Living: the ultimate team sport

The attached New York Times article by Pam Belluck addresses the ambiguous loss experienced by men and women whose spouses are still alive, but not fully there.  More specifically, it addresses the need for intimacy that still exists for the spouse without cognitive decline, and that can also exist for the spouse with the decline.

It is a well-known fact that advancing age doesn’t mean the end of desire for sexual intimacy.  Whether in the privacy of ones home or in a long-term care housing situation, sex is alive and well.  Even people with varying degrees of dementia maintain the desire for intimacy.  What the above NY Times article so carefully exposes, however, is that sometimes the act of consent for such intimacy can be a subjective one when viewed by a third party.