Desire Doesn't Expire
We didn't dry up. We woke up.
The other night, a friend, well past the age we’re all supposed to quietly fade into invisibility, shared on one of our usual one-hour phone calls that she’s in a phone sex relationship. Not a desperate substitute or a punchline, but more like a genuine thrill that has her laughing more, wanting more, and feeling more alive.
After the initial shock wore off, something shifted in the conversation. I’d stumbled into a version of her life that no one ever shows, the one that exists beyond updates about aging parents, struggling kids, and whatever our doctors want us to worry about next. I wanted every single detail. She was more than happy to oblige.
And then I realized this wasn’t just a moment between the two of us. It was the exception to a rule we’ve accepted: that somewhere between menopause and whatever comes next, a switch flips. The heat goes out, the wanting disappears. We “dry up” so the world doesn’t have to deal with the reality of older women who still crave, still flirt, still ache for connection and pleasure.
Except we don’t.
What actually dries up is the performance and pretending. We’ve lost our tolerance for bad sex, lazy partners, and the exhausting need to be desirable on someone else’s terms. What’s left is something more interesting: women who know exactly what they want and aren’t shy about finding it, even when it looks nothing like it did at twenty-five. My friend isn’t an outlier. She’s just saying the part so many of us hesitate to say out loud.
We’re not dead yet.
The women I know are not fading. They’re radiant, but not in the way we were taught to define it at twenty. It's the kind that only shows up after you've stopped performing for an audience, the kind that’s impossible to manufacture and impossible to fake. We wear the clothes we like, keep our hair long, or cropped, or wild, and we sleep naked, in silk, or in old ripped up concert t-shirts that feel like an act of defiance.
Desire hasn’t left but it’s changed shape. It’s no longer just about a cute face or the quick hit of attention from someone who may or may not call. As we get older, we’re drawn to something more specific, like a conversation that actually goes somewhere, laughter that doesn’t feel rehearsed, the kind of intimacy that shows up in small and unexpected ways. A hot cup of coffee brought to us in bed. A full tank of gas because someone didn’t want us to be stranded. Dinner prepared, and yes, the cleanup too.
And before anyone misreads that as us hanging up our lingerie: we still want sex. Let's just say we've all been Meg Ryan’s character Sally Albright in that diner scene, faking it so convincingly that we got a standing ovation. We’re done ordering off that menu.
The other thing that nobody tells you about getting older is that you stop accepting what you once mistook for love. We know the difference now. We want to be loved, but not as a project or as something to be maintained. We want to be adored in the full complexity of who we are now and not a younger version of ourselves.
A gay male friend once said to me, coming back from the gym: “If I’m going to be old, I’m going to be hot.” I told him I was making that my motto and I meant it. The funny thing is, that was a decade ago. Age is relative. The motto is not.
After my second marriage ended, I made a list. Not the kind you make at twenty when you’re still negotiating with fantasy, but a real list of the things I was no longer willing to talk myself out of.
There were plenty of men to date. Men with money who thought that was enough, and men that flattered me so extravagantly it started to feel like a sales pitch. I went on a few dates and then went home to my gorgeous apartment in Santa Monica and opened a bottle of prosecco. I went through my list and crossed them out. Next.
I even considered dating a woman. I’d met her many years before and saw her occasionally, always in the company of others. She oozed passion in a way that didn’t ask for attention but was as natural as her wild blonde curls and tan skin that looked like she’d spent half her life in the sunshine. I’ve never kissed a girl, not in the Katy Perry sense, not in any sense for that matter, but I would have kissed her. Something about her made the idea feel like a possibility. In all my years of dating men, I had never met someone who carried that kind of passion and confidence so effortlessly.
I always knew what I wanted. She just made me think that maybe it was time to expand where I looked for it. But she was gay, and taken. What she clarified was that I wasn’t just looking for a man but instead looking for that quality of passion, that kind of aliveness. If I couldn’t find it, I wouldn’t be interested. Settling has consequences.
This is something I knew too well. So I waited, and along came a doctor. He was the list.
Must be romantic ✓
Must love cats ✓
Must love LA and NY ✓
Must love Italian food and culture ✓
Good in bed ✓
Must believe that mad, passionate love doesn’t only exist in movies ✓
As it turned out, he understood settling too. He’d stayed married for too long to someone who was, by his own description, the opposite of everything he wanted but who offered something that felt safe, predictable, and manageable. For a man like him, he told me, was a death sentence. He divorced, and then dated the wrong people, all versions of what he said he didn’t want but couldn’t break the pattern. He eventually wrote a list.
His list, after all those years and costly detours, contained exactly two words.
Sophia Loren ✓
I mean. Hello.
Before he came along, between the list and the imagined kiss and the forgettable dates, I lit candles in my own bedroom just because I wanted to. I poured a glass of wine for myself, ate mortadella and good cheese for dinner, and put on music to create an intimacy that didn’t require a partner. I never stopped believing in love. I just refused to abandon myself while waiting for it.
Women are no longer interested in fake romance or recycled excuses. We’ve been around long enough to know the difference between a man who desires us and a man who just needs a warm body next to him, who shows up dazzling and disappears into the couch.
What used to sound like a consolation prize turns out to be its own kind of revelation: we don't need a man. We are perfectly happy alone. Alone is better than dragging around dead weight we have no interest in carrying. We spent too many years being someone’s emotional support animal and we have checked that bag for the last time.
This is not meant to sound like a statement of bitterness, but more like a genuine exhale. The candles I lit in my own bedroom, the glass of wine poured for no one but me, the music that created an atmosphere just because I wanted one, that was living. Desiring yourself, your own company, your own pleasure, your own presence in a room you've made beautiful for the simple reason that you're in it is its own kind of romance. This might be the most honest one because nobody disappoints you, and nobody can love you out of the contentment that comes from finally choosing yourself.
And then there’s this: I still can’t believe I ever thought that being told I look good for my age was a compliment. I look good. Period. The “for my age” is not a bonus qualifier, it’s a leash. It serves as a little reminder to stay grateful and to stay in my lane. I have no intention of ever staying in any lane. I never learned to parallel park and I’m not starting now.
And if a man can’t do the job, let’s just say there are plenty of women who can, and will. Maybe that’s why so many of us are changing lanes these days. Once you realize you’ve been trying to parallel park in a space that was never big enough for you, driving in a whole new direction starts to look appealing.
We are in our prime, the kind of prime that doesn’t show up at twenty-five because at twenty-five you’re still apologizing for being yourself, whoever that is. This prime is built on the wreckage of every compromise we made and every time we smiled through something that deserved a hard no.
We didn’t dry up, we woke up, and the men who can handle that, the ones who find it thrilling instead of threatening, are having the time of their lives.
As for the others…who cares.