Mireille Silcoff recently wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine titled “Why Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex.” At a time of life when many women describe feeling less visible and less desirable, Silcoff said, her life instead “exploded in a detonation of sex confetti.”On this episode of Modern Love, Silcoff shares the juicy back story to her popular article, from her coming of age in Montreal to the surprising sexual resurgence she experienced after her divorce. Silcoff reflects on what it feels like to be a highly sexual person in her early 50s and tells us how being part of Gen X is central to her newfound freedom.For more Modern Love, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What warning does Anna give about this episode?
Hey, it's Anna. Just a quick warning, there's a bit more swearing in this episode than usual, so if you're listening with kids, maybe wait until later? Everywhere I look right now, there seem to be articles and books about women in middle age, with titles like Rediscovering Desire in Perimenopause or Middle Age is Sexy Now.
Plus, of course, you have the wild success of Miranda July's novel All Fours. Women in their 40s and 50s are being centered in the cultural conversation in a way they've never been before— But why? I mean, women entering middle age, going through menopause, that's not a new phenomenon. So what is it about this generation of women that's making this life transition seem so sexy?
And what can other generations learn from this one? Enter writer Mireille Silcoff.
There is something real happening here with women who are older, and it has to do with power. It doesn't have to do with being like a young person. It has to do with being like an older person.
Murray is a writer from Montreal, Canada, who recently wrote an article for the New York Times magazine called Why Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex. In it, she writes about getting divorced at 46 and going on to have more sex and better sex than she'd ever had before.
I remember, like, I don't know, it must have been around my 49th birthday or something like that. Walking around, I was having quite a bit of sex and just thinking, like, Everybody in the world is having sex.
And after talking to a bunch of her friends, Mireille realized she wasn't the only one. What the F is happening here? We're 50.
Like, why are we talking about analingus? How is this a thing?
Well, from The New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Each week, we talk about sex, love, friends, family, and all the complexity of human relationships. On today's episode, we get the juicy backstory to Mireille Silcoff's popular essay. She tells me about the unlikely sexual resurgence she experienced in her late 40s and why being a Gen X woman is central to her newfound freedom.
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Chapter 2: Why are women in middle age becoming a cultural focus?
And suddenly every guy around the turn of the millennium wanted a threesome. I don't think anybody really liked those threesomes, frankly. And I don't know. Listeners, write in. Yes, listeners, please write in. Back then, it felt like every single thing existed for male titillation.
Yeah.
And I was part of that. And yes, it was exhausting. I didn't know it at the time. I just thought sex is something you do all the time. It's tiring. Maybe you don't enjoy it that much, but you do it and you do it because you're a sexy woman. It's weird things like that.
I know from your article that you met your husband in your 20s and you two were together for 21 years. How did your relationship to sex evolve once you got married?
My story was very much sidetracked by the fact that at the age of 32, I became catastrophically ill with a really rare condition called spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid leak syndrome. I was very...
very very ill for many many many years uh at some points you know confined to a declined bed with my head lower than my chest i mean really really could not could not move and and in a lot of pain because when you have no spinal fluid you have no cushion around your brain which means that your brain is clanking against your skull all the time so it was not an easy way to live
Yet you figure things out. That toughness comes back. The toughness comes back. So within the marriage, we had two kids. I very much raised them from bed. My ex-husband did a lot of heavy lifting. There was always some help in the house, too. That was hard. being sick and a young mother and also displaced at one point to a new city. We had to move to Toronto. That was extremely hard.
So the overwhelm of just living in a long-committed relationship with two young children and my health being what it was did not create the best conditions to have the best And so there were many, many years, which were just years of survival, I would say.
Did you ever think that things might change for you? Like, did you fantasize about having a healthy body again?
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Chapter 3: What does Mireille Silcoff's article discuss?
They divorced and then they partnered up pretty quickly and started having sex and having conversations about sex. how their partner enjoys analingus or, you know, this stuff. And I'm like, how am I sitting around at 50 or whatever it was with a girlfriend who's the same age as me and we're sitting in our Gen X uniform of the mother jeans with the Levi's shirt tucked into the jeans.
I love that look. Thank you. And I wear the same thing every day. And the slightly graying hair. And we're sitting around talking about, you know. Licking someone's butt. Licking someone's butt. So, you know, it was just like it was really a moment.
I mean, so let's talk about that moment. Like what had what had changed for you and your girlfriends that made these things you were talking about even possible?
Divorcing later is a huge piece of the puzzle. I divorced in my late 40s. And divorce is often a catalyst for sexual exploration among women. And what was interesting was that, well, even if you divorce really late, that still holds true. And so I think that's a big part of the story. So I noticed this among my girlfriends. And then very, very quickly, I began noticing it in the culture.
And noticing it in the culture, I just saw the same things that everybody else has seen this year. I had a Netflix scrolling bar serve to me called Grown-Ass Women Living Their Best Lives, which was filled from top to bottom with these kind of... almost made-for-TV-ish type movies, like whatever, made-for-Netflix type movies about grown-ass women having affairs with younger men.
That seemed to be like a big theme. So there was a lot of that. There was one with Laura Dern. There was one with Nicole Kidman. There was suddenly just a lot of material. And so taking that along with my own experience and what I was seeing with the women around me, it just seemed like, well, this is a moment, right?
I mean, I want to get back to the Gen X of it all. Those movies you're talking about, are they real? Like, women in their 40s and 50s tend to have a lot of responsibility. How are some of them also having amazing sex, as your article describes?
I think that with women my age, I'm just going to coin something called owning the hot mess. LAUGHTER
I love that. Grown-ass women owning the hot mess.
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Chapter 4: How did Mireille's perception of sex change after her divorce?
So I can't really imagine what my 60s are going to be like, especially because for most of my adult life, I didn't think I was going to reach my 60s.
So
I'm going to say a crazy thing that one friend said to me. And I don't know if this is true, but she said that I was fucked back to life.
I want to center that in you. So it's like, I fucked myself back to life. Period. Exactly. Marae Silcoff, thank you so much for talking to me today. Thank you. It was really a pleasure. I loved it.
This episode of Modern Love was produced by Sarah Curtis. It was edited by Gianna Palmer and our executive producer, Jen Poyant. Production management by Christina Josa. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Alicia B. Etoupe, Rowan Nemistow, and Dan Powell. This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez, with studio support from Matty Macielo and Nick Pittman.
Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, and Paula Schumann. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you want to submit an essay or a tiny love story to The New York Times, we'll have the instructions in our show notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.
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