My mid-life sexual reawakening
When she caught her husband of 22 years cheating, this mother of three despaired for the future. But as she reveals in a new memoir, she experienced an eye-popping adventure as a singleton — and is now on lover No 9!
WE HAD been together for 27 years when I discovered my husband was having an affair. I had imagined us growing old together, jockeying to be the first to hold our grandchildren and reading the Sunday papers with one pair of glasses to share between us.
We loved each other deeply and it never crossed my mind that we wouldn’t be married for ever. But neither did it occur to me that the bitter, unexpected end to our 22-year marriage could herald a remarkable sexual awakening for me, and that I would catalogue my journey — the good, the bad and the ugly — in a
book. My brother was adamant that writing about my experiences would be cathartic.
My goal was for the book to be raw and real when it had to be, but mostly funny.
This memoir did not come out as i had intended, however. The zippy story of the single, middle-aged mother of three striking out and finding her sexual mojo was not, in fact, the only tale i had to tell.
The deeper story was how i came to the revelation that i’d become complacent, coasting along while roiling underneath was a woman yearning to live life on her own terms.
Michael and i were just 20 when we met and, up to then, my sexual experiences had been limited. in our marriage, yes, i enjoyed sex once i found
the energy, but if i’m honest, i could take it or leave it.
i’d given birth three times (Daisy, now 18, Hudson, 15, and georgia, eight), nursed three babies, fought gravity with only middling success and — frankly — aged. i’d thrown myself into motherhood with gusto. i took parenting as seriously as the Un takes world peace.
My needs and desires? i had not considered them for ages.
so how did i come to be in a hotel bedroom at 46, naked, with a stranger on the other side of the bathroom door?
The news of Michael’s affair shocked everyone. Yes, we bickered, but we loved and often adored each other.
Made suspicious by an extravagant valentine’s Day bouquet (he had never bought me fancy flowers before) i checked his phone and found a WhatsApp chat peppered with loving messages between him and a woman 20 years my junior. Michael was not only sleeping with someone i knew, but he had been contemplating divorcing me to be with her.
FOR several months, i was so miserable i could barely scrape myself off the floor to care for our kids. He moved out while we tried to figure out if reconciliation was possible.
i wanted to burrow in my grief and hibernate.
A stay- at- home mother, although i had worked in publishing before my children were born, it was all i could manage to coach myself out of bed each morning, feeling nothing but dread for the day ahead.
i would spend hours talking to friends or sitting alone at home, thinking and crying. i stopped reading newspapers and tried to keep reading books, my most cherished activity, but i could not track the words across the page.
My friends kept urging me to go out and flirt to shake off the sadness. Finally, five months after Michael’s affair was revealed, i relented and found a local bar where a band was playing, bought myself a ticket and put on a dress.
i felt equal parts brave and foolish: less ‘i am woman, hear me roar’ and more ‘i am lonely, newly single, timid woman, hear me whisper.’
When a tall, muscular man with a full head of dark hair — let’s call him Man #1 — walked in, my radar activated. He was a stranger, just visiting the area for a few days. We chatted, i flirted, he kissed me and i ended up back at his hotel room. it sounds seedy, but he was handsome and charming and i really didn’t want to pass up a seemingly perfect opportunity to kick my life forwards.
i gave myself a pep talk: ‘it doesn’t matter what happens here. it’s like the first attempt at a jog after years of being sedentary, you will never see him again. You can do this.’
But at that point, it occurred to me i was wearing a beast of a strapless bra with a wide back and four hooks. There’s no way this man would be able to get it off gracefully and i didn’t even want to imagine how matronly it would look.
Then there was my belt! it had a clasp that you have to twist just-so to undo and if he had to tackle that he would surely feel defeated before even getting to the bra.
Decision time: i quickly removed all my clothes and folded them on the desk. By the time he emerged from the bathroom, i was naked.
i had never felt so wholly out of my body, or so certain that i did not belong there.
i knew it was not too late to retreat, to reach for my clothes, get in my car and backtrack to the life i had known for decades. To say this moment felt dreamlike is an understatement of epic proportions.
i might have lost my virginity 30 years earlier, but this experience felt remarkably similar. All that was missing was the worry my parents would find out.
Then the voice in my head said: ‘Jump!’ And slowly i nodded my head in assent.
i had worried i would miss Michael like a stabbing pain, but sex with this man felt profoundly freeing. This was the sex i remembered from my youth, ravenous, raw, and thrilling — the kind of sex that took my breath away.
it gave me a reprieve from the sexual identity i had adhered to during my marriage.
As i drove home, i realised i’d only been gone a few hours, but was returning a changed woman. From that point on, a voice in my head urged me to keep going, to leap forward, don’t look back, pedal faster, have more sex, learn more, explore more, discover more — more, more, more.
Over the next year, i had nine different lovers. i found myself looking for men all the time. suddenly i wanted to be noticed, i wanted to be flirted with and touched. For better or for worse, i felt free and very, very available.
i had given so much of myself over the years, gradually disappearing as i put all of my love and energy into my children and maintaining as perfect a home as i could. But now there was something inside stirring — not just sexual arousal but sexual curiosity, too.
Man #2 was a builder who’d once worked on our house. We bumped into each other at a food market and went out for a drink. But back at his place our passion was interrupted by Floyd, his devoted and very jealous german shepherd (i’m
not a dog person). i was clearly
‘ This was the sex I remembered youth from ’