Sex and intimacy in later life: a survey of the terrain

Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 suggests a recognition of finality, mortality and the changes that ageing brings, with a plea for love (and respect?) from those who are younger, through the certain knowledge that they will miss those who are ageing when they pass, and will experience ageing and its vicissitudes themselves. This is ageing as natural cycle and self-aware progression through the life course. It appeals to naturalized and normalized contours of the process of ageing, which are 'coloured in' by cultural representations of how we are seen to age. Older people should 'grow old gracefully', both experience and express that 'slow journey into the twilight of their lives'.