The Dashrath-Kaikeyi Syndrome
“In my experience, I have often found that the older man suffers from an insecurity that he may not be able to sexually satisfy his much younger wife, although sexual frequency may be more than in a couple of the same age.

There’s also this underlying fear that his wife could get attracted to a younger man. Therefore, older husbands try to compensate by going overboard in indulging their wives unlike a husband of the same age. The older man will go out of his way to do things for his wife more like what a parent would do for his child.

“The young wives find their husbands more sympathetic and considerate; sometimes of course this softness is exploited. The Ramayana has a classic example — Dashrath and his third wife Kaikeyi.

“Many times the wife demands that she be indulged all the time, like a spoilt child. The husband therefore becomes a parentlike figure. This could result in a confusion of roles for the man and the woman. Is the husband a parent, supporting partner or an equal companion? Role clarity becomes foggy as the wife is used to being treated like a child. The husband makes most of the decisions because he is the maturer person rather than an equal partner.

This can become a source of conflict if the wife wants to take independent decisions. The husband may resent it because he is used to making decisions like a parent for a child. The problem is how much will he give in, in those issues.

“Another typical situation is that the identity of the woman is never established. She is always, ‘so and so’s wife’. Since her man has put her in a very comfortable situation she may usually not find a reason to stretch herself.

“Then again sometimes, a woman is so enamoured of the man’s success, a particular talent or brilliance, that she doesn’t quite know his ‘human’ side till she actually starts living with him. That’s when she may realise that as a husband, he is not a sharing companion. That can be quite shattering for her.”

— Dr Nirmala Rao, Psychiatrist

Can The Body Keep Pace?
“A young wife is by herself a stimulation to any man. If you look at the animal kingdom, in a pride of lions, an old lion leads the pack of lionesses. During his mating season he always chooses the youngest lioness. A lion’s sex drive does not diminish with age. The same can be said about a man. Aging is not a bar to his fertility or libido. His fitness and state of mind are.

“Some of the common medical ailments seen in middle-aged men are diabetes and hypertension. These ailments by themselves do not directly impact a man’s sex drive, but related medication could adversely affect it. Moreover, if a man has had a unhealthy lifestyle — excessive smoking, chewing tobacco, drinking with no fitness routine — he is a likely candidate for heart problems or cancer (of throat, lung or the neck).

“Such diseases lead to psychological trauma. From a healthy person, he is suddenly a sick patient undergoing a lot of medication and treatment. Though medically he is fit to perform sexually, psychologically, he may not be in the right frame of mind. This is quite likely to affect his marital life, especially if he has a younger partner.

“A man needs to be more health conscious if he has a younger wife. If he has been careful with his fitness routine in his 30s and 40s, he is not going to be faced with obesity which is characterised by wastage of muscle (flabbiness) and osteoporosis. Or else she might find him physically unattractive because of his flabbiness that comes with aging.”

— Dr Kaushal Pandey, Cardiac Surgeon