Stage 16: Sex and the Modern Urban Widower, Part 1

Day 576: Negroni: Gin, Campari, Sweet Vermouth, Orange Twist

Sex is a dangerous topic for anyone. The remnants of a Victorian society have kept discussion of it out of polite company for generations. It's made it so the simplest of discussions of desires are delayed and built up to such a degree that relationships are destroyed rather than be honest with a partner about what we need in the bedroom. It's probably the first topic I wanted to talk about in this blog, and yet it has taken 18 months to actually broach the subject.

No one knows this better than cancer patients and their partners. The disease and the treatments given can affect every single physical function of a survivor and the realm of sex is no exception. The chemo and a deteriorating body took its toll on Dahlia. Our lovemaking was always deliberate by the necessities of how our bodies operated together, but as the disease progressed, even taking things slow didn't help. By the end, several months would pass between intimate moments.

Of course, on top of all the physical ailments came emotional issues from the thousands of intricacies of living with cancer. All of these failures in the bedroom led to frustration and remained a contributing factor to my depression. For me, at least, a waning desire to have sex didn't come with worries about the state of our relationship. For Dahlia, who had seen cancer tear apart relationships, had a worry in the back of her mind that I would leave. I laughed off the idea when she brought it up. I still think it was a ridiculous notion, but I get where it came from. Cancer can destroy weaker relationships, but I meant my vows when I said them and I still did the day she died.

After she died, I found her Kindle and started looking through it. I was just looking for something to read, not expecting to find some insight into my recently deceased wife. Nevertheless, while I was flipping through her collection of books, I found a title called "The Sex-Starved Wife." It honestly shouldn't have been a surprise. When Dahlia saw a problem, she read up on it and attempted to find a solution. It was one of her most endearing characteristics. That said, it's a little different when you find out you're part of the problem she was trying to solve.

Of course, I knew that there were several extenuating circumstances to my fading libido, but it's hard for me to not think of myself as personally responsible. I could have tried harder. We could have tried different things. I suppose we did, but every failure, everything that caused Dahlia pain instead of pleasure, was a setback that pushed me subconsciously further away.

I'm not trying to absolve John Edwards or anything, but sometimes I wonder if opening up the relationship in these cases would make things easier or harder. For the survivor, it might remove some of the pressure of trying to please their partner, but it could be yet another reminder of your own mortality and cause even more worry about your partner leaving you. Maybe all that jealousy and guilt is inevitable, so perhaps things could have been easier for Dahlia and I. I don't really know.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about it as her condition deteriorated. It's human nature to think about the future for anyone. As much as the Buddhists would like to say otherwise, it's not really natural to just stay in the present. For a partner of someone with a terminal illness, this means thinking about what you want out of the next partner. Despite all of the remorse and the pain associated with doing so, I couldn't avoid looking at other potential mates out at the bar and on my bus ride into work.

My wandering eyes didn't go unnoticed either. Women starting approaching me in ways that either didn't happen or I didn't notice in the past decade. When they did, I nervously fumbled over my words and dismissed them in the politest ways I could think of. After one of these encounters, the usual cardinal sins would flood my mind: lust, pride, envy and all the mental self-flagellation associated with them.

A couple days after she died, I was filled with emotions: loneliness, relief, survivor's guilt, anger, etc. It was difficult to separate one emotion from another or to recognize the reasons for them. On the Friday following Dahlia's passing, I had friends over for our usual game night.  It was an amazing and emotional night, lots of hugs and reminiscing and support. It ended up being a lot of close friends and a few less frequent mourners. It was a strange night. Around midnight, the sky opened up and we had the rare Northwest thunderstorm.

I'm not a religious or spiritual person, but a powerful rainstorm is as close as I get to a metaphysical experience. Standing out in the warm summer rain provides me with a simple calm, a euphoric state in which I can let go of my anxieties and let the water wash away any sins, real or perceived. And petrichor, it seems, is a powerful aphrodisiac. It was in this storm that I first felt a deep and powerful longing for another human being that was not Dahlia.

He was a beautiful human being who had often been the target of my aforementioned drifting gaze. To be fair, I probably wasn't the only one with a crush on him. He stood squarely in the gap between genders in such a way that attracted the attention of all sorts of orientations. That night, with a million emotions running through my head and all my defenses washed away in the storm, I needed his touch in a way I was completely unprepared for six days after losing my wife.

Looking back on that night, I wasn't being very subtle about my affections, and he knew it. If I had been single for longer, I would have recognized his reciprocations. He returned the furtive glances. He sat next to me so bare skin touched. It drove me crazy. In another time, I would have been bolder. Instead, every touch of his made me more shameful about my feelings.  Six months later, things would have been clearer, but then, there wasn't a way to separate remorse from lust, an absence of contact from desire for an individual. The night left me with a confusion that I'm still trying to figure out.

After talking with several friends, I decided to discuss the matter with the object of my affection. Nervously, I invited him out for a drink. We talked and joked. I suppose I did some amount of flirting, though I'm not sure I could have recognized it as such at the time. After some time, I told him that I was attracted to him and completely unsure what to do about the situation.

He responded politely. He said he was attracted to me, but wasn't ready for another sexual partner. I'm not sure how much was truthful and how much was polite, but I'm not sure how much it mattered. To be honest, I wasn't ready. If anything happened between us, it would have ended in a panic attack and tears, mostly mine.

I've learned a lot since then, and the tears and panic attacks weren't really avoided, just reduced and delayed. I'm still trying to figure out how to be intimate again, both emotionally and physically. It's been a long journey and I have a feeling it's just beginning.