My Menopause Blog: Sex

Please consider this post the racy weekend edition.

I'm reading Eleven Minutes, by Paulo Coelho, author of one of my all time favourite books, The Alchemist.

Eleven Minutes is about "the sacred nature of sex within the context of love". Eleven minutes is also considered to be the average amount of time two people spend performing the act of sex.

This of course does not include foreplay, undressing and what not. That would be another five or six minutes worth of time spent for sure.

Maria, the main character in the story, a young woman turned prostitute, concludes after six months of working her trade, that the world evolves around something that only takes eleven minutes. Me thinks that 'the world' to Maria, equals 'men'.

More concisely, the world of men evolves around sex, the eleven minute act.

I put down the book and started wondering. It certainly seems to be the case that menopause triggers fear in our deeply rooted understanding of our own sexuality which definitely rotates around the act of having sex. So just as the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, menopause is connected to sex.

From what I gather and experience, menopause exposes our fears of loosing our sexual desire, our sexual ability, our partner, our identity, our attractiveness, our access to partners, our reproductive ability and our sexual energy. The fearing can consume us, motivate us to have risky cosmetic surgery designed to turn back the physical aging clock, take questionable drugs to stop menopause and behave in ways that do not support our soul or spirit.

From here, my thoughts led me to this question. If the world of men is consumed by sex, the eleven minute act, is there a way that we women as individuals, can take the remaining twenty three hour and forty nine minutes in the day and consume ourselves with something else?

Maybe pick something positive, wise and complimentary to the common good?

Sue Richards

Tags: My Menopause Blog, Sue Richards, sex, Paulo Coelho.