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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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'I don't know if you want to know this'
— carers' understandings of intimacy in long-term relationships when one partner has dementia | | Author(s) | Jane Youell, Jane E M Callaghan, Kevin Buchanan |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 36, no 5, May 2016 |
| Publisher | Cambriddge University Press, May 2016 |
| Pages | pp 946-967 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Married couples ; Spouses as carers ; Sexual activity ; Personal relationships ; Attitude ; Qualitative Studies. |
| Annotation | This article explores experiences of relational intimacy, including sexual intimacy, in long-term relationships when one partner has dementia. The qualitative study explores how six participants experience their intimate relationships with their partners with dementia. Semi-structured interviews provided a rich source of data which were analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Three master themes emerged from the analysis: 'everydayness', 'absent presence' and 'I don't know if you want to know this_'. Participants explored how living with dementia constructed specific, everyday relational challenges, and disrupted everyday intimacies. Intimacy, including sexual intimacy, remains an important element of older couple relationships. Relational experiences present specific and difficult to articulate experiences for the partners of people living with dementia, particularly experiences related to sex and sexuality. Representations of older adults (particularly older adults with a long-term illness) as relatively asexual beings can make elements of these relational challenges particularly difficult to express. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-160415203 A |
| Classmark | EA: SM: P6:SN: BIU: DS: DP: 3DP |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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