Intimacy and Ageing

To repartner in later life is increasingly common in large parts of the Western world. This book addresses the gap in knowledge about late life repartnering and provides a comprehensive map of the changing landscape of late life intimacy. The book examines the changing structural conditions of intimacy and ageing in late modernity. How do longer lives, changing norms and new technologies affect older people’s relationship careers, their attitudes to repartnering and the formation of new relationships? Which forms do these new unions take? What does a new intimate relationship offer older men and women and what are the consequences for social integration? What is the role and meaning of sex? By introducing a gains-perspective the book challenges stereotypes of old age as a period of loss and decline. It also challenges the image of older people as conservative, and instead present them as an avant-garde that often experiment with new ways of being together.