“When Joan Price joined our interview from her home office in Northern California, the 82-year-old had bottles of lube lined up in the background. I found this delightful, and totally on brand: Joan has worked for decades as a senior sex educator.
Joan is invigorated by her work, and her enthusiasm is palpable. She speaks glowingly about past lovers and boyfriends and friends with benefits, sings the praises of masturbation and excitedly explains which sex toys are the best for aging bodies.
But there was a time when Joan completely lost her connection to her desire. After her husband died, she found that her grief made her a stranger to her own body. She knew that she needed to find her way back to her sexuality. So she began the work of rediscovering and redefining what it meant to feel good after loss.
Joan ended up writing a book about everything she learned, called “Sex After Grief: Navigating Your Sexuality After Losing Your Beloved.” Over the course of our conversation, she lays out exactly how she found her way back: to orgasms, to sex and, eventually, to romance. She shares advice for people who have lost someone and are looking to experience physical connection again, but don’t know where to start. And she tells me about the conversation every couple, regardless of age, should have right now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Anna Martin: Joan, you are a senior sex educator. What kinds of questions do you get from seniors about sex?
Joan Price: Very often, it’s under the umbrella of, I always used to reach orgasm this way, but now I can’t even do this way. It’s, this is what I like the best, and now my joints won’t let me even do that again. It’s never just about sex, but it is about sex. And so often doctors and even therapists will avoid the subject of sex if it is an aging person.
Martin: What do you think they’re scared of? Like why is sex a topic to stay away from when someone gets older?
Price: Oh boy, it’s what I call the ick factor, which is, “Ew, wrinkly people having sex. That’s disgusting. Who’d want you anyway?” I don’t personally get that anymore because I have a real response to that, which is, “At what age do you plan to retire your genitals?” Old people are not the other; they are you, if you’re lucky enough not to die first. If your sexuality is valuable to you now, why do you think there’s this arbitrary date when, OK, I don’t care about that anymore?
Martin: I want to let that sink in: “Old people are not the other. They’re you.”
Price: If you’re lucky.
Martin: I mean talking to you, it’s clear that you are affirmed in your sexuality and that you want to help people get in touch with their bodies. Have you always been a sex-positive person?
Price: I went through a lot of phases in my life. I was in monogamous relationships often until I was in my late 30s, early 40s, and then I had had a very serious relationship dump me. And I felt I just needed to go wild for a while, and I kind of liked it.
Martin: What did going wild look like to you?
Price: Going wild looked like: I had three friends with benefits at the same time. I was dating two cousins who lived together. And one-time, I had a date with one and then the other a little later, never both at the same time. And one night I had just had a lovely interlude with one, and then I watched him leave out the window. And he left my house and went to the parking lot where his cousin had just arrived. They shook hands, Anna! And then the second one came in. That was kind of the high point of my wild child in my early 40s.
Martin: What did you learn about yourself in this phase of experimentation?
Price: I learned that every man is different in what he gives, what he wants, what he likes, how he sounds, his utterances. It was almost like a research study. And what I learned was I can adapt to these different styles. I also learned what I didn’t want.
Martin: We spoke about readers writing in and saying things like, “Hey, things don’t work the way they used to anymore.” Did you have your own moment as you were getting older of realizing things were looking or feeling or working differently?
Price: What happened was a bit later, it was probably in my late 40s, when I was going through perimenopause and then menopause. And I realized that I had become invisible as a sexual being. It was really devastating, because I thought, “I’m the best I’ve ever been, in terms of self-knowledge, in terms of what I have to give, in terms of what I’ve lived, what I understand, what I welcome, what I offer.” And now, why are the very men that I’m interested in just looking over my head when they talk to me? Now that’s easy to do, because I’m only 4’10,” but that wasn’t the reason! They’re hard-wired to seek fertility. They don’t know it. They don’t intentionally do it, but they are, and that was pretty devastating. And I had to kind of pull back and say, “Well, what do I do with this?”
Martin: I think this is probably a good time to ask you about meeting Robert.
Price: Oh, yes. Thank you, that’s what I love to talk about. I met Robert at age 57 after a long period of being unpartnered. I was teaching my line-dance class, and this beautiful man walked in. He was, I learned later, 64-years-old, remarkably fit, remarkably handsome, with ocean blue eyes and snow white hair. And his shirt was open a few inches, and I could see the tufts of his white chest hair, and I wanted to pull open his shirt. I thought, “Oh my God, what’s happening to me?” I was so totally in lust that I kept losing my place in the dance I was teaching.
Martin: And what could you sense about his vibe?
Price: At the time, all I could sense was he was a very dedicated dancer, and his hips, his hips … I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was like there was a spotlight on him the whole evening. And I thought, “Oh, may he please come back!” Well, he did keep coming back, and he would take walks with me after class. I’d say, “I’d love to know you better. You feel like taking a walk after class tonight?” And we’d talk, but never very personally. He would tell me about the English gardens he’d seen. And I thought, “Well, OK, I don’t know, he could be gay. He might have a partner. He might not be attracted to me. He might not be aware of these lust arrows I’m sending him.” And flash-forward to nine months, after one of our walks, I came home and I emailed my best email of all time: “Robert, I’m really enjoying getting to know you. I love you as a dancer. I love you as an emerging friend. And I’ve got to tell you, I can’t help imagining what it would be like to dance with you without footwork.”
Martin: So let’s just be clear, for those who need to decode it: You’re saying, basically, I can’t stop thinking about wanting to sleep with you.
Price: Yes.
Martin: And?
Price: He responded, “Thank you, I’m flattered. I am attracted to you, too.” Patter, patter, patter goes my heart. He said, “But I see you as my dance teacher. Those are lines I never thought I’d cross. And can we just get to know each other a little better first? I don’t rush into sex quickly.” And I am a person whose motto is: “The only problem with instant gratification is it takes too long.” So I said, “Of course.” This man is worth whatever it takes. And then, after an hour or two, I got another email: “I’ve changed my mind. Maybe it’s time for these old parts.” And we made a date for two days later to go for another walk. And after that walk, we sat at a park bench and we kissed and kissed.
Martin: How was the kiss?
Price: Oh, it was glorious. I was dizzy with exhilaration. From this kiss, I cannot stop kissing this man forever. And two days after that, we had our first sex date at his house.
Martin: Did anything surprise you about that sexual connection? Were there things you liked as a 57-year-old that you wouldn’t have liked when you were younger?
Price: Oh, yes, every part of it was a discovery. From finally getting to see the chest hair and finally getting to touch it. It still remains one of my favorite things in our whole relationship. And then little by little, discovering how each other’s bodies worked. There was no goal. There was no rush to the finish. We didn’t know if there’d be a finish or what it would look like. It was just, “Wow, this feels good. Does this feel good?”
One of the things that I discovered about myself being 57 instead of 42 is that my body responded so much more slowly. My brain was tingling. It was sending fireworks, but my body was really slow to catch up. And finally at one point I realized, I’m embarrassed about this and it’s delaying me even more. And so I said, “Robert, I’m fretting that you are getting tired or bored or this is just taking too long.” And he said, “Oh, I don’t care if it takes three weeks. As long as I can take breaks to change positions and get something to eat.”
Martin: It sounds as though you were so in love with each other, and so sexually in touch with each other. When you were locked into an intimate moment with Robert, what was going through your mind?
Price: Everything in me was saying, “This is where I’m meant to be. This is what I’m meant to be doing. This is the person’s eyes I’m meant to be gazing into.”
Martin: How special to feel that. I know from your book, you and Robert got married, and then two years after you got married, Robert passed. That must have been incredibly difficult.
Price: It was the hardest thing that has ever happened to me. He had been diagnosed with cancer, and it was under control for a time, and then it wasn’t. And we got married knowing that we had limited time together, and it was the right thing to do because our relationship deepened after that.
Martin: Can you bring me into that time?
Price: The night he died, we knew it was imminent. We had a caregiver in the other room so that I could go in and out, and Robert started making throaty noises. And the caregiver said, “It’s almost time. If you have something to say to him, say it now.” So I stood and held his hand and told him everything, probably way too much. There were times he’d been in and out of consciousness, and he’d come out of it saying, “Boy, you talk a lot.” I mean, it was really sweet, though. And so that night I told him all I could think of. And then when I realized he’d stopped breathing, we called hospice and they said, “You can have some time with him if you need it.” And I said, “I do.” And I got in bed with Robert’s dead body. And I put my hand on the chest hair that I loved so much. And then finally, it was time to take him away.
And I went into an absolute profound depression where I could barely function. I would cry all day and then pick myself together an hour before I had to go to line dancing and teach the class, because that’s where he was. He was on the dance floor. And I finally realized one day I could not stop crying in time to teach the class. And I called my H.M.O. and I said, “I can’t stop crying.” And they said, “Are you suicidal?” And I said, “Oh no.” “Will you hurt yourself?” “No.” And they gave me an appointment with a psychiatrist who prescribed an antidepressant. That was very helpful. I still could barely do basic functions.
Martin: How did your body feel as you were grieving?
Price: Numb. It shut down. I’m a sex educator, and I know how much of a release sex can be or an orgasm can be. I didn’t need another person for that. I was aware of how it’s a stress reliever, how it will kind of ground you, how it’ll help sleep, and I just thought, “No, it wouldn’t work.”
Martin: That numbness, did it start to fade?
Price: It didn’t start to fade until my third grief counselor. I said to her, “I know I should bring back solo sex into my life. I know it would help me.”
Martin: You hadn’t been masturbating at all?
Price: I had not. And I told her, “I just feel so numb. I don’t even know if it would work.” And she said, “If you have a vibrator, it’ll work.” And I thought, “I tell people that all the time!” And she was right, that did work. And then I started a regular practice and got myself back into having regular orgasms. It made me cry, because I couldn’t help but picture it was Robert who was pleasuring me. But I would just keep going with that. Like, here he is, you can enjoy him again. You can enjoy him any time.
Martin: You’re existing in this space where everything hurts, and then to reintroduce pleasure into that space must be quite complicated. Did you feel guilty for feeling pleasure?
Price: I was relieved! I said, “Oh, my body isn’t dead!” And, in fact, I had this dream that I was walking with a man that I didn’t recognize. He was walking behind me and holding me, and I could feel his erection through his clothes behind me. And I started getting aroused. And then I woke up and I sat up and said, “I’m alive!”
Martin: It was like your body was awake.
Price: My body was awake, and it was as if there was a life force that I tapped into, that I’d tamped down before. I’d said, “No, I don’t want to hear from you. I’m too busy being devastated. Don’t even try.” And I realized that we have this inner resilience that will emerge.
Martin: You know, masturbation is one thing, but being ready for sex with someone else, is a totally different thing. How did you begin to navigate that?
Price: Very slowly, with a lot of starts and stops. What I realized along this process, which took years, is that there is a timeline for getting back into sex. But no one knows what it is, and it’s different for everyone. And this is one of the main things I teach in “Sex After Grief,” don’t let anyone tell you that you should be dating by now. Don’t let everyone tell you it’s too soon to date. I mean, we get all these horrible messages that clamp us down. Only you can tell when you’re ready.
And when you think you’re already, maybe you are and maybe you’re not. So when you think you’re ready, try something tentative and check in with yourself. What I realized is that it isn’t just going from no sex to everything goes, it’s step by step.
First, I tried just having first dates with people. Nah, nothing there. I said, “Well, maybe I better just choose widowers because then I will get someone who really understands.” And that turned out to be true, however, being widowed was the only thing we had in common. And so I said, “Well, you know, I wouldn’t be interested in this person had we not had this in common, so we can rule that out.” And then I tried having sex with an old friend. I thought, “This is the way I’m gonna get back into sex. This’ll work.” And so I showed up at the hotel, and we talked a lot, and we got into bed, and he started gently caressing me, not rushing anything, and I just froze. This is not Robert’s body. This is not Robert’s hands. I told him, “I’m sorry, I can’t go through with it. I just can’t do it.” I had prepared for this. I chose my underwear with care. And I just can’t go through with it. And he said the best thing he could have, “Tell me about Robert.”
Martin: Wow, I really love that response from this partner: Tell me about this person that you love so much.
Price: It was just what I needed. And I realize how self-indulgent all these stories are, but it’s what we can do when we’re in really bad grief. Especially in the beginning, before we’ve figured out a process for getting to the next step.
Martin: At this point, you are experimenting with different partners. You’ve gotten back into solo pleasuring. But you’re not looking for another partner. What happens next?
Price: Almost nine years ago, a person appeared on OkCupid responding to my profile. His name is Mac, and he was everything I would have been looking for if I’d been looking for someone. He was smart. He was open. He was communicative. He was accomplished. He had his own life that was rich, and he also was a widower. He had lost his wife recently after long caregiving while she was ill, and he needed to find out how to live again. And he’d written a really good profile. He was a retired anthropology professor. He was fit, a hiker. He wasn’t a dancer, and he didn’t have chest hair, but otherwise, he was kind of perfect. And so I said, “Well, do you want to go for a walk?” And he said, “Yeah, I love to walk.” And so we walked, and we talked for well over an hour, getting more and more excited about each other with every revelation, and how easy it was to talk to each other honestly. He could talk about Marjorie. I could talk about Robert.
Martin: Marjorie is his wife who passed?
Price: Yes, and yet we didn’t have to talk about those things all the time. He thought my work was fascinating, and so many men were intimidated by it. And then, we went home, and we started emailing again immediately. I don’t know how many emails we exchanged over and over. In one email, I said, “Are there any questions you haven’t asked that are really important to you?” And he said, “Yes. Can you imagine having sex with me?” And I replied: “I’m imagining it now.”
Martin: You are the queen of sexy emails.
Price: Don’t ask me to text. I need my keyboard.
Martin: Can you tell me about the process of being intimate with Mac? What was that like? I mean, you’re both widows. I imagine that adds a dimension. Tell me about that.
Price: We made a date to meet at his house and pretty quickly I said, “Can I see your bedroom?” I had brought lube. I had bought condoms. I was ready. And he was so eager after a very long celibacy that it just happened. The bodies took over, and we didn’t really have to negotiate anything at that point. Later, we thought, “OK, now there are some things I want you to understand about how my body works, and I want to understand more about yours.” And so we kind of stepped back and went into the exploration of what works best for us now. And then modified what good sex is for us right now. And we’ve continued to do that, and it’s really helped us.
One of the things I learned along the way is we don’t need to have the goal of penetrative sex for it to be real sex or good sex. Let’s see what we can do now, given the buffet of sexual choices that will arouse us, bring us to orgasm, keep our old bodies comfortable and work. Mac had never experienced a sex toy other than a very old magic wand that Marjorie used solo, not with him. And I’ve introduced him to dozens of sex toys. We bring it into our sex play. He enjoys the penis sex toys as much as I enjoy the clitoris sex toys.
We really believe in keeping sex fun with surprises and games, and one is that we each have a sex basket. And it’s filled with the lube each of us needs, a wash-up cloth, the sex toy we want to incorporate and anything else that might be fun, a blindfold or something. I have my own room at his house for when I stay over, which I highly recommend. He will come into my room and he will look at the basket and he’ll see what’s in it and he’ll know what I want. I have a bell there, too, and the bell is used to summon him when I’m ready. And so when I am freshly showered and get everything settled and phones are off, I’ll ring the bell. He does not come in until I ring the bell.
Martin: Everything you’re saying is adding a layer of erotic on top of the erotic. What a fun series of practices and rituals you have in place to keep it exciting. It sounds thrilling.
Price: I think maybe all of these things, we had to figure out being old and having body parts that were wonky or hurting, but they’re applicable to any age relationship. You know, if young people started doing this now, they’d have a whole lot more fun and less stress and fear when their bodies started aging.
Martin: I want to return to the idea that both you and Mac have lost people, Robert and Marjorie. Invoking them in these spaces, how do you go about that? What’s your insight into that part of sex after grief?
Price: There is nothing off limits about Marjorie and Robert. And very often we’ll ask each other questions or something will remind one of us of a story, and I’ll tell the story and it’s so welcome. In a way, I joke that there are four of us in this relationship, and it’s just so open. So many people who don’t understand the grief process think you have to rid your house of everything that reminds you of your previous relationship and so on. And it isn’t that at all. We can love two people at the same time, the person we lost and the person we have. What I came to understand through my process is that loving someone that deeply doesn’t close your heart. It expands it so that you can bring in someone new.
Martin: If someone has lost someone and wants to connect with their sexuality again, what are some first steps you recommend they take?
Price: Decide exactly what it is you need at this moment in your life. It’s not what you needed before you lost your person. It’s not what you’ll need from now on. It’s right now. What does your body need? What do your emotions need? And what don’t you want yet? And then go looking for that. And explain to a potential partner, “I am very vulnerable. This is my first time, and I honestly don’t know how much I’ll be able to do. So I want us to agree that we’ll just maybe hold each other and kiss for a while and see how that feels, and maybe we’ll do some exploratory touching next. We’ll see how that feels, and then we’ll stop for today to see how that feels later. And if this is good with you, I want to go on this journey with you. If it’s not, just tell me now, no hard feelings. I know this is not what you signed on for.”
Martin: Even before you do lose your partner, you recommend in your book some steps people can take to make this sort of transition easier. Can you talk about what you recommend folks do?
Price: Well, one thing I recommend that everyone do, whether your partner is ill, on the verge of death, or perfectly healthy at the moment, is to sit down and have this really important conversation. And first, let me tell you why: So many grievers are consumed with guilt when they start thinking of inviting another person into themselves. They feel, “I’m betraying my husband. I promised fidelity. It would be a betrayal of everything we stand for.” And what I want to have everybody do with a partner is to say, “I love you, and I want you to know this. If I predecease you, or I am unable to be a complete partner to you, I want you, please, to feel you can seek joy and comfort with someone new.” And to get that message back from your partner. So many people don’t. Even when someone is close to death, the partner will want to ward it off. And say, “No, don’t talk about that.” No, talk about it. This is the chance you have. And if you do it before you need it, you’ll have it.
Martin: I mean, it makes so much sense to have this conversation, and yet I understand why that conversation would be so hard. Because the death of the person we’re the closest to is not something we want to think about, let alone speak about in specific terms. But it does seem incredibly important as an act of love to remove that guilt.
Price: Yes.
Martin: Can I ask you, have you and Mac had this conversation?
Price: Oh, absolutely. And we continue to revisit it, even though it has gotten to the point of “Yeah, I know. I know.” But we just keep saying it because we just want to confirm it’s still true. We understand this, and we want this.
Martin: If I asked you for one thing that you want people to know and remember about sex and grief, what would that thing be?
Price: Get to know yourself first, the self you are now without your partner. Don’t be judgmental. Don’t think, “Oh no, I’d never do that.” It’s a time to be selfish. And it’s not selfish, it’s self-protective. There is a new you here and you don’t even know who that is until you take the time and the patience and the compassion to connect and learn and take that forward. As I learned from one grief counselor, losing your beloved isn’t a sign that you will be empty and filled with loss for the rest of your life. Losing your beloved can mean that you learned how to love fully, and you take that with you on your path.” [1]
1. A Widow’s Guide to Sex: modern love. Martin, Anna. New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Mar 18, 2026.
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