Do you have a partner or a project or a person who moves you deeply? Someone you trust totally? Have you heard yourself use the word “love” in circumstances you hadn’t before? Do you connect love with sex? If you feel you are missing love in your life, what is it you miss?
The reason I ask is that everywhere I go, I hear from women who are experiencing love, intense love, in new ways. In some cases, they do not label the feelings “love” but the more we talk, the clearer it becomes that the word is taking on a wider definition. We are finding love – and sometimes sex -- in circumstances we would never have dreamed of earlier in our lives. I want to know more about this expanded and enriched love life.
“I have fallen in love for real and for the first time in my life,” a 52-year-old bride tells me with a tinge of disbelief. Would she have fallen for the same guy thirty years ago or would she have dismissed him as uncool or inappropriate? I wonder. Why now?
“I have fallen in love with my husband all over again,” exults a woman who has been married over forty years. “There were times where I thought we would never make it, but this was worth hanging in for!” What happens in a long term relationship that refires the engine?
“I was happily married for forty years,” says another woman, “but when my husband died, I found myself becoming increasingly drawn to other women. I just found the intimacy so easy.” What is it like to make this kind of transfer or eroticism and intimacy?
And what is it like for the women who never felt satisfied in their heterosexual relationships who are discovering their true sexuality now?
”You may be shocked,” says a very serious-looking doctor, “but I have discovered the joys of one night stands. I need a rest from ‘relating.’ And the sex is great!” I am not shocked; I have spoken to countless women who are experimenting with separating sex from long-term commitments, and countless others who are experimenting with sex in general. Does reaching the “fuck-you fifties” set us free to literally go there?
