Sex & Love: The New World

In real life, Kim Cattrall, the 49-year-old actress who played Samantha, is in a relationship with 27-year-old Alan Wyse, a private chef whom she describes as an old soul. "He's not a very young 27-year-old," Cattrall says. And, she adds, "he's in the culinary world, and making food is a very nurturing thing." After playing a sexually adventurous character, Cattrall found it hard to have a relationship with a man her own age because she thought they were trying to compete with Samantha. A younger man, she says, doesn't feel that need to outdo her. "The thing I really enjoy," she says, "is that I can show him my world and what I think about something. He's not closed down." She recently introduced him to the movie "Harold and Maude," the story of a special relationship between a 20-year-old man and a woman in her 70s. He loved it, of course.

But men who date younger women say that's their only option if they want to have a family. Even though Jim Bixby, a 46-year-old chemical engineer in Chicago, lives in a big city, he's finding it tough to meet women and started looking online about a year ago. In the first part of 2005, he had about 18 dates with six different women. "I was so jazzed," he says. "Then reality sank in. At some point, I realized I was drawing from the DNA cesspool." A number of the women had what he calls "extreme behavior" and a lot of "issues." One constantly swore even in ordinary conversation, and another e-mail correspondent turned out to be from Poland and was looking for a way to come to the United States. When he looks into his future, he's hoping he'll be a father instead of a 60-year-old dating 24-year-old women. "That's just gross," he says.

But not impossible. Thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, physical limitations to sex as men get older are vanishing. The percentage of men suffering from erectile dysfunction increases dramatically with age. Viagra and its cousins are helping men stay sexually active, although that can pose unexpected challenges for women, says Dr. Lee Shulman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University and a board member of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. If a man has "36 hours of an erect penis, that's a lot of pressure, especially for those women for whom intercourse has become painful," he says. "She may try more oral sex to keep him at bay, but eventually, he's going to want to do the horizontal mambo." The solution: vaginal lubricants and moisturizers and possibly local estrogen therapy for women who want to stay in shape for sex.

As joe germana continued his search, Diane Barna was also tentatively starting to date. She tried online dating and "absolutely loathed" her experiences. After being in a couple for so long, she found the new rules daunting. Who makes the first call? Who pays for dinner? Does the three-date rule still apply? Who brings the condom? And (a really delicate issue) how do you ask if that someone has been tested for HIV? On all except the last, there are no real guidelines, says syndicated columnist Amy Dickinson, but she advises her readers to have a very specific discussion of their sexual histories. "Getting an HIV test together is the modern equivalent of exchanging class rings," says Dickinson, a 46-year-old single mother herself.

But Barna couldn't do it. "Oh, God," she groans. "That's kind of intimidating."

Though single boomers are having sex regularly, only 39 percent invariably use protection, according to the AARP study. "To me those are pretty alarming figures," says Linda Fisher, AARP's research director. From 1990 to 2004, the cumulative number of AIDS cases in adults 50 and older grew sevenfold, from 16,288 to 114,981. The increase reflects people who were infected early on and have survived because of antiviral medication, but experts who study aging and AIDS are concerned that the problem of new infections in older adults may be more serious than the statistics reflect.