Diary of a Sex-Starved Pseudo-Mennonite, Part 1

I am 9 months out of a 21 year relationship, 18 years married. I never prepared a single Ness backup plan because the last time I was single I was 15--I don’t really do single--and frankly I didn’t believe the fucker whose name I took would actually leave. Because he told me he never would. But he did. And here we are.

When I was in my early tweens, my step-dad, who liked to engage me in big picture short-lived discussions on career, finance, and love, asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. “Happy” I said, without hesitation. At the time, I thought it a humble aim, forgoing money, status, and acclaim. Only now do I understand that this goal was wildly ambitious.

Now you might want to shield your screen as if you are secretly watching porn on your lunch break AT WORK, because things about to get adult up in here. I grew up an outward-facing good girl. I was May Queen, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t particularly want to be good, but my brother was really “bad,” so I went the other way trying to make my single mom’s life easier. I wrote thank you notes and got good grades and had 3 long term monogam-ish relationships, the last culminating in marriage. I may have been an eensy bit desperate to marry, trying to meet lifelong good girl expectations. I was 28. My brother was already referring to me as a spinster. And I loved the company of men and couldn’t imagine why I wouldn’t always want to have one handy.

The courtship between myself and my ex was a red flag convention. It was like trying to play flag football when both teams’ flags were red. I was codependent and needy, mourning a shattering long distance breakup with a guy I loved more than my future ex-husband--more than anyone ever at that point. My ex was charming, witty, unusual, intelligent, creative, musical, could do man stuff yet be shockingly emotional and sensitive; he was a wordsmith, a blacksmith, a poet, a car geek, a literature freak, a romantic, a listener. He was viciously protective of me and depending on the moment and the context, a light to medium sociopath.

About 5 years into our marriage, when he had had it with my repeated attempts to get him to consider putting a baby in me, my ex had a conniption fit. Face in hands, shoulders shaking, he cried with the disquieting passion of the toddler-type whose parents drown them in backyard pools. Through red-faced tears and gulps for air, he implied how cruel it was for me to ask him to give us a child, because it took all of his energy to take care of me. Expecting him to babysit me and a child was wildly insensitive and impossibly selfish on my part. The take away from this one man soap opera was that I was unfit to take care of myself, let alone my husband or a child, and should just be grateful my long-suffering husband put up with my trifling, worthless ass. And I believed him. I loved him. I simply could not bear to ever see him this upset again. So I gave up on a family and any other dreams we did not share so he would never be upset like this again. And he never was. Until the day he left. That day he was crying so hard I helped him out and said the words for him. "Do you want a divorce?" Unable to speak through his sobs, he shook his head yes. A strong yes.

After the baby showdown, I went through a period in our marriage where I was not as stoked to have sex with my husband as usual. I did, I even enjoyed it the majority of the time, but it was not often my idea. Obviously in retrospect this was a subconscious reaction to him being a complete shit, but I didn’t understand that then. I believed I was the complete shit. In his saying-not-saying way, my husband told me so. Even though I still at least tried to have sex whenever he wanted and was a good little (and big and multiple) orgasm deliverer, his fragile ego could not tolerate my failure to adore him in the manner he began to demand. So after I was old enough that I had more or less accepted my childless lot in life and tried to focus on other things and felt like boning more, my ex said no. Let me repeat this. A MAN REFUSED MY SEXUAL ADVANCES. Not just any man. My husband. I did not know this was a thing. Those I have shared this with since my marriage ended did not know this was a thing. I was shocked. And I’m cute. Very cute. And sexually responsive, even to assholes. And sexy AF. Even my girlfriends with no lesbian leanings who don’t typically talk about sex will see a pic of me and say unprompted, “Girl, you sexy AF.” So my sexual power is a thing. A thing my ex aimed to dismantle and reshape to suit him and his agenda only. But he convinced me he did this all for me, out of selfless love and care, for me.

Fast-forward to 2 weeks ago. Although my marriage has been over for 9 months, ironically the amount of time it takes to bring a child into the world, I actually had not had an orgasm with another person in at least 11 months. My ex had his unit on “I’m about to ditch my wife” lockdown. So in the months after my partner of 21 years left and I then got ghosted by my first love interest as a single person and then found out from a specialist I was too old to have kids and then my step-dad of 35 years died suddenly and then I was deeply disappointed by my second lesser love interest, this was also nearly a year of not getting properly laid after more than a dozen years of marital sexual neglect. I tell you the following not because I think free love is wrong or sex with strangers is wrong or hittin’ it and quittin’ it is wrong. I tell you this as an apparent good girl grown old and alone who has just soldiered through probably the hardest year of her life. And the fact that I say probably and not certainly tells you my life has not been a bowl of cherries. I tell you all this seeking understanding, whatever morality you embrace regarding sex. When I started dating for the first time 2 weeks ago at 47 after 21 years monogamously committed to one long marital mind-fuck, I was not trying to get laid. But when it happened, and it did not suck, MY GOD was I happy.

Frederic was fine as hell. He was not the first guy to respond to me in the dating app (that was Bobby, who we will address in another titillating installment), but the second. He was busy. He’s always busy. But he checked back with me first thing the next day. Frederic moved in quickly, mostly a gentleman, only a sprinkle of sexual innuendo for dating app chat, I would soon learn. He was playing golf with his buddies. Yet he could not golf. Because I was so alluring and distracting. Frederic simply had to see me. He’d never felt like this before. He’d never been so attracted to a woman so quickly. This all may have been true. Or Frederic could have read these lines in his tattered paperback back-pocket edition of “How to Fuck a Bitch in the First 24 Hours.” But the physical book is a metaphor. Because Frederic is 41 and too young to read books.

Tune in for Part 2 to find out what nearly takes place with Frederic at da club.

Until next time, Sweeties!

Ness Sweet Ness