“…This article investigates women's perceptions of their married, later-life sexual relationships and of how their experiences of sexuality have changed over time. Despite the importance of socially constructed meanings, later-life sexuality research tends to focus on the impact of ageism on older adults' experiences (Bazzini, McIntosh, Smith, Cook, & Harris, 1997;Bildtgard, 2000;Butler & Lewis, 2002;Walz, 2002), on the declining rates of sexual activity among older couples (Brecher, 1984;Schlesinger, 1995;Gott, 2001), and on the social and physical reasons for this decline (Butler & Lewis, 1983;Crose & Drake, 1993;Levy, 1994;Rice, 1995;Segraves & Segraves, 1995;Spector & Fremeth, 1996;Matthias, Lubben, Atchison, & Schweitzer, 1997). Calasanti and Slevin (2001) maintain that the existing research has failed to account for older adults' emergent definitions of sexuality.…”