AARP article on rediscovering sex after a SM
Jun 14, 2018 13:09:42 GMT -5
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Post by northstarmom on Jun 14, 2018 13:09:42 GMT -5
"Like many women my age, my libido went MIA sometime around menopause. In my case, it was coupled with my husband having health issues that precluded us from partaking in any “rolls in the hay,” as he once so sweetly called them. What I hadn’t counted on was that when the sex in my marriage died, it would take all the romance with it.
All of which is to say that by the time I lost my husband to heart and kidney disease, I was the poster girl for what it was like to live in a sexless marriage.
We lived together until my husband's death but years before we had stopped kissing, hugging or even holding hands. Occasionally I tangibly missed how when he held open a door for me, he would place his hand on the small of my back and gently guide me through. Even that stopped as his illness led to personality changes. For the last years of our marriage, he would just charge through doorways and let the door slam on all who followed — including me. I understood it was the disease speaking and tried not to let it bother me.
The truth is, long before he offered to move into the spare bedroom, I had wished he would. There, I said it. I was in a bad place on many levels, but I recognized that every ounce of sexual desire on my part had vanished, and I never believed for a minute that it would ever return.
Boy, was I wrong.
A little while after my husband died, I met the man with whom I’m planning on spending the rest of my life. He also is widowed, and our caregiving paths followed a similar course but never collided. We reckoned that there was a good chance our spouses were both patients in the same hospital at the same time, but our paths never consciously crossed.
We were total strangers when we met on an online dating site. I was there researching a story on romance scams and Charlie was there, as he so charmingly puts it, looking for me. He’s a bit of a cornball and says things like that all the time. And I’d take a cornball over a player any day.
Charlie says that mine was the first photo he clicked on. After texting back and forth for a bit, we advanced to phone calls. Our first call lasted two hours, and while neither of us can recall what we talked about, we both left the conversation stunned by its ease...." www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-2018/sex-after-sexless-marriage.html?intcmp=AE-HEA-HL-SA50SPL
All of which is to say that by the time I lost my husband to heart and kidney disease, I was the poster girl for what it was like to live in a sexless marriage.
We lived together until my husband's death but years before we had stopped kissing, hugging or even holding hands. Occasionally I tangibly missed how when he held open a door for me, he would place his hand on the small of my back and gently guide me through. Even that stopped as his illness led to personality changes. For the last years of our marriage, he would just charge through doorways and let the door slam on all who followed — including me. I understood it was the disease speaking and tried not to let it bother me.
The truth is, long before he offered to move into the spare bedroom, I had wished he would. There, I said it. I was in a bad place on many levels, but I recognized that every ounce of sexual desire on my part had vanished, and I never believed for a minute that it would ever return.
Boy, was I wrong.
A little while after my husband died, I met the man with whom I’m planning on spending the rest of my life. He also is widowed, and our caregiving paths followed a similar course but never collided. We reckoned that there was a good chance our spouses were both patients in the same hospital at the same time, but our paths never consciously crossed.
We were total strangers when we met on an online dating site. I was there researching a story on romance scams and Charlie was there, as he so charmingly puts it, looking for me. He’s a bit of a cornball and says things like that all the time. And I’d take a cornball over a player any day.
Charlie says that mine was the first photo he clicked on. After texting back and forth for a bit, we advanced to phone calls. Our first call lasted two hours, and while neither of us can recall what we talked about, we both left the conversation stunned by its ease...." www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-2018/sex-after-sexless-marriage.html?intcmp=AE-HEA-HL-SA50SPL
