I have been doing pretty well to distract myself lately, especially with all the new excitement of my middle daughter coming out. On that note, we went for her second Covid vaccine yesterday and had lots of time to talk. And it occurred to me that if I end up staying in this area, it might still be important to get out of the suburbs and move to a more LGBT-friendly neighborhood.
But I digress. The truth is that I’m actually feeling pretty overwhelmed by my husband’s cancer lately, which is probably intensified because this is a chemo weekend.
An old friend I used to be very close to when I lived in Michigan contacted me, wanting me to review some stories she wrote because she wants to get them published. She said she trusted me to read them and give her honest feedback and didn’t really trust anyone else to do so.
Though she’s happily married to a man now and mothering two young children, she was in a lesbian relationship when I met her. We used to have long talks about how to cope with being bisexual while in a straight marriage. The outlet she’s found for that is apparently writing lesbian erotica. And though she told me it was pretty vanilla, she definitely wrote it well and as I replied to her, for being vanilla, that was certainly pretty spicy vanilla.
And that got me to thinking about the current state of affairs in my life. Not that I want a lesbian relationship, and certainly my sex drive fluctuates a lot more than it used to, thanks to the hormonal changes of perimenopause.
But my mom assured me that when I get through menopause, my sex drive will return and it will be like I’m a whole new woman. And it occurs to me that most likely, whenever that happens, my husband is not likely to be in a condition to share that with me, even if he’s still around. Already I can tell how chemo is taking a toll on him in that regard.
And it’s not a matter of patience or being unable to set aside sex when there are much more pressing health concerns. It’s obvious that his well-being comes first and foremost.
But it just really struck me that if I’m expecting to be alone after he’s gone, that’s also going to mean spending the rest of my life without sex. That’s one of my primary ways of feeling close in a relationship and I’m going to have to do without it altogether. I will definitely miss it.
I’m certain that my love and concern for him will bring us together during times when we can’t be physically intimate. I will probably find whole new ways of feeling close to him. But it just really reminds me again about how much I’m going to lose. Not just the love of my life but also the physical expressions of that love. And it reminds me once again that I feel far too young to be widowed and like the best times are already behind me.
Return of Conflict Girl 