Let’s Talk About Sex

When I realized my marriage was over, the predictable array of scary topics ran rampant in my brain. I worried about my kids, of course. Then there was the issue of money. And what about lawyers? And where would I live?

But it might surprise you to learn that in between all the hand wringing and nail biting, I somehow found time to indulge a racy fantasy or two. Or three. Right there in the midst of what was surely the saddest and most frightening experience I’d ever had, I couldn’t help but dance a little jig over the prospect of new, and better, sex somewhere on the horizon. Fulfilling sex was one of the many doors to happiness that had closed in my marriage – and one of the first that I realized I held the power to re-open.

Just a day or two after my Big Decision, I sat in my therapist’s office. “Has your fantasy life changed?” she asked. I was shocked. Although on one level I was enjoying my unexpected friskiness, I was also a little embarrassed. After all, I’d decided to divorce less than 48 hours earlier. Didn’t dignity and propriety demand some kind of dry spell?

But like the good therapy patient I am, I spilled the truth. The doctor’s smile washed over me like a balm. “Congratulations. That’s one of the healthiest things you’ve said in a long time,” she told me. And she was absolutely right.