The idea of having sex for the first time after the end of my nine-year-marriage started an avalanche of thoughts. I’d known my potential partner for years, and we had rekindled our relationship easily, but I was suddenly nervous. I started thinking about all of my “flaws” that I had never worried about in my previous comfortable marriage.
What will he think of my C-section scar? Is my underwear decent? Should I get a wax? Are my moves still good? Should I be doing more squats?
I was a ball of anxiety leading up to the initial act. But five minutes and some neck nuzzling in, those nerves were forgotten, and I was heading up the stairway to heaven. I couldn’t help but compare my new single-life sex life to the sexy times from my marriage. After over a decade with my ex, during which our sex life had grown lackluster and taken a backseat to our daily lives, I had sort of settled into a reluctant mindset that this was all there was and as good as it would get.
I was wrong. Oh boy, was I wrong. It wasn’t, and sex got better.
You see, although I was once a very lascivious being, I’d somehow morphed into a sitcom caricature of the wife: a pretty package but all business when it came to sexy time. Sex and intimacy became less of a priority as our kids grew older and the days grew more routine.
Honestly, my struggles with sex absolutely contributed to the demise of my marriage. For years I put being a mom above being a woman, and I lost a lot of myself within the confines of marriage and my twisted ideas of being a wife.
My therapist helped me start digging further into that loss. I had no idea a large part of my post-divorce healing would have to do with reclaiming my sexuality and myself as a sexual being, because I had put so much energy into being a super mom and wife.
But when I was separated and fully able to explore my freak factor solo, things changed. I had to wonder, “Could I really manage being both a sexual being and a mom? Did I even want to?” Turns out, I could. And did.
So while the initial thought of being intimate with someone else after so long was terrifying it was also a bit of a challenge. And I like a challenge. With my first single-mom swerve session, I gave myself permission to fully let go and be in the moment. For the first time in a while, my mind wasn’t wandering into all of my other to-dos during sex. Plus, for several days in a row I managed to be an attentive mother, a productive employee and engaged friend, while finding time to send sexy texts to my new bedtime partner and keep swinging from the chandeliers in the evenings. It was wild, and it took a few days to recover. But then I reveled in the fact that I did that. On purpose.
These sexy times after my separation reminded me that I was sexy. I was actively pursued. Maybe it was the rush of someone seeing me as something other than mom that did it, but I was in desperate need of that, and I want more of it.
In this last year after separating from my ex, I turned 40 and my oldest daughter began getting ready to leave the nest for college. Now it’s time for me to step out and reclaim who I am as a woman. I’m so much more than the queen of my “kid-dom.”
With this separation, and our new custody schedule, I’ve been able to really focus on me and what I need. I’m kind of excited about that. Maybe that sounds selfish. That’s a term that’s been tossed at me in a derogatory manner for much of my life, and so I thought I had to be a selfless martyr who helped everyone else without complaining. But this whole sex-after-separation experience has taught me that a certain amount of selfishness is good. Necessary even.
I made plenty of missteps during my marriage, and I have a lot of work to do still. But therapy has helped me to delve deeper into my previous intimacy issues, and it’s encouraged me to explore the latent, sexual side of myself. Both solo and with a partner.
Now, I have to say, I’m looking forward to continuing that exploration.
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