There was an old Woody Allen sketch (I forget the movie) that went like this: Woody's got marital problems, and the psychoanalyst asks him how often he has sex. "Hardly ever. Only three times a week."
The scene switches to Woody's movie wife. Her psychoanalyst asks her how often she has sex. "Alllll the time," she says. "Three times a week."
That scene came to mind when reading statistics from an AARP study, "Retired Spouses," showing that retirees have sex less often than before they were retired. Among the many, many findings in the study (yes, we confess, we're focusing on the most salacious) is that 22 percent of retirees report having sex less often.
That's hardly a surprise. Retired people tend to be older than working people. The older you are, the less likely you are to have sex. End of story. But here's the titillating part: 25 percent of men say they have less sex while only 19 percent of women say they have less.
What does that tell you? Either six percent of the women are getting some action on the side with younger, non-retired men (We'll let you draw your own conclusions how likely that is) or there's a major difference in perceptions. Here's our guess (based on five or so decades of being male): Men are more likely to notice a fall-off in sexual activity. They're also more likely to brood about it.
If you don't believe us, just ask Woody Allen's psychoanalyst.
