Meet Mark and Andrew!
The pair – a long term couple – will feature in a Relate campaign which will ‘shine the spotlight on the unseen: sex and intimacy in our later years’.
Relate are a non-profit organization and the UK’s largest provider of relationship support, for people of all ages, backgrounds, sexual orientations and gender identities.
In their latest campaign, which was shot by iconic photographer Rankin and lunched at the end of April, they have shot five older couples and one woman in their most intimate settings, with the objective being to show what sex and intimacy can mean in later life and tackle the stigma around the subject of older people having sex. Which, of course, they do.
Included in those couples are Mark and Andrew, who discussed their intimate life candidly and brilliantly: “We’ll lie in bed, and we both love reading in bed.” said Andrew. “And we’ll lie back to back. But feet would be touching and it’s moments like that, that are important to you. As much as, you know, banging each others brains out – to put it crudely”.
Relate said of the campaign that they “wanted to start a conversation about sex in later life”.
“According to a recent study by 3Gem Market research, “two-thirds of over 65s (67%) say sex and intimacy for their age group is rarely (43%) or never (24%) represented in media compared with a fifth (20%) of 18 to 24-year-olds.”
Furthermore, only “one-fifth of people across the UK think society is OK talking about sex and intimacy in people aged over 60.”
Back in 2019, actor, gay icon and all-round legend Sir Ian Mckellen set-up the Pride in Ageing scheme, along with friends of ItsLitGayShit the LGBT Foundation, for which he is a patron.
The program aimed to help ensure that LGBTQ people age 50 and older get the support and access to resources that they need, and also to celebrate the positive aspects (yes, including sex) of being an LGBT person in mid-to-later life.
Read more about Mark and Andrew’s full story on the Relate website here and check out the adorable couple in the video below: