed in many other countries.