5 Things Men Fear Most About Aging

It starts with sex and goes downhill from there.

By Paula Spencer Scott, Caring.com senior editor

Worried about getting old? Who isn't -- except perhaps those who are already unmistakably there. Survey after survey shows the elderly are more content with life, less depressed, and less fearful of death than the young.

"I'm a lot more sanguine and comfortable about aging at 76 than I was at 56," says George Vaillant, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who codirects its Study of Adult Development.

In the meantime, though? Guys in midlife harbor plenty of fears when they peer ahead. (Women have their own, slightly different set of aging fears).

Among men's top fears about getting older:

Why do we assume that as we age, our desire for sex is going to fade?

Dr. Ruth, Westheimer, PhD, Sex Therapist:

God forbid! Don't assume it. 

People after 50 should continue to have a wonderful sex life if they so desire, if they say they don't want it anymore, I say goodbye, but if they so desire, but they have to be sexually literate. 

A woman has to know that after menopause she needs a lubricant, not to engage in intercourse with a not well lubricated vagina, it's painful, she's going to say, who needs it.