By Anna Martin | The New York Times | March 18, 2026
Adapted and condensed from the original
Joan Price, 82, is a senior sex educator with bottles of lube lined up behind her desk. But there was a time when she lost all connection to her own desire. After her husband Robert died, grief left her body numb. She knew she had to find her way back — and she did. Now she teaches others how.
On aging and sexuality
Price encounters the same anxieties again and again: joints that no longer cooperate, bodies that respond differently than they once did. Too often, she says, doctors and therapists avoid the subject entirely with older patients.
She calls this “the ick factor” — the cultural assumption that sex and aging don’t mix. Her response: “At what age do you plan to retire your genitals? Old people are not the other. They are you, if you’re lucky enough not to die first.”
Meeting Robert
After years of being single, Price met Robert at her line-dance class when she was 57. She was immediately transfixed — “so totally in lust” she kept losing her place in the dance she was teaching. Nine months of walks and talks later, she sent what she calls her best email of all time: she told him she couldn’t stop imagining what it would be like to dance with him “without footwork.” H
e came around quickly. They married, and Price describes their intimacy as a revelation — no rush, no goal, just discovery. “Everything in me was saying, this is where I’m meant to be.”
After loss
Robert was diagnosed with cancer. They married knowing time was limited. When he died, Price fell into profound depression. She could barely function. Her body, in her words, “shut down.” Even as a sex educator who knew the physical and emotional benefits of orgasm, she couldn’t bring herself to seek any pleasure. “I just thought, no, it wouldn’t work.”
Her third grief counselor helped change that. Price confessed she hadn’t masturbated since Robert’s death. Her counselor’s response was simple: “If you have a vibrator, it’ll work.” Price laughs at the memory. “I tell people that all the time. Hello, Joan.” It worked. Gradually, her body came back to life.
Finding Mac — and a new framework for intimacy
Nearly nine years ago, a widower named Mac appeared on OkCupid. He was everything she would have wanted, had she been looking. They talked about their lost spouses openly.
They built rituals — sex baskets, a vibrator charging station, a bell she rings when she’s ready. “These things we figured out being old,” she says, “but they’re applicable to any age.”
What she wants everyone to do now
Price urges all couples — regardless of age or health — to have one conversation: give each other permission to seek joy with someone new if one of them is gone. “Talk about it. This is the chance you have.” And for those who have lost someone and want to reconnect with their sexuality? Start slowly. Check in with yourself. “Loving someone that deeply doesn’t close your heart. It expands it so that you can bring in someone new.”
Joan Price’s book is Sex After Grief: Navigating Your Sexuality After Losing Your Beloved.
This piece is adapted from the Modern Love podcast, hosted by Anna Martin. Hear the complete interview with Joan Price wherever you listen to podcasts:
Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music • YouTube • iHeartRadio
© 2026 The New York Times Company
