We spoke the same language about almost everything: politics, business, travel, friends, family and all the ordinary things that fill a life together. For the last eight or nine years of our marriage, though, we didn’t have sex. Al had prostate cancer and the disease changed that part of our relationship.
Someone once asked me how I managed to go so many years without physical intimacy. My answer was simple: I loved him. That was what our marriage required and I never thought of it as some enormous sacrifice.
Had the tables been turned, I knew Al would have done the same for me. Our marriage became a secure, loving relationship where sex simply was no longer part of the equation. Would I do it all over again?
Al was always more to me than sex. What we had was comfort, laughter, trust and the wonderful feeling of being completely known by another person. And something happened that I absolutely did not see coming.
While I was mourning the man I loved, my body seemed to wake up. I wanted the warmth of a man beside me. And, to my complete surprise, I wanted sex.
I could barely look at a photograph of Al without crying, yet I suddenly had this intense physical desire that seemed completely at odds with my grief. Looking back, I realized how starved I had become for physical touch. While Al was alive, I had simply accepted our marriage as it was.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
