You Never Really Know When It’s Your Last Time … to Have Sex

I was married for nearly thirty years, and for most of that time, my husband and I had an active sex life. We went our separate ways when I was fifty-four, and shortly after, I got involved with a handsome, sexy man who shared Sean Connery’s devilish eyes, and his charm. But that relationship, fresh out of the death of my long marriage, didn’t work out. Committed to finding what I wanted and what I’d long been missing, I continued to date — and, eventually, fell in love with someone who I thought was the man of my dreams. Sadly, I didn’t know that he was essentially living a double life and would eventually choose her over me.

I’m still not sure exactly what did happen behind my back — but, following the abrupt end of this relationship, I became much more cautious. For a period of nine months, I remained committed to a flirtatious but platonic relationship with my dancing partner. Despite our over-powering chemistry, I kept him at a distance. Then, I caved — and had a very short relationship with someone else, who looked terrific on paper but wasn’t terrific at all. After the shocking unpleasantness of our physical connection, I gave up — not on men — just on trying to find Mr. Right.

Fuck it, I said — I know who I’m attracted to, and I know he’s attracted to me. I called my enthusiastic dancing partner, and we finally got together, on and off the dance floor. We had an effortless rhythm — and an intense and passionate love story that lasted a blissful three months that I will never regret. Our physical connection was sweet, sexually fulfilling, and just what I needed. It was also the kind of relationship in which I was keeping one foot out the door and we both knew it. He had anger issues, and one day he snapped in such a way that I knew I’d never feel safe with him again. I walked out into the snowy morning, and that was the end of that.

That was in the spring of 2017, a month before I turned fifty-seven. On that March day, I had no idea that the last time my dance partner and I made love, which exists only as a hazy memory, was the last time I would ever make love. Or, that the last time we’d kissed, with greater intensity and sensitivity than I’d ever kissed anyone before, was the last time I would ever kiss anyone remotely like that. If I’d known it was the last time, I’d have paid more attention. But, I didn’t — and I wonder, do we ever know it’s the last time?

I’m now sixty and living completely alone during a global pandemic when dating is impossible, or at the very least, dangerous. And since the pandemic in the U.S. seems to be raging out of control, I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll have the opportunity, or inclination, to make love with another man — and this is something I grieve.

At sixty, my body knows what it likes, and my brain knows how to ask for it. But, almost everyone I know is already happily married. And even before life in the "Coronaverse" became our strange, virtual world, I hadn’t chanced upon any single men who were interested, physically equipped, or desirable — at least not in the past three years. Since I’ve had no invitations, I can only assume the men in my vicinity felt the same about me.

Perhaps, after all, my involuntary celibacy has simply been saving me from unnecessary heartache. Or, perhaps I’m just following a familial legacy. I think back to my father’s decision to leave our family when I was an infant. I don’t remember his leaving, of course — for all intents and purposes, he was never part of my world. But I do know, having done the math, that when he walked out, my mother was only forty-six — and I know for sure she didn’t know it was the last time.

As the single parent and sole provider of five children ranging from age eight-months to age sixteen, she had no time or inclination to pursue the opposite sex. I’ve always thought it a cruel and terrible thing to have to give up one of life’s great pleasures at such a young age — and I’m so sorry that my mother was put in that position. And, if I had to guess, I’d say the loss of her sex life was something my mother grieved, too.

Now, I’ve reached the same conundrum — sexless from the age of fifty-six. I wonder if I will ever have great sex again. But I wonder, too, if it will ever be safe to have any sex at all, given our worldwide pandemic, unless both partners were already in a committed, pre-Coronaverse relationship …

These days, any explicit sexual thoughts go straight onto my keyboard, and then onto paper. I’m well into my fifth book of romantic — and fairly erotic — women’s fiction. Good for me! I have so much fantasy fodder, in the literary sense. But still, I find myself in this unwelcome predicament, only a fraction of which is of my choosing.

I didn’t want my marriage to end. I wanted to find someone to fall in love with again, and I wanted to remarry, or at least, find my person, my long-term partner. I wanted to stay sexually active in a healthy way into my old age. But age-related stereotypes and a global pandemic, together, have created an insurmountable barrier — and now, writing erotic, women’s fiction is my only outlet, for the foreseeable future, or, perhaps, until I’m too old for it to matter.

In these strange times we’re living in — among the many things I’m grieving is the loss of the possibility of finding a romantic, loving, and sexual connection. Thank God for ‘Outlander.’ Thank God for the many romantic stories that fill my bookshelves. And, Thank God for the sweet and sensual ideas that come to me like lovers in the night — I’m certainly going to make the most of all of it.

When I share these thoughts with friends, I tell them it would take an act of God — a miracle in line with the loaves and fishes — to find a desirable and loving sexual partner. I’ve been burned. I have trust issues. I have walls up. I would only want to make love, again, with someone I cared about, who, coincidentally, also cared about me. (For a long time, I did not realize this was a revolutionary concept.) I would need to respect them and trust them, and that’s saying a lot, after the long journey I’ve been on. But it would be a wonderful thing to experience ‘being loved’ for the first time, even in my sixties — and at a time when being vulnerable feels like the scariest thing in the world.

But my faint hope isn’t unprecedented: My maternal great-grandmother remained attractive, vibrant, and … interested, continuing to marry younger and younger men well into her eighties. My paternal aunt fell in love for the first time at age seventy-five and enjoyed a blissful fifteen years before her partner left this plane of existence. The two of them traveled the world together — Mexico, the British Isles, and Spain — making memories that lasted them both all the way to the end. On those loneliest of nights, I sometimes like to imagine I’ll be this lucky …

Author's Note: This is a piece of writing. I am not looking for relationship advice or a hookup.