I know this is the Healthy Sex support group, and impotence and senior dating have their own groups, but I wish I'd known more about this before I was blindsided by it with my partner. It's been a massive struggle for both of us. I hope that sharing this might be some use. If you're a 'pass the sick bucket' type at the idea of over 50s having sex you might want to step away now.

I was 52 and my partner was 62 when we met. I was very naive about impotence before I met him. I thought it was something that happened to a few, very old men, at least aged 80 or older. The wheelchair-bound husband in Lady Chatterlys Lover was impotent so his wife was unfaithful with the young gardener. I saw articles about 90 year olds becoming fathers. A middle aged friend's father was 75 and in sitting a wheelchair when she was conceived with his much younger girlfriend. My own father told me when he was about 70 that he 'could keep going for much longer now' and that my mum 'didn't seem to mind'! All I'd heard was that it could take older men a bit longer before they could do it for a second time! Even now when I know so much more I'm confused by statistics that say '40% of men over 40', '50% of men over 60', '60% over 75' when in real life some men say that 'lots of over 70s can still get it up' and others say 'in his 60s he's lucky he can get it up at all'.

Aged 63 my partner's words to me were 'I sometimes have a bit of a problem, but that's normal for men my age' and in my innocence I smilingly said it's ok, we can do other things. I had no concept of what that would mean and the toll it takes on you both when you both really do want real sex and it goes soft AGAIN, or he gets it in and it goes soft within 30 seconds, no orgasm involved.

People have strange concepts regarding Viagra too! They think it actually gives men the desire even if they aren't interested. They think that it gives them a continuous erection for hours and hours even when they aren't having any sexual contact. You see jokes on TV of men walking round with a hardon at work because their mates spiked their coffee. It doesn't do that, it doesn't work on its own, the men still need some stimulation to get hard, and they'll still go soft after sex or if the stimulation stops. All Viagra does is make the erection last while sex or stimulation is happening by stopping the blood leaving the penis. And even that won't work if the man doesn't want sex.

I wish we were all more open and better informed about impotence and its treatment, and that it didn't have this stigma attached to it. Then men wouldnt feel like failures or be too embarrassed to get it checked out by the doctor, as so often there is an undiagnosed medical reason causing it. Then women fresh back in the dating pool in their 50s, anticipating the same 'new relationship' sex we'd had in the past, wouldn't be quite so blindsided by things having changed so much. Lots of older women are more interested in the friendship side of relationships, but lots of women do still like sex, especially as part of a new relationship. My experience of younger men was that they were ever ready and unstoppable, and that made me feel attractive and sexy. I wasn't prepared at all for how old and frumpy I would feel just because a man didn't get an erection with me. Too much pressure on the man, but deep ingrained attitudes.

My girlfriends are a many-and-varied mixture, some married 30 years, some single and dating, some single and not dating, some living with partners and some like me in a live-out relationship, but we're all in our 50s and early 60s. When this subject comes up as it often does (no, chaps, contrary to popular belief, women do still think and talk about sex a lot), we say how unprepared some of us were for the changes. It's the friends in the long term marriages who seem to cope better, maybe because familiarity leads to boredom and because it's been a more gradual process. One of my 59 year old single friends still says it's all a matter of the woman's technique, and that no man would need Viagra with her! But she's been on her own for 10 years!

We all need to be more prepared for what nature might throw at us, I know I wish I had been