Sex therapist and lecturer Shirley Zussman recently took on a new patient — a 25-year-old woman. “She had gone to somebody else in New York originally, and she felt she knew so much more than he did,” Zussman says. “So she was happy to see someone with more experience.”
At the age of 99, the twinkly-eyed Zussman has a lot of that.
A one-time colleague of Masters and Johnson — the duo depicted on Showtime’s “Masters of Sex” — she makes her old pal Dr. Ruth Westheimer, 85, look like a young whippersnapper.
“I know her pretty well,” Zussman says. “We met on the lecture circuit. I was in Bloomingdale’s not too long ago, with a friend, and Dr. Ruth passed by on the escalator, going up. She yelled, ‘Dr. Shirley!’ ”
Zussman may bring a grandmotherly vibe to sessions with her patients, but she is perfectly blunt when discussing the kind of sex problems she sees today. “I have a patient now who doesn’t ejaculate at all,” she says. “His partner doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it. I think it has many psychological issues attached to it.”
She keeps busy seeing about 12 patients a week at her Upper East Side private practice, located on the ground floor of the building she lives in.
Zussman started her career as a psychotherapist, then moved into sex therapy — along with her husband, Leon, an ob-gyn — after a life-changing lecture from a then-virtually unknown William Masters and Virginia Johnson. She and Leon co-authored a book, “Getting Together: A Guide to Sexual Enrichment for Couples.” She was a sex and health columnist for Glamour for 10 years, and has maintained her own practice since her husband Leon’s death, 30 years ago.
She says she’s seen sexual attitudes, and practices, change over the decades, and isn’t terribly impressed by where they are right now.
“I’m a big believer that sex is influenced greatly by the culture,” says Zussman, who had famed anthropologist Margaret Mead as a doctoral dissertation mentor during her studies at Columbia. “These days, I feel like women are being made into sexual objects. We talk about sexual freedom, but their bodies are being used for all kinds of commercial purposes.”
She thinks our current workaholism and attachment to technology are making us lousier lovers.
“With couples today, you have this general problem — it’s almost like a need to achieve, the way they achieve in the work world or the student world,” she says. “It’s like it’s become a performance. You have to be good in bed. Performance anxiety can make you tense and anxious, rather than just allowing yourself to feel.
“People see sex as intercourse rather than a broad panorama of experience. Most people view it as — what’s that thing on the carousel? The brass ring. The way people approach sex is so goal-oriented.”
Also, she says, “one of the most common issues that comes to sex therapists is lack of interest. And of course that’s the most difficult to treat. I remember one woman saying, ‘I love my husband, but I’ve been so harassed all day and so involved with people, I just want to be left alone.’ I think it’s very common, in this society, that people are exhausted. That 9-to-5 life is gone. There’s a certain reservoir of energy and interest people have, and they lead very demanding lives now. You need to find a way to be together. It doesn’t always have to be the physical aspect of sex. Take a walk in the park together. Take a bath. Take an interest in each other, and take the time.”
As people get older, they get resistant to thinking of new ways to spice things up in the bedroom, she says, which can be a real relationship-killer. “One of the downers in getting older is that people don’t try new things. You can learn new things, at 50 or 60, and you don’t have to feel like you’re on the quirky side. I think people are embarrassed, maybe, to make love in new ways.”
As for Zussman herself, “I don’t date. At my age, I don’t really need that. I have a lot of friends and family here, so I’m busy. My children both live in California, but two of my grandsons ran the marathon, so I had a lot of company [lately].” She also has a Smith College reunion coming up — her 80th, something not many alums can say. At her 75th, she says, “there were four of us — though one of them has since died.”
So, you must be wondering, what’s the secret to Zussman’s longevity?
“In my case, genes must play a role,” she says. “I have a sister who’s going to be 102 — she is as sharp as can be. Always has been. Very fashionable. People stop her and say, ‘Where’d you get your hair cut? Where’d you get that raincoat?’ And I have a brother who’s 95.” She also has two children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Still, says Zussman, she doesn’t follow all the current healthy-body dictates. “I’m not a water drinker,” she admits. “I never touch my water, but I should. Everyone tells me, ‘You must drink water!’ I don’t really drink liquids. But I’ve done well without.”
Though she’s off the dating market now, she says her own married life definitely benefited from practicing what she preached. “I would say we had a happy, enjoyable sex life,” she says. “But no question, we profited from the expertise of the profession!”