I'd say go get a good porno. Because, let's face it - if even YOU aren't attracted to others like yourself, how can you expect someone younger to go for it without payment?

I've always found such ideas hypocritical - we all get older. To decide that while you are older, you somehow only find youth attractive is to denigrate yourself, to fail (however much you can recite otherwise) to recognize the benefits of age, to be unwilling to recognize that time marches on. Others of your own age are no different from you - they've lost the glow of youth - and gained experience, wisdom, depth.

"For some time I have been thinking about an ideal arrangement to have some intimacy and sex in my life. The scenario would be that a younger man would regularly come visit me once a week for drinks, a pizza and a pay per view movie, then stay overnight."

I don't think this will lead to the contentment the LW is obviously seeking. Her weary tone reminds me of several divorced female friends who are my contemporaries. What licks them is that weariness; it scares away men who recognize their disappointment with life and worry it might be projected on to them.

Everyone accumulates some baggage over the course of life. But you have many more options if you are able to move on from personal and professional setbacks with only carry-on luggage rather than a packed to the gills steamer trunk.

you can keep playing it the same way...but here you have a perfect opportunity to look at everything differently.

"Once one feels the sublime in life, it is a wild ride down to a small apartment with no social life and dealing with medical and psychological issues, with no change in sight." Exactly what I suspected.

Pass the Prozac.

Good Lord. This reminds me of a 60-something woman I sat next to on an airplane whose husband announced he wanted a divorce after several decades of marriage. She was able to build a life for herself as a single woman but I asked if she had had any romantic partners. "Oh, no," she seemed briefly horrified at the thought. "Men my age aren't attractive to me, and I'm sure it's mutual."

All life is created to - in turn - create more life. That is what we are at the center of our being. That is what all creatures are. The irony is that this very desire is also unquenchable. Your DNA is pushing you to create copies of itself and it does that through your sexual urge. Even though this is your primal mover your mind has no direct connection to it and your DNA doesn’t want you to be satisfied with any number of copies you have created so far. It wants more. Its like hunger – you can eat and be satisfied for a moment but you will be hungry and want to eat again. Your DNA has built you to hold fantasies about youth and sexual power and to go out and try to get those things. Your DNA has built you to have feelings of inadequacy when you don’t go out and do those things – so you will then change your behavior and go out and do those things.

But the world is unfortunately filled with other people who don’t share your agenda but have their own. You have to navigate that. The older you get the less you will find people willing to take that journey with you. Its not in their interest. Maybe to have peace you have to make peace with that. Keep in mind that your DNA is going to be working against you every step of the way.

Except that the LW is a guy...

...it explains a lot.

It's interesting to see, or think about, how different the responses might be depending on what sex the reader assumes the LW to be. I think it's pretty clear he's a man (pretty sure, even in Belgiam, that women weren't marrying other women back in the day) and is bisexual, or perhaps gay. Is it different for an older man to be attracted only to younger women, or younger men, than if the older partner is a woman?

Betzee, I believe the LW is a man... ("I attend a weekly group for men with PTSD/MST (military sexual trauma). The men in the group are mostly older, like me. ")

I have to take issue with the LW's description of himself as "wise." Yes, wisdom can be gained through experience, but it comes only if we use the experience to move away from ourselves and surrender our ego to the world. The bulk of the letter talks about how he did this thing, bestowed that on others, experienced such-and-such, but doesn't offer a whole lot about the lives he intersected with - they just seem to be road signs on his life's journey. Now he's older, alone, and alienated. His testimony is all about himself - he recounts a memory of young girls throwing flowers in the street when he was first wed, but doesn't tell us much about his bride.

It's hard, and frankly dicey to judge another from a few grafs in a net posting, but it seems to me that the LW needs to let go of himself if he's to make any meaningful connection in what lies ahead in his life. It's never too late.

When I get around 50 I'm going to start doing dangerous things I'm too scared to do now. I think I'd rather die a quick, exciting death than be as sad as the LW. Sorry. :(

...for an older man to be attracted only to younger women, or younger men, than if the older partner is a woman?"

A couple of years ago I saw a movie by Laurent Cantet called "Heading South" about post-menopausal women from North America and Europe who return to Haiti every year to young lovers for whom playing gigolo is a far better paying gig than any other job they can find. (No different from their male compatriots seeking female companionship in the Dominican.) But the women become competitors and want to believe these young Haitian men actually have affection for them.

It left me profoundly uncomfortable in part because I had just started a new job and found a co-worker attractive. He was obviously older than I was though that didn't concern me too much. But overhearing him on the telephone ordering a pair of orthopedic socks put a damper on things. I was not ready to confront the prospect of mixing declining health with intimacy. Upon reflection, it's probably a better way to go than seeking out a partner young enough to be your child.