CONTRACEPTIVE CARE OF THE OLDER PATIENT – CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS (GETTING OLDER)
It is not just the relationship between the couple that is changing, but that with other members of the family as well. Parents are getting older and may need more support leading to great pressure on the middle generation. The ‘what about me?’ syndrome has been described (Lincoln, 1992), where the woman feels that everyone is making demands on her and she has no time or cherishment for herself. It is worth remembering that grief following the death of a parent can affect sexuality and thus contraceptive use. For some people, sexual closeness can be a comfort when they are mourning, but for others it is just too painful to open out to the depth of feeling that sexual abandonment implies.
As children grow up they develop sexual lives of their own and their parents may find that their own sexual lives are affected. Just as some women cannot enjoy themselves sexually if they know their mother is sexually unhappy, so some mothers are inhibited from continuing to be sexual if their children are unhappy or if their sexual lives are in trouble.
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